handy, in this thread you made a disastrously inaccurate claim regarding cochlear implants, which KellyM and myself took pains to correct. The fact that you persisted in maintaining your erroneous views is not why I have started this Pit thread, although such willful ignorance is bad enough.
The reason is this:
To explain why that line made me so angry, let me recount for you a little of my own history.
As I wrote in the thread linked above, I was born severely-to-profoundly deaf. My mother had rubella when she was pregnant with me, and although rubella has the potential to cause a considerable number of disorders, I was relatively lucky to escape its effects save for the deafness.
I’ve worn hearing aids since I was eighteen months old. I was mainstreamed in private and public schools. In almost every school I attended, I was the only deaf student. My hearing aids made me rather conspicuous amongst my peers. There were kids that thought it great sport to call me names related to my deafness and my hearing aids. Junior high, in particular, was a living nightmare. I dreaded going to school, a place I normally loved, because it would mean enduring another round of derisive name-calling, and being made to feel like an inferior human being. Those kids who heaped abuse and contempt upon me because of my deafness apparently did not care that underneath those hearing aids was another human being, just like them, who only wanted to fit in, be a part of the crowd, feel like he belonged, feel like a human being.
Can you imagine how hard that must have been for a kid surrounded by hearing children? The only positive I can take from that wretched experience is that I grew up never calling another person derogatory names because of their impairment, disability, or handicap. It seemed cruel to me to inflict the same kind of hurt upon another person.
So when you stated that you refer to those with cochlear implants as the “FrankenDeaf”, you revealed yourself to be perfectly willing to inflict that kind of hurt on someone else. You revealed yourself to be no better than those ignorant jerks who chose to call me names rather than to get to know me. By using a name that equates those individuals with Frankenstein’s monster, you seem to be implying that these children and adults with cochlear implants are monsters themselves.
The reality is that you are the monster, handy. You are no better than or different from the twerps that made my life hell as a child.
You are a sad, pathetic excuse for a human being.
