Only if the other person’s “special ability” is mind-reading.
Nobody here is advocating this at all. Strawman.
I’m uncomfortable with this rationale because it seems awfully similar to the argument that humans, as a species, are supposed to be able to reproduce (and therefore gay people aren’t normal).
The analogy can be extended. One could conceive of being gay as lacking a sense that most people have – the instinct to find a reproductively-capable mate. Yes, there are workarounds available, but as discussed here, there are also workarounds to allow deaf people to communicate. Gays are socially isolated, even within their own families, and have developed their own subcultures.
I honestly don’t know. My gut reaction is that, yes, being deaf is a disability. But (like most people here, presumably) I also think that it would be wrong and insulting to suggest that being gay is a disability, and that leads me to wonder whether I am looking at deafness incorrectly.
IF you are disabled, you have a disability, and vice versa. What you do to compensate for your disability does nothing to change this definition.
This doesn’t seem determinative, though, because it suggests that in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, I’m disabled. Moreover, saying that they need special devices for their telephones overlooks the fact that the telephone itself is a special device; it doesn’t occur in nature. I have hearing and (some) vision, but I can’t decode a television broadcast without a device.
Just like you can’t imagine a world without music (although there are deaf musicians), the deaf can’t imagine a world like ours. It is not an issue.
RE: danger signs - cognitively deaf people are more aware of their surroundings.
Or ones that need glasses?
Actually, you can be a deaf and be a pilot, but you can’t be deaf and be a commercial pilot.
Indeed. As does sight. Not all people process the same - and that’s okay.
I don’t know any deaf who can sense electrical fields, but I do have a deaf friend with the uncanny ability to ‘hear’ sound before I do (i.e., thunder, people talking or whatever). RE: Weather: he picks up on the vibrations before my delayed reaction does. He can also hear (feel) the tiny hum of my air conditioner.
It’s all about perspective. If I decided to go live in the Amazon, I’m sure the indigenous would see me as pretty freaking disabled.
For all we know, we lose strength in some areas when we gain in others.
This is your perspective from the hearing world, and I understand what you are saying. But think of how white people saw Native Americans and Native Americans saw white people: both thought the other group as stupid and defective.
It’s perspective.
The thing you guys might not understand is the stridency of a few people in the Deaf Community. The simple fact is that many deaf adults went through truly horrible deaf education. Boarding schools that were oral only, and literally punished kids for signing, because they believed that if you allowed kids to sign they would learn to lip read. As I said earlier, this whole approach to deaf education was a massive failure.
And so when cochlear implants first became available, they were seen as another Oral-only solution imposed on deaf kids. They don’t need to sign, just give them an implant and they’re cured. Except of course they aren’t, many kids with cochlear implants are still deaf, meaning they can’t hear well enough to follow normal conversations. And so what those kids need is sign language. Except the path chosen for this kid by his parents is the hearing world. He’s got a cochlear implant, so they believe that sign language is a distraction, it will hold him back.
Man does not naturally travel at 65 mph. To do this we need a special device called a “car”. Now, if I need added devices to this car like a wheelchair ramp and/or hand-operated brakes and accelerator, does the fact that this is already a special device negate the fact that I am disabled?
In a way, you are. If you planned to stay in that foreign country, saying that not knowing their language wasn’t a disability at all, because you already knew English, might seem a bit arrogant to some. Can you see why this analogy might not work?
Well, I’m disabled in the area of having a normative functioning temporal lobe, but I certainly don’t see myself as disabled. Weird; I also think of deaf people as less disabled than I because it is very hard for me to navigate noise, lights, and height sometimes.
But I don’t act as such and I don’t function as such. While my brain may have undesirable traits to many - to most - I don’t want to fix it because then I wouldn’t be the same. I most certainly don’t want to live in a world without Lewis Carrol or van Gogh. Would you?
And who are you to suggest that you’re better than I am? Because that’s what you’re doing with deaf - you’re saying, I have something you don’t have. I am better than you.
F that idea. Close-mindedness - the kind that results in persecution, degradation, racism, genocide - that is the greatest disability.
Diversity! It’s what makes you better.
Now you’re just changing up the definition of disability all together. You can’t lambast me for supposedly doing so when you just did.
Newsflash: Humans adapt. Technology is something that makes life easier. Technology also reflects human needs.
There is a reason why we have adjustable seats in cars, you know. We’re not all built the same way.
I think this is a horrible analogy. The rabbits in Strawberry’s warren could leave, but they don’t because it’s comfortable. Deaf people can’t just decide to stop being deaf.
Are you going to sit down with the guy in the wheelchair who proudly insists he can do everything anyone else can, and explain to him that no, he really can’t and he’s deluding himself and in denial, and he should change his attitude and face facts and stop focusing on all the things he can do and start focusing on the things he can’t? No you aren’t. You’re going to think to yourself, “Good for him. I’m glad I’m not in a wheelchair, but if I were I hope I’d face it like him.”
And of course there’s the additional factor of community. You can carry on a conversation with a guy in a wheelchair. Even if he’s been in a wheelchair his whole life and nobody else in his family has a wheelchair, he’s integrated into his family and neighborhood in a way a deaf kid isn’t and can’t be. He might be part of a group of wheelchair-bound people who get together to talk about wheelchair-bound life, but that group isn’t going to form a community in the same way a group of deaf people would, because the guy in the wheelchair can go back home to his family and talk with them, or you, or his neighbors or co-workers.
A deaf person insisting that deafness isn’t a disability is a hyperbolic way of insisting that they’re just as good as anyone else. You’re going to look them in the eye and say, “No you’re not as good as me, I can hear and you can’t”?
Thank you ever so much for putting words in my mouth. Overreact much?
I think the distinction is clear. Illiteracy, for instance. Are you physically capable of learning to read? Yes? Then it’s not a disability, it’s a lack of a skill. Are deaf people physically capable of learning to hear? No? Then it’s a disability.
:dubious:
You just keep on projecting your viewpoints on those you don’t understand, Czarcasm. It sounds rather conceited, though.
Keep it in the other thread; it’ll get tiresome having to refute you in two places at once. My speculative claim was presented in response to one of your own - IE that a hearing restorative pill would NOT be taken by millions and millions of people.
I think most people here understand that, but it’s true that people who don’t have disabilities can lose sight of this. Fair point. You can survive without hearing the same way you can survive without sight, smell, the ability to walk, and a lot of other things.
Nobody in this thread has said deaf people should be forced to do anything. I know I already acknowledged that deaf culture could go away if treatments for deafness continue to improve. While I understand people are attached to their cultures, we don’t need to preserve deafness just to keep the culture going, and we don’t need to say it’s not a disability. The rest of this is basically a pedagogical dispute. I’m sure cochlear implant technology will improve, but there’s no reason not to teach people the best tools to handle any hearing problems they have. So teach people support techniques to go along with the implants. I’ve never heard of restricting ASL; I think it’s become more common for people who aren’t deaf to learn it. (My middle brother took it in college for a semester or two.)
No, their hearing disability makes them disabled. I am sure there are better and worse strategies and coping mechanisms for dealing with that, and we should keep those in mind.
In other words, being obnoxious and patronizing is bad. Thank you for pointing this out.
Has anyone here said deaf people are lesser human beings, or that they themselves (as opposed to their senses of hearing) are inadequate?
The distinction is not clear. Some people literally cannot process written language. But deaf people can read - and communicate. Fluently.
Well, yes, I do have something that you don’t have - the ability to hear. That doesn’t make me better in any moral sense. But I can do several things that a deaf person can’t.
I am talking “on average” here - a given deaf person might be able to run faster than me, but that doesn’t make him any less deaf.
Not all the time it doesn’t. That’s like arguing that cutting off a thumb makes you better, because most people have ten fingers.
Regards,
Shodan
OK - I’m a jerk because “Glad I don’t have that undesirable trait” is how I feel about deafness and I see nothing wrong with that.
In addition I view deaf people as both ‘different than I am’ AND ‘disabled’.
They are different that I am.
They are also disabled.
The “lesser than/inadequate” part I’m not sure about because I don’t know where you’re going with that. I certainly do not consider their life worth less than mine or feel like I have the right to look down on them if that’s what you mean.