By Jonathan Elebjörk Wahlström, member of the Executive Committee and representative of the European Federation of Hard of Hearing People
I remember my first Pride event. I was 16. I was overwhelmed. Why might one ask? And the answer to that would be twofold. Both by the realisation that there were others like me out there. But also by the sheer barriers of sounds going on around me. How hard it was to try to make conversation with people in these environments, no matter how hard you tried.
And it was a strange feeling. It was being included, and excluded at the same time. The realisation that there was no reason for me to be limited by the convention that a man should fall in love with a woman, and that everything else was something outside of the normal. Or that the conventions that being a man put upon me. All these small expectations and things you don’t speak about or show.
Because no matter if we would like to think that our society was inclusive back then, after all, this was around 2015, what is in the norms is sometimes so much harder to pinpoint and work against. It’s in the small things. Like when a teacher asked the class how we think it would be for a person to be gay in our class, and someone answered: it would probably be super hard.
Coming out was, for me, in a way, coming to terms with that people who are gay both exist and live happy lives. That we can exist without excusing ourselves or being the odd exception in the pages of our biology books about ”alternative sexualities”.
But coming out could also be a way to describe how it is to come to terms with my hearing loss. For me, growing up has also been about slowly learning that you miss a lot of things that go on around you. You might hear the teachers’ teachings in school, but you miss the small talk around you. The one where most of the social interaction takes place.
You might feel like you can take part, but still miss a lot of what is happening around you. For a hard of hearing person, inclusion is creating spaces where we are allowed to listen in a way we can hear. No matter if what is needed is a loop, a calmer environment, captioning or sign language. And it takes a while to come to terms with that. To find the place of yourself that is brave enough to be resting in that awkwardness. In being different. To accept that one exists in the room without conforming to the norms of the same.
That is why ”never mind” as an answer to a question about what has been said is one of the most feared words for a person who is hard of hearing. We want to be included, but sometimes the effort it takes makes it uncomfortable for those around us and the subtle signs of that basically reinforce the exclusion.
I guess that what I want to say is this; neither the identities or the barriers we build are isolated from each other. They intersect, interact and build upon each other in ways that might be hard to predict. As pride month comes to an end, I want to invite you all to try to be aware of what the norms we create or reinforce when we meet the people around us are. Do we assume things about the people around us? How they function; how they love; or how they wish to express themselves. Because as a movement for and by our members with disabilities.
We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.
Nothing about us without us.
In the end, is what our different movements call for so different?