-
6. The Differing Lives of Deaf Women and Men
- Gallaudet University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
133 6 The Differing Lives of Deaf Women and Men Although it is reasonable to think that students leave school once they have completed all grades, in Mexico, in the past as well as in contemporary times hearing and Deaf students leave school for a variety of reasons, only one of which is because they have finished all of the grades offered. Some of the ENS signers decided on their own simply to stop attending school. Others had to withdraw because family circumstances required their presence or their wage-earning labor at home to contribute to the household income. After they left ENS, the ENS signers described intentionally setting out to learn LSM.As a group, they regarded their school as the source of their first contact with LSM but not as the place where they gained mastery of the language.Accordingly, some of the narratives report seeking contact with older Deaf people who could transmit LSM to them and teach them the meanings of signs.They often found their LSM padrinos (“godfathers” or mentors) in clubs, sports teams, and at San Hipólito Church. Most of the signers also describe the growth of their circle of Deaf friends during early adulthood.As they met others, increased their access to LSM, and attempted to form relationships with an expanded set of Deaf people, the ENS men also knew that successfully entering the workforce depended on networks of hearing family members and 134 Differing Lives of DeafWomen and Men employed Deaf men who could introduce them to employers, vouch for them, and sometimes take responsibility for them at work to teach them what they needed to know on the job.Working inevitably required dealing with hearing people,which was not reported as a major problem but which demanded skills beyond the signers’ familiar experiences with their families and school. Inevitably, given the time and place of interest here—Mexico City from the 1940s through the 1970s—the life paths of men and women took vastly different routes during their adolescence and early adulthood. Deaf Women’s Lives The women’s stories of adolescence differ from each other in detail and they range from very brief and to-the-point (Guadalupe and Irma) to very long and eventful (Gela andTeresa).After their primaria school years ended, the women’s lives included work, attendance at San Hipólito’s classes for Deaf people,socializing and going to clubs,and inTeresa’s case, seeking training in job skills.They sought friends and a social life, they gathered where other Deaf people gathered, and all of them married Deaf men. It is clear from their stories that all six women were raised according to traditional Mexican norms. Their parents and older siblings (especially their brothers), protected their daughters and sisters from the wickedness of men while enlisting them to fill their daughterly roles as caretakers of aging parents or as wage earners who contributed to the family’s combined finances. As is common in many Mexican families, formal education outside the home did not take priority over family needs or the survival of the household in difficult circumstances. For the ENS women, further schooling or even completion of primaria was simply not a possibility. Each woman’s narrative fits well into the frame of Mexican expectations for adolescent girls’lives.Each of their stories,though,shows adjustments to general assumptions about girls that take into account their being Deaf. Teresa’s story is particularly dramatic,but Cruz,Gela,Raquel,Guadalupe, and Irma also offered life stories that reflect being Mexican women as well as being Deaf. [3.129.247.196] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 15:09 GMT) Differing Lives of DeafWomen and Men 135 The women’s adolescent years, like their childhoods, varied in important ways. In other times and places, we might consider that adolescence begins when a girl finishes elementary school, or primaria . With the six ENS women, this familiar milestone does not apply because their lives were not organized around years of schooling. Cruz, for example,was put to work in childhood and did not attend any school as a girl. She left her home in Toluca to join her cousin as a live-in maid in Mexico City so she could send money home to her mother. She did not know any conventional sign language. Her first access to schooling came when her Mexico City employers “realized that I was Deaf” and told her about San Hipólito Church, where...