To be PC or not to be PC ?

Is that the question ? and who cares anyway ? Until people say what they are really thinking you won't get anywhere. Deaf started this PC nonsense with the disabled, and supported by the system for a quiet life, a good idea at the time that is now a new form of personalised and patronised abuse used by us. What puzzles me is why they haven't replaced the PC term with a deaf version.... If they have, I don't want to know. I feel quite fed up reading the system outpouring via support sectors as they pontificate and repeat like a gaggle of mindless echoes the credo of the deaf/Deaf/deafened/HoH/HI deafhooded disciples. Tick your own box, I'm sure Pete Seegar had a song for it, (not like this I suspect, sorry Pete):

Little sectors in their ghettos
All obsessed with terminology
Little sectors, minor sectors
And they all think the same

There's a Deaf one and a deaf one
And a deafened, and Hi-hard of hearing one
There are CI's and the Oralists
Left out in the rain...

All the Deaf went to their deaf clubs
And attend deaf school or Gally Varsity
Now there's studies about deafness
All academic and urbane

And the deaf boys marry deaf girls and they all raise deaf families
to go to deaf clubs and to Varsities
So they end up the same...


Deaf communities, Deaf are this, deaf are that, deaf are cultural If, and not if they are THAT, so damned boring and irritating, makes you want to be hearing to get away from it all.....and we have a new sector of deaf and disabled making a living of telling mainstream/hearing how to act when they are in our proximitty so as not to cause offence. Deaf etitquette makes the Royal Family look amateurs... D before d except when they are HI.. what ?

Google threw up a staggering 23 MILLION references to how 'Deaf' are different to 'deaf'. It's all in the capitals or something.... and nothing to do with not hearing. Official websites of local authorities/charities/deaf groups all carry on with Deaf are this, deaf are that, it's all rubbish really. They all had an ID before suddenly it's the wrong one. We don't need to worry about mainstream/hearing, the real problem is us and our almost total obsession with the right way to describe things. Any wonder younger deaf people have deserted clubs/rallies and cultural aspects ? It bores the hell out of me let alone someone a lot younger.

At the start this politically correct nonsense, it was to force the system to recognise us as people, and not issues and problems to be addressed, now highlighting how many problems we have, and described with the appropriate terms is de rigour. Now it is a Deaf/deaf/disabled/cultural system to isolate/divide/separate/create castes/cults, and us from everyone else, and a never-ending search for that elusive ID we never had in the first place, or wasn't deaf-oriented enough, or somone has carelessly lost somewhere whilst talking total crap to boost personal ego, and have moved to planet PC where every step and look has to have a meaning and a purpose not to be seen as offensive. Are some deaf people stupid and silly ? yes some really are ! Deafness does not make us immune from the slings and arrows of outrageous self-centralism.

What is offensive is most of the current deaf awareness. Much bears no relation to actual circumstances on the ground at all, I read these things and ask "Who are they talking about ?" Meanwhile back at the deaf ranch, we are insulting and attacking each other with a venom and deliberate drive to cause maximum hurt, few outright hearing discriminators would dare attempt. Someone then read a book written by a deaf person, (Which was a novelty apparently), and all of a sudden a new wave of discriminations has raised its head, for god's sake Paddy do NOT write anything else, or at least clearly label it as fiction.