# Persuade me that deafness & hearing impairment are not best thought of as disabilities. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 26, 2011, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-deafness-hearing-impairment-are-not-best-thought-of-as-disabilities/583370 "2011-05-26T23:36:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 38
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-deafness-hearing-impairment-are-not-best-thought-of-as-disabilities/583370/38 "2011-05-27T15:30:16Z")
How many of you have deaf friends? Seriously. The stuff I’m reading is typical, but its full of misconceptions. What you know or think you know about what the deaf and and cannot do is based on your experiences as someone who hears. Being deaf means you’re not the norm - I know that - and I understand why it is recognized as a medical condition. But like I said in my earlier post, I know plenty of people who are perfectly happy with themselves and don’t feel the need to be fixed. The human body - and brain - is pretty incredible. You’re talking about people who are deaf and that is _all they know_. Deaf kids signing activate different parts of their brains than we do when talking. You can’t imagine a life with congenital deafness because your brain is sensitized to a hearing world. I wish the OP would have posted the **original** quotes\*\* in full\*\* > [@](#): > > Originally Posted by Max the Immortal, a few months ago > I see it as more akin to “blind” or “deaf”. **Blindness and deafness are objectively undesirable traits. If they invented a pill that gives perfect vision to the blind, it’s perfectly fine to say, “Great! Let’s get this pill to as many blind people as possible.”. Likewise, it’s fine to want to distribute a hearing-granting pill to as many deaf people as possible.** It’s not acceptable to mock a blind person for being blind or to mock a deaf person for being deaf, but saying “What are you, blind?” or “What are you, deaf?” to the unafflicted are acceptable because it is understood that the intention is not to disparage the blind or the deaf. > > In contrast, being black is not an objectively undesirable trait. Slurs like “nigger” carry with them the assertion that blackness is a bad thing. If they invented a pill that turns black people white, it is not at all okay to say, “Great! Let’s get this pill to as many black people as possible.”. The same rules apply for the word “faggot” and a pill that turns gay people straight. It is not acceptable to mock black people for being black or gay people for being gay. It is also unacceptable to use expressions like “That’s so gay.” in a sense that does not mean homosexual, because the statement still carries with it the assertion that homosexuality is a bad thing. > > Now let’s consider mental disabilities. Is a mental disability an objectively undesirable trait? If they invented a pill that grants normal mental faculties to the mentally disabled, would it be helpful or hateful to try to distribute this pill to as many mentally disabled people as possible? I think we all agree that it is not acceptable to mock a mentally disabled person for being mentally disabled, but does saying “What are you, retarded?” to a normally bright person when they fail to understand instructions or a joke also disparage people with mental disabilities? that was re-quoted, to which I replied: > [@What is going to be the next N-word, F-word, R-word?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-going-to-be-the-next-n-word-f-word-r-word/583151/33): > > I’m sorry for the double-post, but I just saw this and I _had_ to comment. > > Deafness is _not_ an undesirable trait to the millions in the Deaf community. Many many many Deaf people OBJECT to ‘fixing’ their deafness. My Deaf friends are Deaf. It’s like me being Jewish or my best friend being Chicano. It’s nothing you fix. It’s just part of who you are. > > Sorry, I felt compelled to correct that. or [linked](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=609874&highlight=Deaf) for context\* since that appears to be the rules, but since **Marley23** agrees with the OP, maybe it doesn’t apply. I was clearly talking about a subset of deaf people, not all. And _hearing impaired_ is not the same as _deaf_. Late-deafened people are also remarkably different than those who are pre-lingually deaf. Hmm…I wonder if **CandidGamera** has polled Deaf people recently… > [@What is going to be the next N-word, F-word, R-word?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-going-to-be-the-next-n-word-f-word-r-word/583151/42): > > Being black is not an objective deficiency. Not having one of the five senses is. > > Don’t get me wrong, I recognize that there is a strong deaf culture that has formed to support people who have hearing disability, **but if there was a 100% effective, safe and painless pill that restored hearing loss in all cases, 98% of the deaf population would be hearing within a month.** You’d have a few outliers whose self-esteem was so tied up in their deaf cultural identity that they would refuse to change, but the vast majority would want that other sensory input. I have a disability. I’m not disabled. I also don’t wish to be neurotypical as I would be a completely different person and wouldn’t have the same talents. I know deaf people who feel the same way. There _are_ things that deaf people are better at, such as spatial recognition and (non-hearing) sensory awareness. To a deaf person, the hearing may be the ones with deficits. 😉 In the mammalian world, one can live without hearing. Do I really have to remind a bunch of adults that _having a disability_ is not the same as _being disabled_? \*I can’t believe I put an apostrophe where it doesn’t belong. ☹ --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-deafness-hearing-impairment-are-not-best-thought-of-as-disabilities/583370)._