They are wrong. At best, the denial is simply a coping mechanism. At worst, they are scum who would deliberately cripple a child’s ability to communicate with the world at large.
Perhaps so. And in real-world situations for this analogy, islanders sometimes really don’t want a bridge. Should we insist they have one?
Does it? I don’t think it necessarily follows. Fragility may indicate relative inferiority, but it needn’t.
By definition it’s a disability, and can I object to that capitalization of deaf? It’s not a nationality, ethnic group, or a religion. It’s true there is a deaf culture, and deaf people aren’t required to hate their deafness or want to “fix” it. But let’s not be so sensitive that we can’t acknowledge there’s something they are unable to do.
Wow. It’s a tough one, for sure. As usual, I am of two minds on this. On one hand, it reminds me of the anti-vaccine mentality or extremely religious people. I don’t believe in inflicting your personal beliefs on your children (other than the basic “thou shalt nots”) when they are too young to have any choice in the matter. On the other hand, I do think that “deaf culture”, while foreign to me, is a sort of viable and necessary tool for the deaf and hearing-impaired, and I am happy to have folks embrace their deafness or whatever. On the third hand (OK, I’m a mutant), if this was in the really old days, the deaf would’ve been devoured by sabre-toothed tigers or something, and if not for the grace of modern civilization, wouldn’t be here for long. Any tool employable should be utilized to increase the chances of surviving and thriving.
What’s the answer? Beats the shit out of me, but I’m OK with deaf people deciding for themselves, but for their children, I am worried.
Great post, Lemur866. There are lots of points in there that I didn’t realize, like the lack of language in children causing long-term mental problems and the fact that cochlear implants aren’t a panacea.
I’ve never really thought about the tragedy (or perhaps just heartbreak) of kids being born into families that will never be able to fully understand their culture. That must feel incredibly isolating.
This frankly makes no sense. How is this different from any other handicap? If I am paraplegic, all of the above apply to me. Am I not disabled? The only one that might not is #3, but there is nothing inherent in being paraplegic that inhibits me and my paraplegic pals from choosing to isolate ourselves from society and thus develop our own ‘culture.’
It’s a bit silly, but capital-D Deaf just means “Deaf Community/Culture”.
While it’s true that deafness isn’t preciesely a nationality or an ethnic group, it is analgous to ethnicity because of linguistic isolation from the hearing world, and lingusitic community within the deaf world. And this linguistic isolation creates “Deaf Culture”, which just the result of deaf people often prefering to hang out with other deaf people rather than hearing people.
Yeah, there’s a certain amount of denial, you’ll sometimes see people in wheelchairs who proudly proclaim that they can do everything anyone else can. While it isn’t true, it’s not polite to get in the wheelchair guy’s face and set him straight about how crippled he is. But the other side is that while people in wheelchairs have a lot in common, they aren’t linguistically isolated from everyone else, like deaf people are. There are other disabilities besides deafness that leave people unable to communicate, but those disabilities usually leave those people unable to communicate with each other as well as the non-disabled, and so there can’t be a community of those people. That’s what makes deafness different.
No problem with any of that, but I think we have also to acknowledge that there are things many/most deaf people (especially those well-embedded in the prevailing deaf culture) can do (and have) that hearing people typically do not.
That is, the ability to communicate in a substantially different way, and a culture that is built upon and around that different mode of communication. Deaf people do not merely have a subset of the abilities and life qualities of hearing people. it’s an intersecting set. And the non-intersecting part on their side is potentially under threat if the hypothetical magic hearing pill existed, and was deployed - or perhaps also in the case of more realistic, less-hypothetical scenarios where the gift of hearing is imposed upon them.
I’m not sure about that capitalization either. But based on her other post in that thread, I guess that’s what she was doing, so I’ll withdraw that.
I understand there is such a thing as deaf culture and I’m not insisting anything to the contrary. And yes, the fact that ASL is nonverbal does create some differences. Saying deaf people have an ability that hearing people do not is a little misleading, I think. It would be better to say they have a skill most hearing people do not. Everyone who has full use of his hands can communicate with ASL. It’s true that only a small minority do, for obvious reasons. If you say it’s an ability instead of a skill, it makes it sound like you’re disabled if you can’t speak a local language.
Right. I realize that if deafness were largely eliminated, deaf culture would go away. I can understand why deaf people want to preserve their culture, but it doesn’t mean they’re entitled to preserve the physical condition of deafness in others to keep that culture alive, or that other people should indulge that preference. It doesn’t stop being a disability just because it’s connected to a culture.
There is a passage in Watership Down, where the wandering rabbits fall into a group of other rabbits that live on a farm. And the farmer, instead of trying to wipe out the rabbits, keeps them as a food source. When he wants to, he sets a wire trap and catches one of the rabbits to eat.
And the prophetic, wandering rabbit, realizes that the whole culture that has sprung up is an effort to cope with the inescapable fact that they are being kept for food. They are all trying to convince themselves and each other that theirs is a good situation - that they “love the wire”.
It’s a hell of a passage. And I suspect that much of the attitude of Deaf activists is the same - there is nothing they can do about their situation, and they are trying to convince themselves to some degree that they are really better off than they would be as hearing.
It’s not all of it, and certainly having a separate language like ASL goes a long way towards defining a culture. And there is nothing inherently inferior about ASL as a language. ASL is just as much a language as Hebrew or Russian.
But the average hearing person can do anything that the average deaf person can do. There are things the average hearing person can do that the average deaf person cannot. That doesn’t make deaf people bad unworthy of their own dignity - it just means that they have a disability. And denial doesn’t change that.
Regards,
Shodan
My view should be obvious from the other thread - yes, it’s a disability, and it takes extreme intellectual dishonesty or delusion to argue that it isn’t.
Well, should a vocal minority of the islanders be able to refuse the bridge that the mainlanders and the rest of the islanders want? If the bridge is built with mainlander money, what harm comes of having it built, except that the ‘leaders’ of the islanders might lose their power to control the others, who now have a choice?
Slight hijack, but: You’ve just convinced me to read Watership Down. That sounds amazing, and horrifying.
You will not be sorry you did.
Regards,
Shodan
Like I said in my post, I view #3 as important (it’s what convinced me to bother to make the argument) in discriminating between the terms disability and what I guess I would call a difference.
Paraplegics do not have a self-sustaining culture. Also, the relative rate of congenital deafness as compared to congenital paraplegia must be far higher since paraplegia is far better associated with accidents in males. I do not think there would be a deaf culture if it was only the result of gradual or sudden hearing loss. I do not think there would be a deaf culture if there were not large numbers of these people with a way to communicate with each other.
This brings up an important distinguishing feature about the term disability from the point of view of a person who never had a specific trait. A key component is to know you have lost the ability. To them and to me, if I were in their shoes, using the term disabled for somebody who never had a specific ability is what ‘frankly makes no sense’. In fact, I think well-meaning people constantly referring to my disability would annoy the shit out of me after awhile, make me move out to an island of like-minded people and tell everyone to go to hell.
In other words. thinking of it as a disability serves no purpose. It places you in the hands of people who design awesome, but still flawed devices to ‘fix’ the problem. This is true despite the fact that sign language is far superior for communication.
But it’s still accurate. Where does that leave us?
Those of you who insist that hearing problems are a disability please explain the great number of things such disabled people can’t do? If you can’t whistle or snap your fingers is that a disability? What about people who can’t dance? Is illiteracy a disability? Is someone who can’t read more able than a person who can read but can’t hear? Does the average person who is not deaf know sign language?
It’s easy to say that anything a person can’t do is a disability, but qualifying that as something that should consider special designation is silly. Do we call all the un-cool people out there disabled? What about people who can’t cook? How many abilities can we distinquish that a lack of puts someone in a special category?
I’m sure someone will respond that the vast majority of people can hear. But the vast majority of people can hear, thus deafness is a disability. But that smacks of the claim that difference is a disability. What is it other than the basic function of hearing are deaf people unable to do? They can communicate, they are not limited in physical or mental ability at otherwise. Even in the case of blindness lack of sight limits ones physical ability. But deafness excludes very little. You have define disability in a way that is only distinquishing in its frequency of occurence from the all those things that any individual may be incapable of.
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**
that was re-quoted, to which I replied:
or linked 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…
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. 
I can’t make a full list of them at the moment but I suppose near the top of the list would be HEARING. Does that count? It’s somewhat important in spoken communication.
See my earlier comment about skills and abilities. I’m not a very good whistler, but if I were motivated, I could learn. My lips and my lungs function.
Not really.
I’m getting the impression that you want to create a special category for deafness so that it’s separate from disabilities because, um, yes. Why is it a bad thing to categorize deafness as a disability? By definition, it’s the lack of ability to hear. That doesn’t mean anybody needs to be ashamed of it, but it’s starting to sound like people want us to pretend it’s like having green eyes or being left handed. It isn’t.
Must we turn this into a resume issue?
That’s fine, and I think that’s been acknowledged here. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a disability.
Cite?
This makes as much sense as saying that a person who is missing a leg is not the same as a person who is legless. This is a grammatical hoop I am not willing to jump through.