For several years, I've been debating whether if I should call Deaf community's leadership out on their balant ableist behavior or not. Until the recent incident with one of the largest Deaf rights activism movement, their leaderships are so poorly organized and does everything pretty unethically to the point where they would oppress marginalized groups by throwing us under the bus. Meanwhile, I've seem lot of other -ism and -phobia being discussed, I yet to see anything concerning about ableism within our Deaf community AND their leadership.Â
Those list of ableist vocabularies are literally used by leaders within Deaf community for our Deaf rights. This is unacceptable. All of those eyes represent hearing people's eyes looking at our "leadership" spewing out ableist language and slurs, and I, as a DEAFAUTISTIC, I feel like I'm the only one who is concerned about this ugly ableism within our Deaf community, expressing to the Deaf community. It seem like they chose to do absolutely nothing about it and continue allowing our leadership harming our Deaf rights by making us look bad with those kind of ableist behavior and language. I feel like I'm the only one who is bringing ableism issue up. Even I get told that I shouldn't be so judgemental of Deaf community, as it sound like my concern is more harmful than ableism to them.Â
Hello? We have the kind of leadership that is literally using this word, "retarded" to make a point. Right there, right in front of hearing people's eyes, possibly hearing politicians eyes. How is kind of behavior between both leadership and community helping us to get further with our Deaf rights activism? We shouldn't accept this kind of behavior. At all. We really need to fix our Deaf leadership for our better future if we want to be taken seriously.
