https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8057-7146
The issue
Deaf queer people exist everywhere, across geographical and historical contexts. Yet, research remains limited.
First, gaps exist about how deaf queer people work, learn, socialize, and develop. Second, there are pervasive negative biases that unfairly represent deaf queer people. Third, while these gaps are inherently problematic, we are deeply concerned by trends of rising fascism in the United States, Europe, and Asia, which uniquely and directly threaten deaf queer people.
Overall, we believe that new knowledge is needed to address the unique needs of deaf queer people, all of whom deserve to live healthy, self-determined lives of consequence.
What we know
We approach four ideas in sequence. For us, both “deafness” and “queerness” indicate dynamic, positive states of being, whereas “queering” refers to active processes of constructing queer-positive knowledge. By “fascism”, we refer to political stances advocating violence against vulnerable minorities.
Deafness
“Deafness” is not one thing but many. Deaf people are partly defined by differences in auditory abilities. Research on contemporary deaf people depicts an increasingly diverse population, including a heterogeneity of races/ethnicities, disabilities, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds. In considering the diversity of deaf people, gender and sexuality are increasingly prominent characteristics.
Deaf people have a range of social experiences which contribute to educational development. For instance, researchers have explored the negative effects of language deprivation syndrome (LDS) on brain maturation. Using medical assessments, researchers have documented reduced gray matter in deaf people with LDS. Other studies on deafness have shown positive developmental outcomes stemming from certain curricula, such as Strategic Interactive Writing Instruction, designed to enhance the cognitive and social skills that deaf students already possess.
Queerness
Readers may be familiar with variations of the acronym LGBTQIA+ that indicate people who are lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, among others. This acronym places sex, gender, and romantic identities into hierarchies of value about perceptions of social acceptance. Increasingly, queer people are distancing themselves from problematic hierarchies.
While terms like lesbian and gay are established and relatively familiar, numerous other terms now exist and new terms are rapidly increasing. “Queer” is an increasingly familiar general-use adjective replacing LGBTQIA+. Queer is used in scholarly research and popular media. It is a definite but flexible aspect of selfhood that refers to a widening range of sexual, romantic, and gender orientations. These include the habits of mind and existence, modes of scholarship and resistance, and ideologies of people who question or subvert two main social conventions:
(1) Being cisgender—people whose ascribed biological sex and gender identity match. For example, a person assigned a “MALE” sex based on a medical examination of their DNA and/or genitalia, and who, later in life feels that “masculinity” is a suitable identity.
(2) Reinforcing heteronormativity—assumptions that people who are attracted to another sex/gender than their own (usually: male–female pairings) are inherently better than same-sex/gender pairings (such as two lesbian women coexisting in partnership).
Queer stances often challenge assumptions, such as that heterosexual relationships represent the majority, constitute the norm, and are therefore superior. It is important that non-queer people and people new to these concepts realize that while terms have precise meanings, they also change. This includes changes in sign language equivalents based on motivations for increasing equity and access (Morris et al., 2023).
Queering deafness
While queer was a stigmatizing term, it’s since been purposefully reclaimed to transform negative meanings into positive analogs. Similarly, the verb “queering” represents the processes of building positive queer-focused knowledge or creating viable alternatives to resolve past injustices. In research, narratives told by deaf queer people often juxtapose queer culture, deaf culture, deaf education, and sign languages in myriad ways. These narratives reveal that deaf queer people seldom receive the same supportive care as heterosexual individuals who are not deaf or disabled.
Narratives about deafness and queerness often involve negotiating oppression stemming from dual or multiple-minority statuses, including multiple, interlocking forms of oppression (e.g., intersectionality). Underdeveloped areas of research include documenting areas of positive inputs and outputs for deaf queer people. Because deaf queer people exist across geographical locations, historical periods, social environments, and political communities, we think that each context requires situated supports; that is, specific knowledge-forms should be tailored to local needs. Often, these changes cut in diverging directions—those that reduce harm and those that increase benefits. Below, we offer examples to give our claims a human context:
(1) In deaf spaces, Andersen (2024) has argued that “Queering the ASL Curriculum” should include deaf queer perspectives in sign language learning and teaching materials.
(2) Deaf queer people of color may desire methods to establish community solidarity and protect one another from racism and homophobia in combination.
(3) Deaf queer people in impoverished contexts, (e.g., rural, Global South, etc.) frequently navigate sexually transmitted diseases, inadequate health-care literacy and access, or are victims to drug abuse, sexual assault, and violence.
(4) A person who is deaf, queer, and from an Indigenous tribal community might encounter situations where all or just some aspects of themselves are relevant.
(5) A person who is deaf, queer, and disabled may feel welcomed in academia but face exclusion at a healthcare clinic.
Fascism
By fascism we refer to authoritarian governments fueled by right-wing populist ideologies intent on exploiting vulnerable minority groups as scapegoats for complex social dilemmas. Fascism always threatens people from minority communities; it sometimes threatens people from more than one minority community, such as deaf people who are also queer. Fascist ideologies, as pioneering gender-theorist Judith Butler (Seisdedos, 2024) states, operate using specious, dangerous logic: “Once [a person decides] that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, [they are] operating within fascist logic, because that means there might be a second [group they’re] willing to sacrifice, and a third, a fourth. And then what happens?” (no pagination).
To contextualize our urgency, we examine two historical examples. First, it’s a little-known fact that book burnings in Nazi Germany destroyed invaluable collections of texts about transgender and queer individuals. The Institut für Sexualwissenshchaft was looted by Nazi paramilitary fascists on May 10, 1933. Over 25,000 texts about queer health were lost in the fires at Bebelplatz Square in Berlin, Germany.
Second, people fail to realize that during World War II, infamous concentration camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, were not initially designed to murder Jewish minorities. Instead, they were built to exterminate disabled people and dissenters of Nazi ideology, such as communists and anarchists. Other early victims included people from nontraditional genders and sexualities. The pink triangle iconography, still used today, first identified queer camp prisoners. Later, when camps were normalized, they converted to admit ethnic minorities, including Poles, the Roma, and the Jews—the last group being the most widely-known victims of the Holocaust.
What we do not know
First, “deaf queerness” and “queer deafness” represent complex entanglements, where each way of being influences the other (see Figure 1). This entanglement suggests an emerging, opportune area of research. Knowledge is needed at the population level and at the level of individualizing experiences. Likewise needed are situated pedagogies and curricula to support deaf queer students across a range of ages.
A graphic representation of entanglements of deafness and queerness. © Skyer, Oakes, and Andersen.
Secondly, fascism is a major threat for deaf queer people because fascism uniquely targets disabled people and queer people, both separately and together. Educators and research professionals along with family members and community stakeholders have an obligation to address elevated risks of harm, to protect deaf queer people, including young students and elders who are most at risk from increasingly prevalent and virulent fascist ideologies. While currently incomplete, developing research should uncover ways to protect doubly- or multiply-minoritized groups from fascism, in its many guises.
Lastly, there is a lack of research about how deaf queer people flourish and lead meaningful, self-directed lives. Based on our review of the limited literature and our personal experiences as students, teachers, researchers, and members of these communities, we know that deaf queer people live fulfilling lives and are the self-determined authors of their own stories.
We must then ask: Where are positive studies in research? Are they anywhere represented in our communities, classrooms, or home libraries?
Implications
Nowadays, in and beyond deaf communities, queer is less a schoolyard insult and more a self-applied term imbued with pride. This is similar to the ways that culturally deaf people embraced the word “deaf” many years ago.
All deaf queer people need love, affirmation, positive forms of knowledge, and supportive communities in which they can know themselves, learn, grow, and thrive. There are consequences stemming from the current literature’s overfocus on negative frameworks related to deafness and queerness. This bias causes harm. It could lead parents or practitioners to wrongly assume that deaf queer lifeways are inherently bad or should be avoided. They may overlook the important ideas that unjust systems and inequitable policies cause negative outcomes for deaf queer people, that inequitable systems require transformation. In another way, through a “vacuous celebration of difference” (Luke, 1996), deaf queer people may be honored superficially but not fully welcomed or understood.
Deaf queer individuals face unique challenges where deafness and queerness become entangled. These challenges include harmful social exclusion, insufficient representation, political victimization, and complex intersectional oppressions. At the same time, the experiences of deaf queer people range from mundane to the transcendent. It is incumbent on family members and practitioners to understand the complete range of deaf queer experiences.
Educators, researchers, and family members of deaf queer people should also better understand and collaborate with members of deaf queer communities to foster mutual development. Of particular consequence is the urgent need to produce positive forms of knowledge about deaf queer lives and to build practical knowledge to uplift deaf and queer people through affirmative forms of teaching and learning.
Anything less is a dereliction of our duty to protect vulnerable people from harm.1
Footnotes
A Note on References and Suggested Readings:
There is scant research about deaf and queer people; that which exists is not of uniform quality.
The list of suggested readings shown below informed our thinking, yet we often used these sources synthetically, in the sense that we drew connections between research on general queer populations and made inferences about how these findings affect deaf people (and vice versa). We also drew on our own experiences and insights as members of these communities. Readers, therefore, may be interested to mine these suggestions to learn more about similarities and differences between deaf and queer individuals and communities.
Items denoted with an asterisk indicate studies where deafness and queerness were integrated or deliberately superimposed by the authors. Double asterisks indicate publications we know included deaf, queer, or deaf and queer authors.
Suggested Readings
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References
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