Thing is, though, homosexuals aren’t missing out on anything.
Maybe this will sound extremely patronizing, but how can it NOT be considered a disadvantage never to hear music, for example? Or to be able to hear traffic sounds, or alarms? Never hear someone’s voice, or whatever?
Especially since so many of the deaf separatists, I gather, were deaf from birth? They’re arguing from a position when THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE ALTERNATIVE IS LIKE.
I’m not knocking deaf culture, or saying they’re inferior people. But not being able to hear IS a disability, just as blindness would be.
Homosexuals, on the other hand, are NOT missing anything, I can imagine. No more than left-handed people are missing out on not being right-handed.
Guinastasia and whoever wrote this…We Deaf people think of ourselves more as Seeing people, rather then as hearing impaired.
We can adapt to and learn to live without a sense that everyone else takes for granted. I can remember as a kid and as a teen, wanting DESPERATLY to be hearing. I saw myself as “hearing impaired”…but the thing is…I don’t know what it’s like to be hearing, just the way a lefthander doesn’t know what its like to be righthanded.
You guys may think we’re crazy b/c we don’t want to be hearing…but many of us have never experianced sound the way a hearing person has.
We only have the most academic idea of what sound even IS.
Even those of us who use hearing aids or CIs only have a very basic experiance of what sound even is. Sound to us, is just not there. We have never experianced it, so we don’t miss it!
Believe me, I understand what you mean. I have no overwhelming desire to find out what’s so great about Enimem and Britney Spears, either.
But, it’s not a normal or “different” state. Outside of college, deafness impacts us in a HUGE way, and a negative way too. Nothing will change the fact that deafness is a very disabling condition and one that should be cured if at all possible. Don’t you want to be able to interview for jobs on an equal footing? Go to meetings with your co-workers and be as full participants as they? Use the telephone to set up appointments, talk to others on the job, and so on? Be able to participate in call conferences? We are not “seeing people”, we are disabled people. Period.
dre2xl, disabled does not mean unabled. There are a ton of disabilty rights folks who think that it’s not the disabilty that causes all the problems, it’s more unequal access. We CAN do stuff and adapt and can acheive with proper accomondations! We’re not profoundly mentally affected or rendered totally unable!
SkiDemon, my family is a pretty musical one. Both my siblings learned to play the recorder and the violin, my sister plays the guitar, and my mother plays the piano. Me? Sweet fuck all.
Also, I have to put a lot of extra effort into communicating with my coworkers, let alone reassuring them that I won’t mind their attempts at communicating. And I miss out on all the awesome office gossip and hallway conversations where Things Get Decided.
It’s probably going to take another 30 years for there to be technology that will enable us to be just as full participants in verbal conversations. I’m thinking of speech recognition and voice-to-text (and vice versa) technology, as those would be brilliant for me.
I’d love to not have to take my laptop (much as I love it to tiny little pieces) around to talk to people. With that, I can only talk to a few people at a time, and not the entire room.
I can’t talk to that hot guy at the bus stop because it’s after sundown and reading lips in the dark is, let us say, a wee bit difficult.
I have to worry about my deafness being a blocking issue when attempting to communicate with emergency services in an emergency. I’ve already gotten dinged by the police in a fender bender because I didn’t know exactly what I was agreeing to vis a vis the accident.
Am I disabled? Hell yes. Am I going to let it victimize me? Fuck no.
I just want to thank everyone, particularly Subway Prophet, lizardling, and dre2xl for their valuable insights on deafness. I have nothing to contribute to the thread but I found it fasinating and educational. Thank you for sharing your stories.
BTW SkiDemon, welcome. I hope you can register and stay.
I don’t think that most observers assume a deaf or otherwise disabled people is “profoundly mentally affected or rendered totally unable”. There are a few jackasses who do see things this way, but I think they’re a minority.
The problem with increased access is that, well, there are problems. How do you increase access for casual hallway conversations, as per lizardling’s example? Or for emergency vehicle sirens? Or storm warning sirens? How do you increase access for PA announcements in a store?
Logistically speaking, these may not be feasable to accomodate. Most of them are based on the fact that sound travels farther and around more corners than visual information, a fact that many alert systems exploit in order to enhance their effectiveness.
I don’t pretend to have a general solution. In my daughter’s case, cochlear implants were the best option. (But there are many cases of deafness where this won’t work so well - e.g. adults with prelingual deafness, those with nerve damage or a collapsed mastoid process, etc.) How can you increase access for everyone?
EXACTLY, and I do NOT, for the record, and for what it’s worth, think you’re crazy. However, keep in mind, you’re arguing from a position of ignorance, or better yet, inexperience.
Can you not understand why those of us who do have hearing, might feel otherwise? Or why we might be concerned?
I would also ask those who lost their hearing later in life, if they would want it back?
Or, how about this, as a hypothetical-suppose by some miracle, you were offered the opportunity to experience perfect hearing, for one week, just as a trial. Would you take it?
I’m not saying any of you are lesser people, or that you’re inferior, or somehow equivalant to the mentally retarded. But you are at a disadvantage, and yes, you are missing something. I’m not speaking with pity, or being patronizing. I’m just speaking from MY point of knowledge.
I suspect very much that SkiDemon is a student. In an environment where everyone knows sign language and doesn’t leave the campus very often, it’s easy to get the mentality that “hey, I don’t need to hear.” Most of your post is a strawman (I never said anything about mentally unable), but here’s one point I can respond to…
So, your beef is that not enough people bend over backwards to accomodate us? I have no qualms about accepting help when I’ve exhausted other options–but I am also very aware that said help is an inconvenience on everyone’s part, so I try and reduce that, which includes actively supporting a cure.
BTW, I can understand where SkiDemon is coming from. I’ve got a cochlear implant, but it’s only a tool, and not a cure. It’s not pleasant at all. It’s a lot better at picking up background din than foreground voices. Multiple sound sources run together to be an unpleasant buzz. Sound perception is far from perfect; for example, I can’t tell the difference between a vacuum cleaner and a babbling brook very well. I can easily see why SkiDemon and others think the way that they do, if they were in a completely sheltered environment like Gallaudet or living on SSI in a Deaf community.
I’ve been reading this thread with interest, and thank those of you that are knowldgeable about these issues for your thought-provoking posts.
I know next to nothing about deafness related issues. So I apologize in advance if I get something wrong, or inadvertently offend. But I do have a question or two.
I gather that the Federal govermnment makes various benefits available to people who are deaf. Posters here have talked about subsidized education, interpreters and SSI benefits. In addition (although this doesn’t come from this thread), I understand that employers are responsible for making reasonable accomodations to allow their deaf employees to do the job under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Am I correct so far?
I also gather that some in the deaf community assert that their deafness is not a disability. Do I have that right?
Do those who take this position also repudiate governmental benefits? Do they refrain from seeking employer accomodations under ADA?
If not, how do they reconcile these seemingly-contradictory positions?
It’s also the connotations that ‘disabled’ and its related terms have. It’s a loaded word, and small wonder. You see news articles about this person or that one being disabled and living at home on disability. (This is shorthand for SSI, I think, no?) Plus, disabilities cover a whole range and then some of issues. Physical, mental, and so on. Given the typical usage of the word as given in the above example, it’s no wonder that people get twitchy around it.
I should have clarified terminology in my earlier post, but I was too busy having a nerve struck by the ‘not needing to hear’ stance. Apologies to the gentlefolk of the Dope.
I can’t speak for others, but I can accept being labelled disabled in the legal/clinical senses, since if you look at the nub of the matter, it basically means that I’m missing a sense compared to other people, which I am. If I were missing an arm, I’d be called disabled as well.
However, on the other hand, recently I found myself having a severe kneejerk reaction to someone who asked me about other folks who might have severe disabilities like me. I was polite to them, but corrected them since my sense of ‘severe disabilities’ is that that particular label is for people who need a lot more help to function in the world than I do, and so my gut level reaction is to reject the label on that basis. I’m disabled, sure, and I’m deaf, but at the end of the day, I’m **lizardling **, whole and true.
I could very well be wrong about the connotation and its application to myself, since I personally have very little hearing left, but dammit, I do better than a lot of ablebodied folks. I own my own home (well, me and the bank ), which I share with two cats, I have a great job, and I have friends.
So considering myself severely disabled isn’t something I do. However, I can and do consider myself covered in the **clinical sense ** by the broader and more general term ‘disabled’ which covers pretty much every deviation from the norm, ranging from slightly colorblind to near-vegetable-dom.
It’s the connotations that cause so much trouble. Ask ten people what they think of when you say ‘disabled’, and you’ll most likely get ten different responses, usually centering around the negative connotations.
Even in someone like me, ‘disabled’ evokes a lot of ambivalence as you can probably see from this post.
So given this background, it’s not that hard to understand why someone might have issues with the connotations of being called disabled as opposed to simply considering themselves deaf. The latter has fewer negative connotations and focuses on that particular sense, IMO. (Linguists, feel free to chime in)
However, going back to read SkiDemon’s specific post, he (?) doesn’t seem to be arguing against the term ‘disabled’ or ‘unabled’ so much as the concept that deaf people are missing something vital to their existence and thus need curing, because how can you really and truly miss something if you’ve never had it?
My answer to this still stands: Plenty.
Okay, this response is way too long, so I’ll stop now, but hopefully I’ve gotten it so that folks can see the outline of what I was driving at and why SkiDemon might not want to be labelled ‘disabled’.
Lizarding, <checks pants for a second > I am a she.
Gunin, I can and do understand that. I can hear fairly well…in fact my hearing loss classfies me as hard of hearing. But the thing is, I have a VERY weird loss, that’s usually seen in deaf people, instead of hoh people. I identify as both deaf and hoh. The dividing line is really fluid and a subject of a lot of debate.
Anyway, I do understand how many hearing people might see hearing loss as something not too great. But you have to understand that I didn’t always subscribe to this mode of thinking. I grew up thinking of my hearing loss as an “unabilty” or a barrier… It took me ages to realize that I can adapt to and live with this difference. To me, physical disabilities are something that can be adapted to relatively easily.
I know most late deafened people I know, would give their left arm to be hearing again. At alldeaf.com, (and the Deafies in this thread should really check alldeaf out! It’s a fun community, and very welcoming to everyone from all four corners of the dhh world) we have a few relatively late deaf people, (lost their hearing as children)who say they wish that they could hear again.
Actually Guin, I have experianced perfect hearing for a week or so as a teen. I was born with no ear canals. As a teen I had an operation where the docs made new canals. I can remember how excited I was to be able to hear things like the wind or my cat Boggles meowing (when I was little I thought that she knew I was deaf, b/c to me she just mouthed "meow meow meow ) However, the canals closed up again…and I realized that my hearing loss is just a part of me the way my blue eyes or laugh is. It’s not good…it’s not bad…It just IS. A lot of the kids who I grew up with, thought the same thing…that I was just one of the kids. Even a lot of the kids who I went to college with, thought that way too.
Very very true. In our society we equate disabilty with in- or un-abilty, which just makes me mad. I do consider myself disabled, but not in a “sit in the house and whine how horrid it is to be disabled,” disabilty= total and complete unabilty type thinking.
I am a student, but not at Gally or any other place that has a high popultion of dhh students. Maybe for grad school though. I do love hearing…but I would say the sound that I and other dhh people hear, isn’t the same as what a hearing person hears.
No not at all. I am simply approaching this from a Disabilty Rights mindset.
That is disabilty=unabilty is caused not by the disabilty itself, but rather social attitudes and inaccessibilty. For example a person in a wheelchair would be disabled in a place where everything was too high up for them to make use of. However, then put them in an enviroment that is specificly designed to accomondate that disabilty, and they aren’t disabled, under the unabilty theory.
Oh agreed, you can’t make everything in life 100% accessiable via accomondations. You’d have to have a set up just like in that short story, Harrison Bergeron.
Ideally, yes, but since when is this true? I didn’t get to decide shit at my university, and the student government was a joke (e.g. they voted against the war in iraq). The university was controlled by a board appointed by the state government, and the board made decisions (like who would be university president) without bothering to ask any of us.
A report on NPR last spring indicated that students were dissatisfied with the way Fernandes handled discipline. I can’t remember the incident, but my impression was that as provost, she was perceived as “heavy-handed”. I remember thinking that the students in question deserved stronger punishment for whatever it was they did (sorry, I tried the Google & NPR but couldn’t find the story).
Why? For one thing, the amount of money outlaid by a university is substantially greater than the sum of students’ tuition, with a great deal of it coming from Federal funds and alumni contributions and the like. Why should the current students be able to control all that money? That’s what trustees and boards are for. And although of course they should encourage and listen to student and faculty input, they should never just bow to pressure, even if it comes from the majority. In this case, after an exhaustive review that did include input from students and faculty, they selected someone they held to be the right choice, Jane K. Fernandes, and from what I’ve read, I tend to agree with them. See the Washington Post’s moderation of: Gallaudet On Line Discussion Transcript
And I repeat, they did request student and faculty input, and they did consider and weigh it in their search. It’s just that the bigoted Deaf supremacists on campus didn’t get the results they felt they “deserved”. And here’s what I consider the most important observation: The claim that Fernandes was a “poor administrator” rather than “not Deaf enough” is overwhelmingly shown to be rationalized bullshit by the extreme vehemence and outrageous displays of anger of the protesters. You don’t show your calm, rational displeasure with a “poor administrator” by burning her in effigy!!
Do the students have a right to protest anyway? Sure, and they can protest against stuffing instead of potatoes in the cafeteria, too, as long as they do it within the law and within reason. But judging from what I’ve read and from the fact that the police had to get involved, they apparently violated both.
They’re bigots and they deserved to lose, if for no other reason than because of the tactics they employed. The fact that the dogmatists won is certainly no cause for celebration (though they celebrated anyway).
For a prime example of their Deafist bigotry, see especially the definitions section in the Wikipedia entry for the term: Audism. Does that sound calm, sober, and balanced to anyone?
Though I agree with Jenny Haniver and other comments on this point, I’d like to take a stab at it anyway…
I can’t, of course, speak for the gay community, but as a member of that community, allow me to speculate. The last X-Men movie portrayed the outcome precisely as I would expect something like this to happen: there would be lots of gays fighting to stop other gays from taking the “cure”. And those that would forcibly try to stop others would be dead wrong.
Just like the Gally protesters and other Deaf supremacists.
), which I share with two cats, I have a great job, and I have friends.
> I am a she.