The distinction between Deaf and deaf is a cultural distinction. In Deaf Studies circles, some people choose to identify between being culturally Deaf (i.e. using ASL as a primary means of communication, aware of the history and culture of the Deaf community, and so on) and deaf (i.e. disavowing any personal connection to the larger Deaf community, eschewing the use of ASL or manual communication in favor of auditory input and lipreading and so on).
Some people consider the D/d distinction to be polarizing and prone to exclusion when the entire D/deaf community should be pulling together rather than apart…
However, since my focus is on culturally Deaf bloggers, I will use the D/d distinction.
Conversely, I have adopted the same methodology for hearing culture. I will capitalize when I am directly addressing the culture of hearing people, and lowercase when I am simply referring to people who happen to have hearing ability.
[...] that I am not writing in my native language. I am writing in my first language, though. I am Deaf. I should be signing to you rather than writing to you. I could be vlogging this, but I plan to [...]
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