Hello and welcome back to the channel
and the first episode of Ask Rikki,
where you are gonna ask me for advice on anything you want
that's something that I tend to talk about
from time to time on the channel.
Kind of similar to the old series, Get to the Poynt,
but for here, for this series, I just wanna like talk and chill out
and be kinda like a friend -
although this is actually a parasocial relationship -
but just be chill about it, yeah.
So if you need any advice for yourself about disability, deafness,
mental health, LGBT issues, more specifically bisexuality,
or child abuse, things like that.
I will have the link to the form down below
and I hope to get these out every Friday as much as possible.
If you like the idea of this series and want more in the future,
be sure to hit that subscribe button and that notification bell
so you don't miss out on any future uploads of it.
Also, if you want to support this series, I do have a Patreon page,
and for all of January, new pledges, even $1 a month,
will receive a postcard with a little letter from me in the mail.
So, I'll have that link down below as well.
So, this person wants to know,
"Am I considered disabled if I'm hard of hearing?
"I am mainstreamed and my country is very inaccessible
"to deaf and hard of hearing people."
OK, well, I don't know what country that you live in
because this is anonymous
but talking about in the United States at least,
from a medical standpoint, yes, you are.
From the standpoints of the Americans with Disabilities Act,
the ADA, yes, you are.
From a personal perspective, that's going to be up to you.
So, for me, as a deaf person myself,
I, a long time ago, used to not consider myself disabled
because I was trying to fit in
when I was first finding the deaf community online.
And the type that I found online,
I was trying so desperately to fit in with them,
and they were very anti-disability.
Like they were like, "I'm not disabled, I'm not this."
"I can do anything but hear," da-da-da-da-da.
And I was so trying to fit in with them
instead of really thinking about myself and for myself.
But now, learning the disability community's side,
those with other disabilities and how ableist that thinking actually is,
I was thinking about it, and so for me, myself,
yeah, I consider myself disabled because ADA, I need that,
and also, you know, I have other disabilities as well,
chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and it's just,
disability, being disabled,
'disabled/disability' is not a bad word,
and it's not a bad thing,
it's nothing to be ashamed of for that.
It's just, well, I can't hear, yeah, that's a disability.
Like, OK, cool, let's move on.
But I know that for a lot of other deaf people,
like I said, they don't consider themselves disabled,
and, you know, I've said I'm just gonna fall under, really,
team whatever-you-wanna-call-yourself,
because sometimes it can be really,
it can be really exhausting trying to break that kind of mindset.
So, for you, really, it's going to be up to you.
I can't tell you for yourself
whether or not you're gonna feel like you're disabled or not.
But I can tell you that from the medical standpoint,
you know, if you go to a doctor or whatever,
they're probably gonna say, "Yeah, so, you're disabled,"
you know, whatever.
And for the percentage of the deaf community and deaf people
who don't consider deafness a disability,
or they might consider deafness a disability
from a medical standpoint,
but culturally they don't consider themselves as that,
and it's kind of like a little bit more complicated thing.
In the United States and in Canada,
and, you know, other westernised countries,
like even England for example, maybe Australia, even -
Do we count Australia as westernised
even though they're on the other side of the world?
Something I never really thought about.
But like in, I know in other countries
that don't have the same amount of access that we do,
for lack of a better word, just other things like that,
they would consider themselves probably disabled
and use 'disabled' a little bit more,
so I think I could, I may be wrong.
Let me know if I am, please.
I know, well, one other country that comes to mind is Russia
because they have a very strong,
at least when I did a video way back when
about how people wanted to tweak genetics
so that way nobody would ever be deaf anymore.
That's what I'm thinking of when there are countries,
where people are just like, yeah, we're just gonna use the word 'disabled'
because that's what it is.
But yeah, ultimately, it's up to you,
I guess, from a personal standpoint
how you want to identify yourself as,
if you wanna consider yourself just deaf or just disabled
or, you know, use both like I do.
I think I have a video kind of somewhere to this.
I think it's mostly about the words
like 'disability' versus 'differently abled'
and how I felt about those words.
I'm gonna leave down a link in a card,
on whichever side that they show up on.
So you can watch that as like an add-on to this video.
I think that'll also help a lot and give you a little bit more detail.
If you are also a deaf person,
let me know in the comments down below what you think.
Thank you, Anonymous, for asking a question.
I hope I helped you out a little bit.
If you would like to submit a question yourself,
I will have the link to the Google Form down below
and hopefully you'll be able to see your own question in its own video.
If you would like to help translate this video,
I'll have a link to the translation link down below,
helps out a tonne.
Be sure to like and share this video,
that's always extremely helpful, especially the sharing part.
Thank you for taking the time out your day to watch this video
and I will see you later. Bye.
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