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When I was little, my mother used to say,
当我很小的时候，母亲曾经说过，
The love you have for your children is like no other feeling in the world.
父母对子女的爱是世界上其它一切感情都无法比拟的，
And until you have children, you don't know what it's like.
只有当你拥有自己的孩子时，你才能体会到。
And when I was little, I took it as the greatest compliment in the world that she would say that about parenting my brother and me.
我小的时候，把母亲讲的关于抚育我和弟弟的这段话当成是世界上最高称赞。
And when I was an adolescent, I thought that I'm gay, and so I probably can't have a family.
当我成为一个青少年的时候，我想我是同性恋，所以我可能不会有自己的家庭。
And when she said it, it made me anxious.
当母亲说那些话的时候，我就会感到很焦虑。
And after I came out of the closet,
当我的事公之于众后,
when she continued to say it, it made me furious.
母亲还重提此事,我感到很恼火。
I said, I'm gay. That's not the direction that I'm headed in.
我说：我是同性恋。我不会走那条路。
And I want you to stop saying that.
我希望你不要再说那些话了。
About 20 years ago, I was asked by my editors at The New York Times Magazine to write a piece about deaf culture.
大约二十年前，《纽约时报》主编让我写一篇关于聋人文化的文章。
And I was rather taken aback.
我感到很惊讶。
I had thought of deafness entirely as an illness.
我原以为耳聋就是一种疾病。
Those poor people, they couldn't hear.
那些可怜的人呀，他们什么都听不见。
They lacked hearing, and what could we do for them?
如果他们听不见，我们能为他们做什么呢？
And then I went out into the deaf world.
接下来，我走进了聋人世界。
I went to deaf clubs.
我去了聋人俱乐部。
I saw performances of deaf theater and of deaf poetry.
观看了聋人的表演。
I even went to the Miss Deaf America contest in Nashville, Tennessee where people complained about that slurry Southern signing.
我甚至去了田纳西州纳什维尔的美国聋人小姐选秀赛，居然有人抱怨她们甜腻的南方手语口音。
And as I plunged deeper and deeper into the deaf world,
随着越来越融入聋人世界，
I become convinced that deafness was a culture and that the people in the deaf world who said,
我开始相信耳聋是一种文化，并且聋人世界中的人也说，
We don't lack hearing, we have membership in a culture,
我们不是听力不健全，我们是一种文化，
were saying something that was viable.
这是可行的。
It wasn't my culture,
这不是我的文化，
and I didn't particularly want to rush off and join it,
我也没想冲过去加入这种文化，
but I appreciated that it was a culture and that for the people who were members of it,
但我欣赏它是一种文化，对其中的成员而言，
it felt as valuable as Latino culture or gay culture or Jewish culture.
它的价值就如同拉美文化，同性恋文化或犹太文化。
