"Deaf Culture" is, well, bullshit. Sorry.

Great Debates
1

I finally got a chance to watch “Sound and Fury”, the documentary about the two families facing the choice of whether or not to get a cochlear implant for their deaf child.

One family was made up of hearing people in the nuclear core, with deaf relatives on both sides. The other family was made up of deaf parents.

I had seen certain scenes from this doc many times but I never wanted to participate in discussions about it because I hadn’t seen the whole thing and I really wanted to get a clear understanding of what everyone was arguing about and their point of view.

Having now done that, I feel comfortable dimisisng the point of view of the deaf father as self-serving bullshit.

The position of the father, and of pretty much every deaf person in the program, is that there is a “deaf culture” that is a beautiful thing that needs to be preserved, nurtured, and evidently, increased. Giving cochlear implants to deaf children is a slap in he face of that “culture” and a horrible tragedy because such children will never grow up “knowing who they are and where they come from”.

Good lord… has anything ever been more self-serving bullshit? I’m sincerely happy that deaf people who have managed to make such tasty lemonade from the lemons life has given them, but spare me the argument that the lemons were a good thing to begin with.

I have always been a fascinated admirer of sign language. I think it is a truly beautiful language, and I understand that it is a complete and separate language, with its own rules and syntax, etc. And that’s terrific, thank heaven. But a language is not a “culture”.,a nd that’s really what these deaf people are arguing. Judging from the people in the film who wouldn’t shut up about it, if “deaf culture” can be said to exist at all, it seems to be made up of talking about how great “deaf culture” is!

The father in the film was obviously having a huge disconnect in his head between his insistence on how great being deaf is and the reality of his life. In one sequence, we begin with him talking about how successful he is in the hearing world, about his great job at Soloman Smith Barney. We see him at work, struggling to keep up using writing, computers and interpreters, and by the end of the sequence he is stating plainly that yes, he feels he cannot rise further in the company because of his deafness.

I understand the deaf parents’ fear, I just think they are being disingenuous about the nature of it…or maybe they are simply just not that self aware. But it’s not about “deaf culture”, it’s about being separated from your child. They, understandably, felt that it would put a distance between them and their daughter if she could participate in the wider world on even footing and they could not. The deaf grandparents who were so deeply hurt by the fact that their deaf grandchild did receive an implant were obviously feeling the same thing. Deaf people * obviously * like having lots of other deaf people in the world, that’s understandable. Then they don’t feel so isolated. And if the next generations of deaf people all get implants, the existing deaf community will get smaller and smaller. I understand that this would be sad and painful for them, I get it.

But it still doesn’t make deafness a “culture” and it remains utterly self-serving to insist that such a thing exists and that it is worthy of preserving to justify keeping a child who could participate in the larger world limited to the deaf one. That’s simply wrong.

Anyone care to convince me I’m wrong about this?

2

Link to PBS documentary “Sound and Fury”

Video clips of interviews from the documentary about how various deaf people feel about deaf culture

3

Thanks for the links, astro.

4

IANA anthropologist, but isn’t language the number one hallmark of a culture? Sure, take away sign language and deaf folks are just like “us”. But that also applies to other cultures. Take away American-style English and Americans are just like the Brits, right?

I don’t think it’s fair for outsiders to judge the validity of “deaf culture”, unless they have much more exposure to deaf folks than what they see on a television show. Regardless, the existence of a deaf culture (or, if you prefer, deaf “subculture”) doesn’t seem that big of a deal to me. I don’t get why so many hearing people get their panties in a wad about it.

How lovely of you to presume what these people are feeling. Have you considered the fact that those two things aren’t mutally exclusive?

5

monstro wrote: *Take away American-style English and Americans are just like the Brits, right? *

Um, no. Americans have a separate history, a separate political identity, a separate folklore, etc. An American wouldn’t magically become British just by adopting a British accent (Madonna, anyone?). Language is not the end-all, be-all of culture.

.:Nichol:.

6

I don’t think culture is all about language. But it sure is helpful in delineating “us” from “then”. I think it’s wrong to just say sign language is just language without recognizing the culture it both creates and fosters. Stoid seems to be doing this.

7

I have to agree with the OP. A few years ago, I was looking for a foreign language class to take to fulfill my credit obligations in college. It turns out that they consider sign language to fit into that. I was intrigued, and took the course.

I was interested in the language and hand motions, but was totally turned off by my professors insistence that I understand “deaf culture.” From what I learned in that class, it seemed like they were purposely separating themselves from everyone else, and calling it a culture.

I know that they can not communicate with most people. I understand that they wish to be with those with whom they can more easily communicate. But purposly isolating yourself and calling it a culture doesn’t work anymore than walking into McDonalds and calling yourself a hamburger.

Just my $0.02.

8

Um, I’m with Stoid. Deafness is a handicap, not a culture. American Sign Language is basically a means for people who have never learned to talk because they were deprived of the opportunity to hear spoken language during the critical formative years to communicate, to a certain extent, in their native language (there are letter signs to fill in those gaps where there is not a sign to express a particular concept or word so the person signing can spell it.) Nearly all of the deaf people I’ve come into contact with can read and write, so it is possible for them to communicate with the hearing population, if a little inconvenient.

I don’t hear the blind saying there is a blind culture that needs to be preserved, as evidenced by Braille writing, the use of white canes and guide dogs, etc.

I almost see the family’s objection to the cochlear implants as being along the lines of my stepfather, who is a (very bad) hairdresser and unsuccessful businessman discouraging my kid sister from going to veterinary school and refusing to help her financially (yes, he does have the means, thanks to a smallish side business selling books at a discount). He really just wants to keep the kid down because he doesn’t want her to outdo him.

9

Go to Quebec, Wales, the Basque region of Spain or Sri Lanka and try that argument out. If you’re still alive and want to give it the old college try, stop by Estonia, Bangladesh, and Belgium next.

10

Take away the language and you certainly have a culture. Americans and the Brits are two cultures seperated by a common language, really. I’d have to argue that the selection for adventure and aggression (Colonists) and the geographical difference of the land created a seperate culture from England quite quickly. Otherwise, the rebellion wouldn’t have been quite as successful. On the other hand, Canada and America share even closer linguistic ties, and they’re different enough from us.

11

Well, then help me out. What exactly is this “culture” that is “created” and “fostered”? What does it consist of? Is there literature? Religion? Rituals? Traditions? Holidays? Dress? Codes of conduct not connected to speaking ASL? Philosophy not connected to “supporting deaf culture”?

Please, fill me in, cuz I sure haven’t seen any evidence of it.

I don’t care one way or another about the belief that the deaf have a culture…except when it leads them to deny their children the opportunity to function in the hearing world. I consider that on a par with denying your children medical care because your religion tells you God will heal you, another practice I find wholly unacceptable. Each individual human being deserves the right to be as healthy and whole as they can possibly be, in every respect, and they deserve to have every opportunity that is available to them to achieve and be everything they can. If you deny a deaf child the option to hear, you are, by definition, limiting who and what they can be, and I don’t think anyone should have a right to do that, including parents.

12

I have to partially agree with the OP. I think that there is a deaf culture. However, unlike most “real” cultures, it is distinguished not by difference, but by absence. In this case, the absence of hearing. I would classify it more as a sub-culture, really.

I simply cannot understand why a deaf parent would seriously not want their child to have a cochlear implant. Don’t all parents want their children to have more oppurtunites than they did? It’s intuitively obvious that being able to hear will open more doors for their child. Is the preservation of a fabricated sub-culture that requires its members to be disabled really more important to them then giving their child every oppurtunity to succeed?

13

Um, maybe because, from what I’ve read, cochlear implants do not give them hearing. It’s more a static sound. Plus, if they have any residual hearing, it has to be destroyed-and sometimes the implants don’t work.

I don’t think I’d want to give my child one!

14

Even if there is such a culture (indeed, ASL is a language by all technical standards), one must bear in mind that this is a culture which has grown up in response to a disability. The only reason the culture exists is because of something objectively negative, and while that does not eliminate the value of the culture per se, it does mean that if the disability could be eliminated but the culture would have to go too, it is better to eliminate the disability than preserve it for the sake of the culture. In my mind these parents are being irresponsible, willfully consigning their child to a worse life than is possible, for the sake of preserving a culture - rather like an extremely conservative parent who prevents his or her daughter from working (or rather, believing that when she grows up she can work) because in their culture, a woman’s place is in the home.

To use an extreme but personal example, as a Jew I am certainly a part of what is considered Jewish culture. Now much modern Jewish culture was established as a product of the Holocaust. I would certainly rather the Holocaust never happened and I lose out on the work of Elie Weisel than the other way around. An extreme example certainly, but it serves to demonstrate the principle that it is better to eliminate an objective negative even if that entails elimination of the culture produced by that negative.

15

I suppose the best way to decide is to compare deafness to other accidents of birth or development or medical necessity. Blindness was mentioned.

There are also amputees, diabetics, non-speaking, transplant patients, and a dozen others to mention.

I myself have half of my left foot amputated, due to a surgical complication. People have offered me contact with an amputee support group, which I declined. I don’t consider myself part of “amputee culture.” Yes, there are certain limitations I must accept, and certain ways around them, that I share with many others. In a similar way, diabetics share a lot of common activities and medical rituals and dietary habits with other diabetics. I don’ t know that I consider that a culture, either.

But the rub about deafness vs. hearing is this: if the child can hear and the parents cannot speak, who raises the child? As a parent, I suppose I would have a certain fear that my child would be more heavily influenced by the world of sound than by myself. The child would listen to music, watch and hear television, talk on the telephone, with friends, listen to debates, and be influenced by a whole environment of which I had no knowledge or control. I would be unable to advise my child on how to speak with friends; the child would undoubtedly spend much time in the company of speaking caregivers so he could learn to speak fluently, and I would have little influence on this development.

I’m not sure if the term “deaf culture” is, at least in this case, a smoke screen. I can see, however, that there are reasons other than a putative “culture” that could worry a parent and reduce a parent’s influence over the development of his child. Perhaps it’s not so much a fear that the child will be excluded from his heritage, than that the parent will be excluded from the child’s life.

I haven’t watched the documentary in question, so this is purely an opinion.

FISH

16

I’m with you, Stoid.

I remember seeing an article a while back about this deaf lesbian couple who wanted a deaf child, so they made sure the sperm donor was deaf. How fucked up is that, to go out of your way to make sure your child winds up disabled?

17

Not being deaf or friends with deaf people, I do not know. I admit that I’m totally ignorant on the subject. But just because I don’t “get it” doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The fact that many deaf people believe they share a culture seems to be more important in the grand scheme of things than us trying to debate its lack of existence. Maybe I’m just more willing to take people’s word for it when I can’t know what the hell they’re going through. shrug

I’m not saying I disagree with your argument, Joe, but I could hear a deaf culture-proponent saying that all subcultures could be defined the same way. Aren’t all subcultures deviant in some way from “mainstream” culture? Yeah, they’ve got an absence of hearing, but they’ve got the “addition” of sign language. Seems to balance itself out.

A deaf person may not think of themselves as “handicapped” if they feel like they are functioning just fine and dandy without hearing. So I think it’s a little arrogant of us to think that deaf people are idiots if they can’t see the benefits of cochlear implants etc. I mean, it is perhaps easier living in the US as a white person than a black person, but that doesn’t mean I want to bleach my babies’ skin and straighten their hair (ala Prince Michael). I don’t consider my “blackness” a handicap and it would offend me if someone tried to convince me that it is. Some deaf people feel the same way and I don’t see why I should debate them on that.

Maybe I would feel differently if the majority of deaf people were helpless and dependent on society for help, but they seem to be independent folk who aren’t hurting nobody. I don’t understand why people want to impose their beliefs and judgements on them.

18

Gotta disagree with you there. It is a compensation for a specific negative consequence of deafness which is in itself extremely limiting. Yes, they have a beautiful language that they can speak to each other. But do you really believe that language is all that is missing when one is deaf? Even leaving aside all the joyful noises one may delight in when one can hear (music of all kinds, birdsong, laughter, the ocean, rain, etc.) what about safety? A deaf parent cannot hear their child screaming in pain or fear if they are not looking at them. A deaf person cannot hear a car horn or a fire alarm or a dog bark in warning or a burgler crashing around their living room or a gun being fired, etc. etc. Deaf people are shut out completely from a wide variety of jobs and careers because those careers absolutely require hearing, and a bunch more because people are unwilling to do the work to include someone with such a handicap.

On and on and on. It’s so much more than simply finding a way to communicate with others like yourself.

19

I haven’t seen the film.

Guinastasia’s comment about whether or not these implants actually work is a relevant one. I speak two languages, but I’m not excluding myself from the culture of one by virture of the fact that I speak another. Why can’t the child of deaf parents have the best of both worlds - an ability use sign language and participate in the “deaf culture,” which undoubtedly exist, as well as the obvious benefits of not being deaf in a world that is not really geared to handicapped people. Sounds like sour grapes to me.

The most important factor to me is freedom of choice. Parents sometimes have to make decisions for their children, and - while this may involve a weighing up of factors such as trading residual hearing for something that isn’t as good, etc. - I would always take the route that leaves the child’s options open as far as is possible. If the kid grows up and really wants to be deaf, it is easier to deafen yourself than to restore your hearing. I wonder how many of these deaf kids grow up to hate their parents for what they have done to them. I certainly harbour resentments against my own parents for far lesser crimes…

20

Right, but yet so many still manage to survive and be happy.

It seems to me that if deaf people–who know how hard it’s like not being able to do those things hearing people take for granted–don’t have a problem, then why should we try to convince them how hard and horrible their lives are?

I watched the show a long time ago, but I remember there being a discussion about the risks involved with cochlear implants. The results are often imperfect and getting the process involves destroying the little hearing a person may have. I don’t know if it would be an easy decision for me to choose for my children and I’m hearing. I imagine the decision would be even more difficult for deaf people who have no problem with their “disability” and feel that the procedure is cosmetic.