thedailywhat:

Heartwarming Tearjerker of the Day: Four-year-old comic book fan Anthony Smith is deaf in his right ear and has hearing damage in his left. He also refused to wear his hearing aid (which he calls “Blue Ear” because it is blue), because “superheroes don’t wear hearing aids.” So in a long-shot attempt to help her son, Anthony’s mom emailed Marvel for ideas.

“She didn’t know a specific person to write to here at Marvel, and even figured it might get caught in our spam filters, but she sent it in anyway, because that’s the kind of great parent Christina is,” said Marvel editor Bill Rosemann. “And it was her inspiring effort to help her son that touched so many of us here. As a fellow parent of a toddler, I can understand where she’s coming from, so I forwarded the email around the rest of Editorial, asking what we could do to help, and like when Cap yells, ‘Avengers Assemble,’ the gang leapt into action.”

Not only did Anthony receive an image of the superhero Hawkeye, who lost 80 percent of his hearing back in the ’80s and wore hearing aids — Anthony also received a drawing of a brand-new superhero: “Blue Ear.”

Now, with his hearing aid back in, Anthony is able to “fight battles and help people.” His preschool, for hearing-impaired kids, recently hosted a superhero week to inspire the students to overcome their limitations.

DON’T miss the video. It’s the best thing you’ll see all day.

[death+taxes / robot6]

This is a very sweet story, but I have some thoughts.

The emphasis here is on the way in which these comics have encouraged him to utilize his hearing aid- and not about something much deeper, about how deaf children yearn for role models. It makes me sad, and not because without his hearing aid he is somehow deprived (which is the sentiment I get from this news story). It makes me sad because audism/phonocentrism are so hegemonic in our society that a little boy believes that he can’t be a hero with a hearing aid. 

I hate this sentence: “His preschool, for hearing-impaired kids, recently hosted a superhero week to inspire the students to overcome their limitations.” First, “hearing impaired” is an offensive term. Second, the trope of “overcoming” is damaging and has been heavily covered in disability studies as reductive and oppressive. And third, what “limitations”?  I like that superheroes, generally, are different from larger society- often that which makes them different makes them a hero [ here’s an example of ten that I read about recently: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/76853 ]. Instead of emphasizing THAT message for these children- instead of teaching them that difference is good or powerful and valuable to society, this boy was left staring at drawings of costumed men and feeling like he could never be like them. 

 Don’t get me wrong. Its beautiful what this mother did for her son. Its great how Marvel created a hero that could be a role model for this boy.  But for me, the story reveals a larger problem in how people view deaf children/people and how deaf children/people view themselves.