natalyad

How 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.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about Muslim women and whether they should be allowed to wear their niqab in public.

I think non-Muslim people/men should be extremely careful before requiring or expecting a Muslim woman to remove her niqab and be absolutely sure that any perceived need for niqab removal is justifiable and proportionate.

I doubt Birmingham Metropolitan College actually had a spate of security incidents caused by niqab wearing Muslim women...

I have my concerns about the so called openness and responses being parsed in the court case where a niqab wearing woman is being ordered by the judge not to wear it while giving evidence. Interpretation of body language and how people engage with others both positive and negative is very strongly based in gender, cultural origins, social class and even disability characteristics...


Deafness and lipreading
I supplement what I hear through my hearing aid(s) with lipreading (known as speechreading in the US). Lipreading is where the listener watches the speaker's face and mouth patterns while they speak and uses them to differentiate between words which might sound similar.



Lipreading is very important to me, especially if I am trying to understand someone I have never met before. Last time I was tested under silent sound proofed conditions my single word recognition levels with lipreading was 90%, and without lipreading was 60%.

Dentists and deafness!
I struggle to understand the speech of someone whose face is covered. I have to really nag dentists not to use their usual surgical masks and to use a clear face shield instead.




Deaf and hard of hearing people's views on niqab bans
I have seen a lot of comments in deaf and hard of hearing spaces emphatically agreeing with banning Muslim women from wearing niqabs in public. I can even empathise with these comments and understand. But...

I think we deaf and hard of hearing people need to do better than "ban the niqab", we need to recognise our own privileges on race, gender, religion lines and not tell Muslim women what they should do... Whatever our personal views are.

Should deaf and hard of hearing people call for blind people to be banned?
I work with a blind person, he can't see, I can't hear very well. We discuss clashes all the time, we negotiate, we compromise and each of us works hard at things and we mostly manage not to get too frustrated with one another. I don't get to tell him to "look harder" and he doesn't get to tell me to "listen harder" I can't just ban blindness or blind people from going out in public. I wouldn't want to, I quite like the challenge of working out how to work together.


Possible things which might solve or reduce issues
I live in Birmingham, I see women in niqabs probably once or twice a day as I walk to work. I haven't yet had to engage with anyone wearing a niqab but I have wondered "what if?" because I know it's intersectional and complex.

Ideas which have occurred to me include:

Being honest. So I could say to a niqab wearing woman "I'm partially deaf, I normally need to lipread to understand speech. Can you speak louder and more clearly and do other deaf awareness good things? And I'll try my best to understand you."

In a 1:1 situation a niqab-wearing woman might be willing or able to remove the face covering part of her veil so I can lipread her. I could ask this and put a do not disturb sign on the room's door. I realise this is a possible option because I am female.

If I can't hear the woman and she isn't able or willing to remove the face-covering, I could ask her to write down what she needs to say.

Is not being able to communicate with a tiny minority of people really a huge problem?
If none of the above options worked out and we couldn't think of others to try, then maybe a woman who wears a niqab and I could not have a useful face-to-face engagement. Maybe I couldn't have a niqab wearing client assigned to me at work. Maybe I couldn't do college group work with someone who I can't hear.

Muslims make up approximately 5% of the UK population. Assuming half of those Muslims are women, that's 2.5% of the population. I can't find figures for how many of those Muslim women wear a niqab but I believe it's a small minority, so we're almost certainly talking about less than 0.5% of the population, less than one in two hundred people.

There's more men with mouth-covering beards than that I am sure! Those are a definite lipreading barrier at times.

And while difficulty engaging is frustrating for deaf people and probably for a niqab wearing woman too I don't see this situation arising all that often in comparison with other bigger issues like racism towards Muslim people or Disablism and discrimination against deaf people.

I don't think my deafness gives me the right to require that I ask a woman to remove their niqab.

Some Muslim women's voices on the niqab and current debate and issues
Has a woman in a niqab ever harmed you? by aisha Gani in the New Statesman.

I wear the niqab let me speak on my own behalf by Sahar Al Faifi in the Independent.

The veil debate: why we must respect the autonomy of all women by Raisa Kabir in the F Word.

edited to add:
How many Muslim women of working age wear a niqab and no known cases where it's been an issue in say healthcare.

Discussion about the French niqab ban and problems it causes identifies no NHS workers choosing niqab wearing and that justifiable need to see faces is usually understood with niqab wearing women being willing to remove the face covering part of her veil when respectfully asked by Nabila Ramdani - Guardian.

There's a 20 minute documentary about a white British Deaf Muslim potential convert to Islam where veils are discussed at 10 and 12 minutes in.

I've also sent a facebook message to Muslim Deaf UK letting them know about this post and asking if they have any links or quotes they'd like me to append to this blogpost. I did do a little searching but haven't found anything by D/deaf Muslims in English so far but am happy if anything is found.