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natalyadHow to mug a deaf person. A video produced by someone I know, Caroline O'Neill and written by a Ben Green is up for the British Comedy Awards and seeking votes at http://www.comedy.co.uk/bca/video/163/. Another similar comedy sketch is Deaf Mugger by the same writer Ben and directed by William Mager at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us7nAFSfo1U. I think Ben has a bit of a mugger thing going on. In both videos the sign and speech is subtitled beautifully!
On one of the deaf places I sometimes hang out someone said she didn't like How to mug a deaf person because it made the interpreter the butt of the joke.
I thought How to Mug a Deaf person was pretty funny, using the vehicle of interpreter having to relay what has been spoken to the deaf person (or around them) or signed by the deaf person faithfully because their professional code. In reality the code is at http://www.nrcpd.org.uk/page.php?content=30 and both interpreters would be able to refuse in these cases, but this is comedy, and in these sketches the interpreters are following a simplistic "must interpret all" even if it means they are aiding and abetting a crime or have to tell a mugger they're carrying lots of cash...
It's a bit of a 'what if' and not entirely unrealistic. In the early naughties the American 711 relay services were being heavily used by overseas scammers using the relay operators to relay scams . Newspaper reporting including MSNBC had interviews with relay operators saying they felt like criminals being required to relay threats and obviously unlawful content.
USA organisations are not permitted to refuse to take relay calls, but because of this high scam load many were doing so because more than 80% of calls were scams. This was causing harm to American deaf and deafblind people so eventually the telephony regulators instigated systems to make relay providers verify the identity of callers and ensure they are in the USA. UK law is similar, making it unlawful to hang up on TextRelay which I discuss in my blogpost about receiving relay calls
As well as issues around legality, I think these comedy videos highlight humanity. The humanity of "support workers" "communication professionals" who are theoretically supposed to be invisible when acting for deaf and disabled people, but in reality cannot become unpersons, because they are human, they exist with characteristics such as age, race, gender.
In the UK court system it is not currently legal to take a sign language interpreter or other support worker into the juror's deliberation room because legally the interpreter would count as a 13th person and breach the "sanctity" of the deliberation space. This is being challenged by UK deaf people and a mock trial is being carried out to see if having a deaf jurer and interpreter impacts deliberations.
Research such as Women-only services: making the case by The Women's Resource Centre in the UK and the UK Women's National Commission's Findings from the WNC survey on women-only services consistently shows that the presence of men in some spaces can make them less safe for women. It is common practice in women's centres and organisations to have areas where men are not normally permitted during opening hours. It is easier to find research on women, so I am going to extrapolate the same principle for other X only spaces.
Some time ago some friends and had an exploratory debate about the nature of a disabled or deaf person needing to take a support worker into what I call "X only spaces" so women only or Black, Minority Ethnic (BME) only people spaces where the support worker did not meet the required characteristic.
I've seen various disability activists argue that the disabled person's access rights override the requirement of a support worker to have the appropriate X characteristic for X only spaces. I'm not sure I agree, cos intersectionality happens and sometimes needs clash.
The argument that a support worker is like a wheelchair or even a guide dog doesn't work. A support worker IS a human being. It isn't about their professionalism, it's about the fact of their personhood that they could in themselves be a threat to other people in that X-only space - making it potentially unsafe or unwelcoming for many other people. So it pits a disabled person's right to support over other people's right to safety.
This wasn't just a hypothetical exercise, I've organised events where a disabled person who had another X characteristic has attended with a support worker and would be absolutely welcome and entitled to go into the X only spaces. But their support worker might not be.
Could we be honest about our policy, encourage people bringing a support worker to communicate with organisers in advance, so if their support worker wasn't appropriate for X-only spaces that we could look at alternative options? Some people don't need their support worker all the time, could the support worker help assist the disabled person as needed then wait nearby ready to be called if needed? Could we split a X-only session in half, one with non-X support worker and one without - giving other attenders honest information about what the space would be? Could we (with advance notice) as an organisation agree to pay for/towards hiring a support worker or person who could provide support for the duration of the X-only session? Much depends on what the nature of the support is, or how much notice we had.
There isn't necessarily an answer which would keep everyone happy. But it was useful to think this stuff through, talking to women, trans people and people of colour about how they would honestly feel about sanctity of their X-only spaces.
To me, beyond the comedy, the deaf mugger sketches really throw that personhood of a support worker in the viewer's face, making us uncomfortable, or laughing at the ludicrousness of it, but at the same time, maybe making us think and remember that while we can demand high standards, it's difficult and a bad path to go down trying to dehumanise anyone, even a professional "non person" in some situations.
On one of the deaf places I sometimes hang out someone said she didn't like How to mug a deaf person because it made the interpreter the butt of the joke.
I thought How to Mug a Deaf person was pretty funny, using the vehicle of interpreter having to relay what has been spoken to the deaf person (or around them) or signed by the deaf person faithfully because their professional code. In reality the code is at http://www.nrcpd.org.uk/page.php?content=30 and both interpreters would be able to refuse in these cases, but this is comedy, and in these sketches the interpreters are following a simplistic "must interpret all" even if it means they are aiding and abetting a crime or have to tell a mugger they're carrying lots of cash...
It's a bit of a 'what if' and not entirely unrealistic. In the early naughties the American 711 relay services were being heavily used by overseas scammers using the relay operators to relay scams . Newspaper reporting including MSNBC had interviews with relay operators saying they felt like criminals being required to relay threats and obviously unlawful content.
USA organisations are not permitted to refuse to take relay calls, but because of this high scam load many were doing so because more than 80% of calls were scams. This was causing harm to American deaf and deafblind people so eventually the telephony regulators instigated systems to make relay providers verify the identity of callers and ensure they are in the USA. UK law is similar, making it unlawful to hang up on TextRelay which I discuss in my blogpost about receiving relay calls
As well as issues around legality, I think these comedy videos highlight humanity. The humanity of "support workers" "communication professionals" who are theoretically supposed to be invisible when acting for deaf and disabled people, but in reality cannot become unpersons, because they are human, they exist with characteristics such as age, race, gender.
In the UK court system it is not currently legal to take a sign language interpreter or other support worker into the juror's deliberation room because legally the interpreter would count as a 13th person and breach the "sanctity" of the deliberation space. This is being challenged by UK deaf people and a mock trial is being carried out to see if having a deaf jurer and interpreter impacts deliberations.
Research such as Women-only services: making the case by The Women's Resource Centre in the UK and the UK Women's National Commission's Findings from the WNC survey on women-only services consistently shows that the presence of men in some spaces can make them less safe for women. It is common practice in women's centres and organisations to have areas where men are not normally permitted during opening hours. It is easier to find research on women, so I am going to extrapolate the same principle for other X only spaces.
Some time ago some friends and had an exploratory debate about the nature of a disabled or deaf person needing to take a support worker into what I call "X only spaces" so women only or Black, Minority Ethnic (BME) only people spaces where the support worker did not meet the required characteristic.
I've seen various disability activists argue that the disabled person's access rights override the requirement of a support worker to have the appropriate X characteristic for X only spaces. I'm not sure I agree, cos intersectionality happens and sometimes needs clash.
The argument that a support worker is like a wheelchair or even a guide dog doesn't work. A support worker IS a human being. It isn't about their professionalism, it's about the fact of their personhood that they could in themselves be a threat to other people in that X-only space - making it potentially unsafe or unwelcoming for many other people. So it pits a disabled person's right to support over other people's right to safety.
This wasn't just a hypothetical exercise, I've organised events where a disabled person who had another X characteristic has attended with a support worker and would be absolutely welcome and entitled to go into the X only spaces. But their support worker might not be.
Could we be honest about our policy, encourage people bringing a support worker to communicate with organisers in advance, so if their support worker wasn't appropriate for X-only spaces that we could look at alternative options? Some people don't need their support worker all the time, could the support worker help assist the disabled person as needed then wait nearby ready to be called if needed? Could we split a X-only session in half, one with non-X support worker and one without - giving other attenders honest information about what the space would be? Could we (with advance notice) as an organisation agree to pay for/towards hiring a support worker or person who could provide support for the duration of the X-only session? Much depends on what the nature of the support is, or how much notice we had.
There isn't necessarily an answer which would keep everyone happy. But it was useful to think this stuff through, talking to women, trans people and people of colour about how they would honestly feel about sanctity of their X-only spaces.
To me, beyond the comedy, the deaf mugger sketches really throw that personhood of a support worker in the viewer's face, making us uncomfortable, or laughing at the ludicrousness of it, but at the same time, maybe making us think and remember that while we can demand high standards, it's difficult and a bad path to go down trying to dehumanise anyone, even a professional "non person" in some situations.
