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How Baby Signs Infantilized American Sign Language

Five years or so ago, the Baby Signs movement was in full bowel, with mommies everywhere clamoring to get their babies “signing” their first words instead of verbalizing sounds.  “Baby Signs,” the theory still goes today, “is a prime key to early intellectualization and language acquisition for babies.”  The problem with that notion is that Baby Signs do not teach a language — Baby Signs only destroys an established language by infantilization and misuse and ego projection — and I’ve never seen any convincing, quantifiable, evidence that Baby Signs actually does a baby any good.  Oh, Baby Signing is great for mommy because it makes her feel fulfilled and that she’s given birth to a genius-child-by-inference using imagined visual glossing, but Baby Signs does nothing significant at all for the baby because the intention is to never actually teach the baby American Sign Language.  The intention of Baby Signs is to improperly use ASL HandShapes out of context to bridge the baby into spoken English.

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Throwing Down Gang Signs: It is Deadly Being Deaf

It can be pretty rough being Deaf.  Your disability is pretty much invisible unless people look for a hearing aid or catch you using sign language.  Being Deaf often includes having to deal with stupid people and purposeful misunderstandings.  A recent example is what happened in Miami.

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The History of Our American Sign Language Classes at CUNY

Janna and I were delighted to create, and then teach, our “Hardcore ASL” style of learning as a new series of American Sign Language courses offered by the City University of New York professional school, and while we no longer teach there, the experience was both historic and defining.

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Camille Paglia Scolds Lady Gaga's Nattering Vagina

Let there be no doubt:  Camille Paglia hates Lady Gaga — and she says so, quite clearly — in a relentless, unbending, 3,200-word, flaying published in The Sunday Times.  The article is behind a paywall.  I ponied up the $2.00USD access fee for one day access to the website.  I was surprised to read not a single kind word was shed in Stefani’s favor:

There are blurred borderlines between the sexes: gender is now alleged to be fabricated rather than biological; so everything is a pose. Thus Gaga welcomed the rumour about her being intersex and converted it into a fashion statement. Casual “hooking up” blends friends and lovers, with sex becoming merely an excuse for filial hugging…. Hence Gaga gratuitously natters on about her vagina. In the sprawling anarchy of the web, the borderline between fact and fiction has melted away.

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Banning Sign Language on a New Jersey School Bus

When I used to take a bus to school, I remember it being a rowdy ride most of the time. The kids were always bouncing up and down in the seats, despite the bus driver always going out of his way to show us the importance of putting on a seat belt. Some kids used to play a politically incorrect game called the “Chinese Fire Drill” in which they would jump into the seat directly in front of theirs. There was, naturally, plenty of horseplay on the bus.

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