Deaf gossips have tried to destroy my deaf brother's life. I have seen first hand the damage that they do. It is pure malice. Far worse behavior than that of hearing people.
The topic thread discussion which you replied to is about 15 years sleeping. Or dormant. Now that this thread is back up from the dead one could consider the topic again I suppose.
Gossip is very destructive. With that said when you live with hundreds of deaf who have plenty of boredom, idle time and so on for a week at a time, for most of your life time away from home from K to 12th grade it can be very destructive.
I remember the AIDS infection when it entered into the USA It had made it via HIV in the 60's into the USA. However about 1981 or so it was our first pandemic or health Emergency. Everything you saw in those days we also saw with Covid with several differences.
First, there was NO INTERNET. NOTHING. No Google, No nothing. Computers were primitive, APPLE IIe's Amigas, IBM in particular... 486 CPU etc. There was no smart phones. There were cell phones but cost like 4000 dollars retail, then standard your city rate of 45 to 75 cents a minute, A hell of alot more than that roaming. (We were once billed 600 dollars for one hour roaming in 2010 when our cell connectived from Seattle Seatac to a Candaian Cell tower for a hour. We had that phone company erased the bill.
In today's money thats 10,000 flat for the phone. All you had was dailing, paging and thats it. No texting no nothing. (That was what pagers were for a whole seperate bill and devices)
Anyway.
In the Deaf School in the dorms... certain persons (Very few) were known to engage in MSM behavior or even Woman-Woman behavior as teenagers. (Remember, no parents around and some counselors there advocated that alternative freedom of choice is what they called it., One died in 2019 of HIV itself after having lived decades with same sex lifestyle in addition to possibly having a history of molesting boys)
In those days the State of Maryland was responsible for eduating the deaf and serving them where necessary for a variety of things including medical and counseling etc. Sex subject was not allowed then in the class work. The Alternative lifestyle was absolutely illegal and taboo. The idea that teenagers were concerned about HIV being the scary killer were patted on the head and told they were too young to worry about stuff like that.
In the sense you could argue that the State in their ignorance, censorship and restrictions and policies making hurt the Student Body across the board. SOME dorm counslers realized there is absolutely no deaf advocate for those engaging them in secxual lifestyle questions or dealing with abuse or trauma across religions or some adult staffer touching them late at night in bed as a crime etc. Or the dirty doctor who could not stop being strange in the office during medical exams. (The State on down laughed it off. A DOCTOR? NAW.. not happening.) well guess what that doctor was ultimately conviced for decades of crimes. but only took 45 years to do it when he finally got caught)
So a culture among some students determined to engage in that lifestyle of alternative sex with each other rather than traditional ways caused several new things to be considered. Most of us decided that if the Counsler in the Dorm is publicly telling us that we were free to choose that kind of life, the original discrimination, bullying, threats, physical beating up and so on for hate, fear and so forth vanished. Poof. There is no point.
Problems began when HIV started appearing. One student then another. ALL had to go through the infirmary which had zero expeerience with that. AND ACTUALLY SEXUALLY ACTIVE despite the state's total ban on such knowledge, teachings in course or class work? Oh my the nerve.
Fast forward 40 years. The State now considers themselves woke and bend over backwards to accomodate such a lifestyle choice. It is actually the traditional among us who advocate man woman, raising a family etc etce tc as a threat somehow to society. Woke cannot exist with conservatives.
Talk about Gossip now. Who is woke, who is not. Who is doing this and that with whom. gossip gossip gossip into over drive. Not enough hours in the day. Hey we solved the dying part. SO there is nothing to be afraid of.
Gossip destroyed them. Oh look there goes so and so, he has HIV. (You could not right then find a medical test that did not yet exist for something like that. So once a kid got branded as having potentially HIV because he or she would not quit injecting drugs or engaging in alternative lifestyle they were excluded from most. It was a very big mess. I generally did not have a problem because I had a girlfriend in those days. Now one person made the decision to engage in a alternative lifestyle in the 20's and that was strictly that person's free will choice. I did not exclude that one from life but knew that gay and lesbian encroachment along with increasingly illegal drugs (LSD, Pot, Herion in particular and Angle White, etc.) There was no laws specifically on the street or in school or workplace for drugs until about 1984 or so after years of fighting in Congress after a doped up amtrack driver ruined a passenger train full of people in a collision after impatiently disregarding three stop and stay signals.
My CDL changed in April of 1994 which was judgement day to surrender the old Class A. Prior to that there was no drug testing, no drinking testing etc. Nothing. After 1994 they started testing. That changed the situation a little bit and we lost 500,000 truckers by 1996, In addition JBH and other top companies lost 300,000 to 600,000 younger training truckers when schools closed. The young will come get a CDL then immediately leave the big company to double their pay working for someone else.
Back to school days.
In middle school I had a situation where some thought I was part of the alternative lifestyle, they did not know then I had a girlfriend who was pretty good in those days. The teachers and so on were somewhat effective at chaperoning which is a absolute killjoy if you were a BF and GF couple. So we started learning to get away from them entirely. (The staff, teachers, parents in particular and so on) And even dorm counselors. In fact we had trouble with a couple busy bodies who were not normal themselves for other reasons. They were peeping toms essentially. And later convicted of child abuse and placed on the sex offenders registry.
As far as the children in the dorm were concerned it was not a problem to understand that HIV, Alternative lifestyle etc did not apply. Not in my life. HOWEVER, we had some who liked to be involved in that. The Regular Teachers and educators in the school building were so out of touch. They were showing Just say no videos and trying to do some semblance of sex ed classes which failed dramatically when the students brought up questions tying to alternative lifestyle. (Very taboo and actually discriminated against in those days)
In the end thsoe students who chose to engage in that risk of getting HIV etc did what they were free to choose to do. The rest of us knew who they were for them most part and excluded them. Sometimes beat them up too to straighten them out. It was a different time in those days. We call that hate crimes today.
Anyway.
I remember a few students who had to leave the school entirely after being actually infected. In actual HIV infections in those early days ther ewas nothing. You will die at some point. Your body immune system will fight of course but in the end you are a dead person walking. So with that in mind if your status was disclused Society REALLY excluded you. So you were a leper in the biblical city gate with nothing as your body rotted way.
Gossip? Hot stuff. Dynamite stuff too. I have seen it destroy a well orderly life. You would have to leave a school, a work place, a city, sometimes a county or even a state or if its really high profile, its the USA you had to leave. Go somewhere where no one knows a damn thing about you and cannot be bothered. Except fo rthe US Dollars you had in your pocket.
Fast forward 40 years plus to the Deaf Church in Little Rock about 20 years ago. I knew specifically of one person in 60's whose spouse then cheated in the 80's with a infected HIV lover. That spouse got infected then addicted and then infected the spouse in short order. Both were as good as dead. Not even 25 yet. (This person would have certainly passed on by now. Too many years have gone by) So its a historical content I am sharing from first hand experience there.
This person's life was first class in quality and lived many many years due to advances in medicine provided to care and fight HIV. I took the trouble to remove gender from this particular deaf church example because it is a very big church and protects the few thousands of people there.
Gossip? Well... that remains to be seen.
In the east coast there was a lutheran church who turned it's back on Luther's Doctrine. And welcomed alternative lifestyle worshippers to the services under the Rainbow flag. I am not aware of any laws made by the USA that would prevent this Chruch from doing what they did. with their idea of God's House.
Gossip? That place got swept big time when the local residents began to slowly understand which among them were engaging in that kidn of taboo lifestyle. People talked for years breathlessly ticking off names of sons and daughters engaged in that kind of hedonism. Hot stuff. Gossip.
IF you really want gossip.... go to a grocery store in your area and hang out for a hour. Without having to say anything at all you learn what will not be unlearned easily.
