Why Blog about Critics in DeafRead?

Ideally we write about ourselves as Deaf people in order to clarify and to account for our language and culture, American Sign Language (ASL). In putting words in writing we tend to take a second and a third look at what is within us. Robert Frost said, "Writing is a matter of having ideas"; similarily, blogging about our being Deaf is a way of expressing what we are capable of having ideas without hearing a sound.

Having taught for 30 years, I would acknowledge that the last word is never said about complex things, especially ASL and its cultural factors affecting all the Deaf. Still, I always seek to make at least a little progress in the difficult but rewarding job of writing. To know what you want to write, you have to have ideas.

But to criticize sensitively to any idea, we need to have some understanding of the thing. We must have understand that critics have an attempt to help someone to see the ideas as they see them. Most comments I read in DeafRead seem to be written to attack or insult or belittle the author, which is not very helpful. The commentors should write for themselves, of course--if they are trying to clarify their ideas--but also for an audience that they must imagine.

Anonymous critics in several blogs and vlogs published by DeafRead wrote because they found fault or something the bloggers/vloggers have missed. Criticism is most useful when it calls our attention to ideas worth attending to. As a blogger/vlogger I often rejected anonymous critics who wrote to insult, mock, and belittle my ideas without presenting their ideas.

I need to be convinced that I have undervalue ASL, its embedded culture, or any idea because I have not read or written them carefully. My critics need to throw light upon the relation of ASL, for example, to life, to linguistics, ethics, etc. Or they need to make me "see" that my idea is not workable.

I think a blog or a vlog is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being developed it changes as my thoughts change in this very blog. And when it's finished, I'm almost certain it still goes on changing. I do welcome comments but I will reject anonymous critics unless I know who they are. To be critical of my blog you have to be censorious of my ideas.
Thank you for reading this far.