Can You Hear Us Now?
By Rachel Spencer
We are the voices of the past, the voices of a thousand silenced generations. We are the voices of the largest minority of the planet. But we have been kept nameless, even to our children. Our voices have been hidden and masked over by those who would call us expendable. One of many terms we have been called. Mistakes. Undesirables. Unfit. Disabled.
*
Every day when I get home from school, I toss my hearing aids at the based of my computer monitor, pull on my headphones, and open up Pandora. Music sounds better when it doesn't go through a hearing aid. Of course, this makes sense considering hearing aids are designed for the elderly with mild hearing loss and not for kids like me who were born profoundly deaf. Engineers try to make hearing aids smart, not recognizing that all the different settings and modes make it harder to hear. Meaning hearing aids intentionally distort sound— especially music—as engineers think it makes me hear better and is backed by graphs and current scientific knowledge. But my brain processes sound differently in a way that cannot be expressed in a graph.
This is why—I smile as “Homeland” by Hans Zimmer begins to play—I avoid wearing my hearing aids whenever possible. The French horns swell, backed by the pounding drums. My heartbeat changes to match the rhythm. I close my eyes and imagine I'm an eagle flying over the old, wild American west with clear blue skies and the warm sun at my back. The song ends with a final crashing cymbal allowed to linger into silence. Wholesome, beautiful silence.
People have all the wrong ideas about silence. They think of it as a dark, oppressing void, desolated of any meaning. A night sky without stars. But a sky is never without stars, even in the daytime. That's another reason I like music. Silence is as much a part of music as any instrument.
Every song begins and ends with silence. The silence of one instrument allows another to shine.
Without silence, music would just be a chaotic thunderstorm of sound.
I start tapping my foot to the next song, “I Lived” by One Republic. Before I know it I start humming, then mumbling the words, matching the feel of my voice to the vibrations of my headphones. I don't sing around others because I'm afraid they'll laugh—but I'm home alone and start singing as loud as I can. It doesn't matter how I sound because, while I feel my voice, I can't hear it. It's freedom.
All too soon, the sunlight streaks through the basement as the screen door swings open at the top of the stairs. I stop singing before Mom has time to unlock the inner door. In a bit, she will call me for dinner and I will need to put my hearing aids back in.
I imagine a future where I'll never need to wear my hearing aids.
*
We were among the first of Hitler's victims. We were used as test subjects to perfect weapons like gas chambers. Those of us born into this life were believed to be children of a fake god, because the real god is incapable of making mistakes. For centuries, we were not believed to be human and treated as such.
At the same time, our “shortcomings” caused great advancements in human history. Neurodiversity, such as Autism, caused jumps in human evolution without which humanity would still be drawing on cave walls. Deafness created telephones. Our bodies have been mutilated to pioneer new, lifesaving medical procedures.
But you will not hear our stories. Our suffering and sacrifices are swept under the rug.
*
After dinner, I take out my hearing aids again and listen to more songs while browsing through my homework. The most pressing item was the final essay for my critical literary theory class. Wasn't there a book I read last semester that would be good for this? I could picture the orange cover, but not the title. College has taught me to keep every book I've read in school for cases like this. I head to the spare bedroom to search through my storage boxes.
These boxes are a bit of an odd hobby. I collect things I might need when I graduate and move out of my parent's house. They are mostly full of scented candles, books I'll probably never get around to reading, and forgotten memories. The first box I cut open has a set of mixing bowls, a few whisks, adorable Halloween themed hot pads, and books on speaking Mandarin and Japanese. The next one has my high school yearbooks, a book on cakes, a Mulan doll, and a ceramic birdhouse my grandma had sculpted and painted blue. I opened the third box the wrong way so the spine of the books faced the bottom and I had to pick them all out one by one to see the titles.
“Oh!” I smiled when I pulled out a worn paperback with a picture of an orange cat stalking through deep green grass: Warriors: Into the Wild. I had loved this series as a kid. Had—being the keyword. I skimmed through a few pages, smiling as Rusty became Fireheart, a warrior of Thunderclan. And then I felt a familiar coldness settle over me.
I will never forget the day I fell out of love with the series. I was sprawled out on my bed, flipping through pages as fast as my eyes could soak in the words. Suddenly I started screaming.
Mom burst into my bedroom. “What's wrong?”
I was so excited I could hardly speak fast enough. “Snowkit! Snowkit is deaf Mom! He's deaf like me!”
“That's great, hun.” Mom smiled and left.
It was the first time in my life I had ever come across a deaf character in a story. My grin was so big, it made the words blurry. I couldn't wait to read about how Snowkit would grow up to be a great warrior, how he would learn to hunt, and how he would work his way around the same challenges I had. Maybe he would even become Thunderclan's leader!
A few pages later, a warning cry rang out as a hawk flew over Thunderclan's camp. Everyone dived for cover—everyone except for Snowkit, who hadn't heard the warning. The hawk swooped down. Snowkit's terrified cries rang over the forest as he was carried farther and farther away—never to be heard from again.
I kept rereading Snowkit's last paragraph. What? It can't end like that . . . can it? No matter how many times I reread it, the words never changed. A deep cold settled inside me, like a void. I was confused. How could I love something so much, yet so clearly be excluded? I often imagined myself being a part of the warrior cat world—but clearly, I would never be allowed to be a part of that world. The cold swallowed all the love I had for the series. The first story I had ever read with a deaf character and they had been killed in a single paragraph. The message flashed like a neon sign: there was no place for people like me in stories.
I wish I could say that was the only time I felt the coldness, but it wasn't. I felt it in third grade when I was determined to find a book about a deaf knight. I couldn't find one, even though I was sure there were loads of deaf knights in real life. I became so desperate that I looked it up on the internet. When a google search for “deaf knights” brought up nothing, I changed the keywords to “deaf people medieval ages” and clicked on the first link.
“In the medieval ages,” the article read, “deaf people were not considered human. To be born deaf was to live the life of a labor animal.” My eyes widened at the picture of a naked man being whipped. He was harnessed like a donkey to a cart, crawling on his hands and knees with his mouth fixed in a permanent scream. “This is also the era that many derogatory terms stem from, such as 'deaf and dumb' and 'deaf and mute.'”
I felt the cold again when I was eleven, sitting on the steps in the schoolyard. While my classmates were running and playing, I was trying not to cry. Questions ran through my head that no eleven year old would ask. Would I be employable being deaf? Would I have a career? Would I be walked out of job interviews? Was I the only deaf person in the world?
In high school, I decided to pursue my kindergarten dream of joining the military. I worked on losing weight and getting fit. Part of me believed that no one else would see me as employable. In a military setting, however, I had advantages that others didn't. Like having natural ear protection for shooting guns. Or, as I was learning sign language, I could communicate silently in a combat setting. I understood I might never be allowed an active combat role, but there were loads of other things I could do. Be an engineer, or a pilot. Maybe I would get to train dogs.
The cold stayed with me for months after I found out no branch of the United States military would allow disabled people to join.
The Warriors book is still in my hand. I absentmindedly traced the embossed letters. How was it that even as a young child I'd always known that I'd face discrimination? I've spent my life wondering why there weren't any stories about people like me. Where were the stories of deaf knights, deaf wizards, or deaf dragon riders? As a child, I came to believe it was because deaf people weren't worth writing about. I gave up on the idea I would ever find a deaf character in a story, which was why I was so excited when I found Snowkit several years later.
I feel my hand tighten around the book. Something sparked inside me. If Snowkit hadn't been murdered—I gritted my teeth. If Disney had a deaf princess, or Batman had a deaf sidekick, or there was even a single deaf Jedi, if I had a single hero like myself to look up to, would I still be the person I am? The sparks grew into a flame, burning away the coldness. The light of the fire made everything clear.
It was the absence of disabled heroes. That's why I was suicidal for most of my childhood. It is because of stories like Warriors, that I felt small, invisible, and worthless growing up. A small tear started in the cover from me gripping it so tight and I let go before I could do more damage.
In my critical literary theories class we talked about new criticism, structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminism, queer studies, Marxism, historicism, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and race studies. But the last chapter wasn't worth covering. It was on ecocriticism and disability studies. Even though it wasn't required, I read the scant twelve pages of the disability studies section, which in the end failed to explain trends I have observed over the course of my life.
Maybe I should write something new for the essay. The thought came before I could stop it. I laughed and shook my head. I had been struggling all semester trying to make head and tails of all the critical theories and applications. There was no way I could create something new and complex enough to earn a good grade. Some things matter more than grades, though. I sighed.
Maybe I could find a way to expand on the textbook a little bit.
I took Warriors back to my desk, then I pulled out the Inheritance Cycle by Christoper Paolini, and Marvel's newest movie, Doctor Strange. I put on American Author's “Go Big or Go Home” and opened a new text document. I started writing. The difference between being disabled and any other minority group is that anyone can become disabled at any time. It's a natural part of aging. In this sense, talking about disabilities is really talking about what it means to be human.
I came up with a concept called “the nullification of disabilities,” which applies in different ways, but ultimately demonstrates trends that relate power and disabilities. Sometimes it shows up in the way a disability fades away after a character gains power, like how Dr. Strange's disability suddenly disappears after he learns to use a sling ring. Another example of nullification is when a disability must be removed or cured in order for the main character to become powerful enough to defeat the big bad guy. Like Eragon who sustained a chronic back injury was cured by magically being turned into a weird elf-human hybrid.
I wrote how sometimes characters are assigned disabilities and then killed off shortly after being introduced, like Snowkit, which suggests people with disabilities are worthless and have nothing to contribute. I explained how stories say having a disability means a character can't have power in so many subtle and harmful ways. I wrote about how the impact of these stories on me as a child how it led to years of depression and suicidal tendencies.
I got an A on that paper.
*
We watched as women earned the right to vote. We watched as the Black community ended segregation and earned civil rights. We learned from them and began to advocate too. The world tried to ignore us, then silence us, but we kept fighting. In 1973, we received Section 504, an anti-discrimination act requiring accessibility of federal funded buildings. When politicians refused to sign it, we protested in the longest sit-in of American history.
At last, Section 504 was signed. It was the first piece of civil rights legislation in the world specifically for disabled people. But Section 504 did not protect us from job discrimination or ensured equal treatment. So we continued fighting. One day we gathered together and abandoned our wheelchairs and our canes to drag ourselves up the steps of Capitol Hill. Even children as young as six joined in the crawl.
In July of 1990, our efforts were rewarded and the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed. For the first time in history, we had the same rights and equality as anyone else walking the streets. But still, we are not free from discrimination.
Only time will bring an end to that. Time and new generations who are willing to raise
their voice against it.
*
The essay stuck with me for months after I wrote it. It sparked a deeper need. I wanted to learn more about disability studies, partly to refine my theories and partly because I was curious.
I started watching talks given by people with disabilities. I learned about inspiration porn from Stella Young. Like women are objectified for their bodies, disabilities are objectified for inspiration. We are not seen as people. Sinead Burke, 3' 5” tall, stressed the need for designing for everyone by walking the audience through the steps of how to use a public bathroom when the locking mechanism, toilet, and sinks are out of reach.
Aimee Mullins, a double leg amputee runway model, let the audience ogle her twelve pairs of legs set out on stage as she talks about disabilities and defying beauty standards. She hit the runways in a pair of hand carved wooden legs decorated with grapevines and magnolias. She has a pair of glass legs and a pair made of live potato and beet roots growing in soil. She does this because somewhere, someone decided people with disabilities can't possibly be beautiful or sexy.
But the talk that stood out to me more than all the others was Judith Heumann, “Our fight for disability rights—and why we're not done yet.”
She started by talking about getting polio during the epidemic in the 50s. She survived it and uses a wheelchair. Neighbors wouldn't even walk in front of her family's house because she had a disability. A doctor suggested that she be sent to live in an institution. It was a common practice back then for families to abandon disabled children in institutions. Institutions that were run like prisons. Institutions that had no shred of humanity.
Judy had visited institutions as an adult. She described how the stench of urine would hit you before you even stepped out of the car. How children only had three minutes to eat a meal.
How the halls would be lined with ill-clothed people sitting in their own feces.
All the time I'm listening to her speak, I'm wondering what would have happened if I had been born in another time period. Would my parents have sent me to an institution? Would I have been left in a hallway covered in my own feces? Would I have died there?
Judy talked about how she was turned away from schools because she was in a wheelchair. She talked about the discrimination she faced in trying to get a job. Her friends would carry her wheelchair up the stairs because interviews were in inaccessible buildings. At one particular interview, the first question she was asked was to demonstrate how she used the bathroom.
Judy ended up becoming one of the founders of the Disability Rights Movement. She talked about the wheelchair protest that stopped traffic in New York City because back then buses refused to let people with disabilities ride. She was one of the leaders in the Section 504 sit-in protest that lasted 26 days in San Francisco. She was next to Frank Bowe when he signed the famous line, “Senator, we are not even second-class citizens, we are third class citizens.” After Section 504 was signed, it paved the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act.
And that's when it hit me. It was the first time I had ever heard about my history. This was the first time I heard about the people who fought for my rights, the protests, and the speeches. This was my heritage. Here, finally, were the stories of disabled people I had been looking for my whole life. For some reason, my history is not taught in schools.
With tears in my eyes, I came to understand that I am a member of the first generation of disabled children to be born in America with equal rights. The first generation who was protected by the ADA and not barred from receiving an education. The first generation that has never seen a public building without a wheelchair ramp.
It means that I am a part of something history has never witnessed.
*
We are the voices of the past. Our children will not be taught our role in their history, but they will have the means to restore what has been lost. They will live, not as lesser beings as we have, but equals.
We made sure of that.
And now we have passed and the mantle belongs to our children. We will watch them from our corner of the sky. We will watch them change history and continue building a world we could only dream of.
*
I know that one day, my voice will become part of the collective of past generations. Every day, I recover a little more of my history. I learn Hitler was inspired to create his master race by how the United States treated people with disabilities. Hitler began his crusade by rounding up disabled people into “hospitals” to exterminate them long before he started targeting Jews. It was the practice Holocaust that enabled the next Holocaust.
I understand how much of the modern world has been shaped by my people. Alexander
Graham Bell created the telephone as an experiment because he was actually trying to make hearing aids. Text messaging was created for deaf people. American Sign Language and Deaf culture was nearly wiped out of existence by people who thought it was inferior. I learn that there are more people with disabilities in American than any racial minority, meaning we hold one of the largest shares in elections yet politicians rarely think to address us.
I witness history happening, like the National Association of the Deaf v. Netflix case, which insured closed captioning for all online streaming services. Nyle DiMarco, a deaf actor, wins America's Next Top Model and Dancing With The Stars. Derrick Coleman becomes the first deaf NFL player. The world is getting better. It's becoming more accepting. But there is still a long way to go.
As for me, it has become clear what I am supposed to do. It's what I've always wanted: to have representation in stories. I will write the stories of misfit heroes that I needed as a child. To raise my voice against exclusion. To announce: we are here, we have always been here, and we are not alone.
I put on my headphones, open a new text document, and play Matthew Mole's “Running After You.” It's time to write new history.
Rachel Spencer (she/her) graduated in April 2021 from Weber State University with a Bachelor's degree in Creative Writing. She’s passionate about disability studies and runs a blog called Listen Up on disabilities and writing. In her spare time, she enjoys sewing, working out, and reading.