The Rebuttal

I have known Don for many years. He has a PhD so is more correctly a Doctor. He has worked hard over many years for the Deaf community and is an absolute icon. This is part of his story and I am proud to share it. With his permission.

When I was boarding at St. Mary’s School for the Deaf, people often called me “the quiet boy.” Older girls said it, my Deaf family said it. But the truth? I wasn’t naturally that quiet. I just didn’t speak orally, and I didn’t sign in that environment either.

I think my dad believed I got my quietness from my mum. She grew up with language deprivation too, and it made her reserved and soft-spoken (and not because she signed quietly, she just didn’t say much). But in my case, I don’t think it was inherited. It was shaped by the school’s oral-only rules and the punishments that came if you broke them. Still, maybe my father had a point. I’ll talk more about my personality, especially my quietness and shyness and how these traits might have been switched on by an epigenetic marker in my next Facebook post.

When I was about four, I started questioning who I was. At home, I used Auslan naturally. It was my language. But one day at school, after being punished for signing, a nun and a priest used a few signs to tell me Auslan was banned. I didn’t fully understand why, but I understood enough: signing was not allowed.

So I made a choice no speaking, no signing at school. Silence became my shield. If I stayed quiet, I could avoid punishment. But it came at a cost. I couldn’t follow instructions or keep up with conversations by lipreading, so I often ended up in trouble anyway.

When I left St. Mary’s at eight, my personality slowly shifted. Over the years, my quietness turned into defensiveness, stubbornness, and sometimes even anger. Later, learning about the history of oralism and language deprivation helped me change again. I became more assertive, calmer, and more patient. I even learned to forgive people who still choose to communicate only through speech.

But the triggers never fully go away. I remember once going to a police station and asking the officer for a pen and paper. She gave me a look that “you’re stupid” look just because I couldn’t lipread. Another time, about ten years ago, I was at the funeral of my lifelong friend Barry Priori’s oldest oral-deaf brother, Peter. When people were offering their condolences to the family, Barry’s brother-in-law told me I should “learn oral and lipreading.” In that moment, it all came flooding back, the judgment, the exclusion, the feeling of being “less than.”