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Tracey Skelton 14 Young, Deaf, and Lesbian A Portrait of Susannah S usannah was born in 1978 in a northern England industrial city.1 The city and its region at that time was experiencing economic decline whichcontinuedthroughtotheearly1990s.Manufacturingintextiles— a mainstay of its economy—was either lost or moved to overseas centers of production. Unemployment levels were climbing and infrastructure support declining as the social costs of unemployment began to bite into the budgets of local authorities. Once the Conservatives were elected under Margaret Thatcher, cuts into public-sector provision deepened and the cost of living rose due to very high interest rates. The 1980s were a difficult time of deindustrialisation and deteriorating public services, especially for regions previously reliant on heavy industry and manufacturing. For people with disabilities and Deaf people, this was a particularly uncertain period. High levels of unemployment lessened their chances of employment, and there was no legislation to prevent discrimination on the basis of disability. Additionally, public services and welfare provision were harder to secure. This specifically affected Susannah’s family. Her parents are both Deaf and use British Sign Language (BSL) to communicate. Her parents had jobs, but they were poorly paid, and they had very little provision from social services as a deaf family. They were not provided with basic facilities such as flashing lights in place of a doorbell and smoke alarm, a minicom machine to use with the telephone, or a qualified social worker for the Deaf. They never had access to a BSL interpreter for visits to doctors, dentists , or hospitals. Young, Deaf, and Lesbian 175 In terms of education provision, Susannah’s Local Education Authority (LEA) supported an oralist system of education. This educational practice was based on the belief that it was possible to overcome the barrier to communication that deafness caused rather than “avoid” the problem through the use of sign language. Such a stance was based on the expectation that deaf children should learn to communicate with the hearing world. The oralist system argues that with early diagnosis, high levels of amplification for hearing aids and intensive oral-language training (such as lip reading and vocalization), deaf children will develop enough spoken language to live successfully in the hearing world. In most LEAs this educational practice was delivered through local or distant (hence boarding) “schools for the deaf.” Oralism dominated the educational debates and was the dominant provision for deaf children, but it was highly controversial. The Deaf community and some children’s-rights advocates argued that oralism denied children the right to their own language and that it was making deaf children fit into a hearing world rather than changing society to support the deaf. In practice, oralism helped hearing people understand deaf children, but it denied deaf children the ability to communicate with each other or other deaf people. Many deaf children leave oral systems of education with very poor linguistic ability, reading, and comprehension skills. The controversy about education continues, but in 1989 the first LEA system for deaf children adopted a bilingual policy that combines the use of sign language and spoken language to ensure that children can access the curriculum effectively and have a language for their personal and social lives. The first time I met and interviewed Susannah was in a small teaching room of a college of further education in a city in the English Midlands.2 Susannah was then a student of film studies and two other A levels; she was twenty-two and had returned to study after working for the post office for two and a half years, followed by a year of unemployment. Susannah had been told about our project through the college advisor for students with disabilities and had agreed to participate. My first interview with Susannah was excellent. I talked to her about her identity as a Deaf person; about her family and growing up; about her experiences of education, work, and studying at college; and her connection (or lack of it) with D/ deaf and hearing communities. I discuss these further below, but first I put Susannah’s interview into a definitional and methodological context. It is important to explain the written terms Deaf, deaf, and D/deaf. D/ deaf is written in this way to capture the complexity of identities that the young people involved in the project represented. A Deaf identity relates to [18.117.142.128] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 10:31 GMT...

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