Monty: and white people haven’t been the nicest group of people on the planet as far as the “black community” is concerned. That’s no excuse for black people to treat all white people as the enemy.
Bigotry is wrong, and the “deaf community” is riddled with it.
Personally, I’d go so far as to say I think more people should be taught ASL. I’d like to learn myself.
Guinastasia, my ex tried that. The attitude taken by many deaf individuals toward people who try to learn ASL is, well, nasty. Either you’re disdained for trying to “help the cripples” or you’re disdained for being “one of them” (presumably the “them” that wants to sterilize all deaf people). About the only people this doesn’t happen to are people who learn ASL because they have relatives who are deaf (and even that isn’t a guarantee). Anyone else is assumed to be learning ASL for “nefarious purposes”.
The deaf community needs to do something about its radical majority and try to work on bridgebuilding with outsiders, instead of bridgeburning and then complaining about the need to wade in the river.
I’m manic depressive and I agree gobear. I had one child before I was diagnosed and after much consideration, decided to permenantly prevent pregnancy (tubal) based on the thought that I did not want to a) replicate this genetic mutation and b) risk another life being as difficult as mine has been. I know MD’s who want children and want MD children, and personally, I think it’s sick and symptomatic.
Sorry for the hijack, and while I’m here, let me say thank you Atreyu for an educational and thought-provoking post.
[clarification] I mean I think it’s s & s to want MD children, not children in general. FTR. [/clarification]
This was my point exactly. To me, what these parents are donig is akin to a slave not taking an opportunity to have their child born free for the purpose of passing on the slave culture. The fact that the culture arose as a response to slavery does not invalidate the culture, but it is relevant because slavery should not be preserved for the sake of the slave culture.
[clarification] I mean I think it’s s & s to want MD children, not children in general. FTR. [/clarification]
You make one bigoted comment immediately after decrying bigotry. Did you realize that or was it part of your “point”?
Let’s try it this way: cochlear implants are not magic beans that all of a sudden give a child 100% hearing. The Deaf community has been, and still is, fighting a long hard fight against bigotry. There is a very good reason why they are very wary of things the hearing community wants to, in their view, force onto them and their children.
How about educating the adult and child members of the Deaf community? I saw the special mentioned in this thread, and it did not focus solely on the attitudes of those Deaf who are bigoted against the hearing community. There were some very interesting, and poignant, comments from all sides of the issue.
But, those who want to say the Deaf community is bullshit have already made up their minds (read: are bigots) and couldn’t care less about the facts.
Monty, non-deaf people who try to “educate” the deaf community are often met with derision.
I understand the difficulties surrounding issues like cochlear implants, forced sterilization, and the like. Those issues do not excuse bigotry against non-deaf individuals.
I’ve spent time in and around the deaf community; my opinions are not based on ignorance.
That’s an easy one. The individual’s happiness trumps their genius. No contest. No one should be expected to live a life of misery just so others can enjoy their work.
Even if the individual gets enormous satisfaction from the expression of their genius, I would guess that they would trade in in in a heartbeat for a life of normalcy.
Agreed!
I just want to echo dre2xl’s thanks and kudos to Czarcasm for his eloquent post, and of course also to Atreyu. (Come back to Oregon!!!)
To be honest, I’ve become quite offended by a lot of posts and attitudes in this thread. Simply put, deafness and our culture is something that one can’t wholy understand unless one is deaf. Unless one has a CI, one can’t understand the difference it makes, which is why there are dissenting opinions within the daf community. What it comes down to is what should or shouldn’t be done to change how we live isn’t anyone else’s decision. It’s ours, and ours alone, to make as individuals.
OK, big shot, what about my brother? He’s hearing, and didn’t get his child a cochlear implant. Did he perpetuate a slavery? Did he engage in child abuse? Should the state have taken his child away or forced him to get his child implanted?
Anyone who claims that refusing a cochlear implant for your deaf child is akin to child abuse is simply wrong. The deaf parent in the movie may have given a bullshit reason for not getting a cochlear implant. That doesn’t mean he engaged in child abuse. If someone gives a bullshit explanation for one of their decisions for their child that doesn’t mean that their decision is therefore automatically abusive.
Cochlear implants have helped many people, but they are NOT a cure for deafness. So please stop saying or implying that parents who don’t get implants for their deaf children are abusing their children. It is an astoudingly ignorant thing to do.
Do blind parents insist that their children’s eyes be put out so that they can continue on in “blind culture”?
I am aware of a deaf family with hearing twins that punished the twins for talking to each other at home and who insisted that the twins have (completely unnecessary) sign language interpreters at school.
Erm, no. I don’t know why your brother didn’t get his child a cochlear implant. If it is the technical and functional issues of cochlear implants (e.g. as other posters have said, hearing through a cochlear implant is kind of a general static), that is fine with me; if cochlear implants don’t noticeably improve hearing, or cause other problems, that is completely reasonable. You weren’t clear about your brother’s reason, at least AFAICT, and that to me is the really essential question. I think it would be irresponsible of a parent to not take the opportunity to improve their child’s hearing specifically so that their child could be a part of deaf culture. My post wasn’t talking about cochlear implants specifically; I know they are not a cure for deafness. It was in reference to the specific belief that a life where one participates in deaf culture is superior to a life where one can hear properly.
And incidentally, the “slavery” argument was an analogy, just as my Holocaust argument was on the previous page. I didn’t mean to suggest that even those parents who hold the specific belief I am criticizing are coming anywhere near these two horrors; thye were merely meant to show that the culture arising from something bad should not be used as an argument against preventing that thing.
Look, we’ve seen this in movies a hundred times. Kid is sitting at home reading his science books. Dad comes home from the coal mine. “Oh, READING again? OOOOhhhh, coal mine not GOOD ENOUGH for you? You think you’re better than all of us! You and your fancy-schmancy science!” The kid runs outside to the woods crying. Later Mom comes for a talk and says, “Look, Pa don’t mean anything by that. It’s jest his way is all.”
This is a very common attitude we see in fiction and occasionally in real life. People want their kids to do well, but sometimes doing TOO well is a slap in the face of the parents. Sometimes parents are irrational. A child who leaves the ghetto is a rebuke to the parents who weren’t able to. But this has nothing to do with deafness or cochlear implants. There just happened to be a movie about a parent with this attitude who happend to be deaf. It could have been about a parent who didn’t want their child to go to college, or leave the reservation, or speak standard english instead of vernacular, or study music or art, or start a business, or get a management job, or marry a white person.
So we have a movie where a particular deaf parent made a short-sighted and selfish decision for his child. What does that have to say about deafness or deaf culture or the deaf community? That assholes and idiots are everywhere?
What school is that, KellyM?
Monty, they were attending a private Catholic school in eastern Maryland.
I did not see the movie, so I am assuming that the movie was implying that the father was justified in denying his child the chance at hearing because he wanted to preserve “deaf culture.”
This stance, IMO, is bullshit. I am not saying that there is no deaf culture, but that denying a child the chance to become integrated into society is not justified by that culture’s existence.
To answer your question, yes, assholes are everywhere, but the movie was saying that this one was doing the right thing.