Yeah its awesome and I love it in my own way. It definitely has issues, notably for a long time it was particularly hostile to hard of hearing people who don’t sign, but that’s been changing over the past few decades as both groups have been working to heal that divide. And I think that’s in part thanks to increasing discussions of ableism and audism as well as the social model of disability bridging the gap between the deaf understanding of “we aren’t disabled, we live fine” and the hard of hearing understanding of “we are absolutely disabled look at how hard we have to struggle in this society.”

And stuff like that, and audism and ablism aren’t really the things you’re going to be taught in an asl class for the same reasons they aren’t going to teach you much about American intervention in south America in a Spanish class. The goal is to get you in a place that you can communicate with native speakers/signers and have enough appreciation of the culture to both want to and to not make an ass of yourself.

And so on that I should say these terms gave me voice to my struggles. The deaf community taught me that the fact that my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents all were told by experts not to teach their hard of hearing child sign language (because we might prefer it and not bother learning English) was a form of systemic oppression. As is the fact that this language which is just generally useful to most people in some contexts, especially as most people will lose their hearing just isn’t bothered to be taught to most people.

The politically correct people are trying even when they miss the mark. When you get to the point of the part of the left that’s long been in discussion of ablism I actually think that’s where you get radical shit, like big queer events often have 'terps, and I’ve even been to a festival that had a deaf section to the camping area.

Idk this turned into a rant, sorry