Yeah, that struck me as well. Honestly, it probably got you pegged as an unreasonable hothead.
And from what you say you said/sent to them - it DID sound almost like you were expecting them to issue a recall. Which just isn’t realistic. Who knows how often they issue a new run of the game.
I understand that you lost your temper, but I think your actions got you the crazy malcontent brush-off.
I agree with the others who say you are overreacting. Granted, we might not have the same life experiences giving us a different perspective. But when I think of analogous situations to my own life, it still seems like you are overreacting. I’m gay, but if I encountered a game card that used “queer” in the old sense of “odd” or “gay” in the old sense of “gleeful” or “fag” in the sense of a stick or cigarette, I wouldn’t be offended. I would just think the game has some outdated material. If I encountered an actual euphemism for homosexual that was outdated and considered offensive now such as “poofter” I would similarly just think the game was outdated. I might politely inform the company and ask them to change it but wouldn’t get myself riled up about it.
Sure the game company should discontinue that particular card or rewrite it. Maybe they even ought to make some sort of apology. Seems like they did or are going to do those two things. What else do you want?
Those in the hearing and speaking impaired communities may have developed some kind of sensitivity to the terms “deaf and dumb” but I can’t even imagine why the term “deaf” is offensive other than it presuming 100% hearing loss. I don’t know anyone who cannot speak, so maybe they do face some sort of ridicule using puns involving the double meaning of the word “dumb”. But in my own experience I’ve never come across someone or any text using the expression “deaf and dumb” to mean “hearing impaired and nonintelligent.” There’s many many words in the English language that have the same spelling but different meanings.
In any case, you are in danger of slipping and falling on the “Euphemism Treadmill”. Terms for various things that are taboo or the subject of prejudice for one reason or another continually change terminology. The old term becomes “offensive” and the new term is “clinical”. But when enough people start using the new term in a derogatory way then the new term becomes offensive too. Then some new term has to be invented to replace it. The problem is, it’s not the term that’s offensive, it’s the derogatory way people talk about the subject. Reorienting attitudes, and not language, is where your best effort lies.
I’m still over here laughing about “deaf and dumb” being offensive in a game of charades. 
True, it’s dated–and the phrasing is awkward–I’d have thought that the term sign language would have been used, but let’s not katiebar the door yet. You’ve alerted the powers that be. Now you need to be patient. If this game is popular and has been around for 20 years, presumably it’s been played by some of the (searches for PC term) um, non-hearing community before with no uproar. Perhaps you’ll be the thin wedge that drives massive change.
vetbridge–when I was growing up, it was common to refer to cats and dogs (all animals) as our dumb friends. Since they don’t share our ability to speak, it’s factually correct. It wasn’t used in the “stupid” sense, although my cat tests that boundary daily. Why is calling a dog “dumb” a perjorative? It doesn’t hurt the dog’s feelings and accurately describes the condition. 
That’s cuz you’ve never seen me play.
Why would a game company have an official complaint procedure?
I can envision a mass of cubicles with phones, staffed to the max, answering consumer complaints about board games.
Just wanted to say I have severe hearing loss (80%-50%) and I don’t find it offensive so much as inaccurate. I agree that it should be changed though. Even back in 1986, people referred to it as sign language. Trying to picture someone calling it deaf and dumb language is weird.
“Ok, running out of ideas here and its 4AM… how about we do that, you know how deaf people talk with their hands”
“Oh yeah, good one…what’s that called”
<silence>
“you mean the deaf and dumb language?”
“yeah”’
<silence>
“um, lets throw in a gorilla to make it harder to guess”
Anyhoo, the company response isn’t that unusual. The first person you take a complaint to, as a general rule, is some peon who’s powerless to actually do anything other than listen to complaints. If said peon thinks it’s enough of a problem and/or you make enough noise about it, the complaint might get passed up to a supervisor and carefully ignored. The best way to get the company to change the card is to send it to the organizations in your links, as someone else said. Nothing forces companies to change offensive products faster than the threat of bad publicity from special interest groups.
I taught Deaf kids for many years - started around 1986 - (Oh, my GOD I’m old…) and about the only people who knew it was offensive at the time was those of us working with Deaf people… Since that time, more people have learned it’s offensive, however, I still run into people who use the term - and usually just let them know that it’s an old and offensive term, and let it go…
I might send a letter to a company, but certainly wouldn’t expect an answer in 24 hours… or ever… I would just assume they probably noted it somewhere for the future…
Well, it’s been observed already in this thread that they don’t play charades as a rule because they’re too darned good at it.
This games manufacturer isn’t a British company by any chance, is it? Over here, “deaf and dumb” is still commonly used to mean “deaf-mute”, and the word “dumb” doesn’t imply stupidity in British English.
The term “deaf and dumb” is offensive and I’d complain too if I saw it in a board game. I used to work with the Deaf community, so I’m probably slightly more aware than the average hearing person about some of the issues involved.
Your approach, however, suggests you were spoiling for a fight. It’s hard to believe you wouldn’t have been secretly just a little disappointed if they’d fallen all over themselves to apologize to the deaf community within moments of receiving your email. Which, by the way, is a little hard to do, particularly when you give them no guidance. What did you expect, they’d take out a full-page ad in the New York Times?
Frankly, I think you’ve ruined a perfectly good opportunity to educate people who doubtless had no real prejudice against the deaf, they were just a little ignorant.
You were fine up through the first two paragraphs of your original letter to them. The confrontational tone you adopted thereafter destroyed your credibility.
By the way, you must know there are people out there who get pissed off if you don’t use a capital D for deaf. Should they be coming after you demanding an apology?
What makes me sad about this is that if anything, you’ve probably contributed to bigotry against the deaf.
Why do you assume that your loved ones are dumb? Read your sentence again before you respond to my question. Please allow for the possibility that while deaf people exist just fine in their own right, “deaf and dumb” people do to, and is hardly offensive.
…and uh… “no longer in use”??
I’m sorry, but the usage of your language and tone here is patently offensive.
Most definitely. IMHO, it’s you who should apologise. There’s nothing offensive at all about the terms ‘deaf’ and ‘dumb’. For what do you think the D in the RNID stands? My father did a lot of work for the (deleted) Deaf Centre. Colleagues have been deaf and / or dumb and made no bones about it. A family friend is dumb too. They are the correct terms.
A quick Google search turns up The Glasgow Society for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb and many more besides.
An analogy in the US might be the NAACP. Nobody says “colored people” any more, but I doubt they get a lot of angry letters insisting they change it.
FWIW, I asked the lady who told me that ‘colored person’ was offensive what term should be used instead. She said ‘person of color’.
Regards,
Shodan
But it’s still prominently posted online. 
Without tons of prominently posted “we know we aren’t supposed to say ‘deaf and dumb’ anymore, but gosh, this is from 1917” PC disclaimers.
And if you click on “The Catholic Encyclopedia” up at the top of the article, what you get is “The Catholic Encyclopedia” home page, not “The Catholic Encyclopedia 1917 edition.” The information that it’s from 1917 is buried way down at the bottom, and requires inductive reasoning to understand that information in a related article listed at the bottom of the page means that the information in the article you were just reading, and in the whole Catholic Encyclopedia itself, dates from 1917.
And if you click on “Home”, up at the top, what you get is “Friday, July 18, 2008”. The Catholic Teeming Millions may perhaps be forgiven for assuming that the Catholic Encyclopedia, and its information, is current, since it’s got today’s date on it.
Thus, it seems to me that the Catholic Church isn’t making it clear that they don’t customarily refer to hearing-impaired people as “deaf and dumb”, and thus might make an appropriate target for someone in a fist-shaking mood.
Use of the term just seems awkward, dated, stilted. As you noted:
There is an animal shelter near me that I support a good bit. It is called Orphans of the Storm. I’ve always thought the name awkward, strange, etc. I have argued to the shelter director that her animals are not necessarily orphans. In fact, in most cases their heritage/lineage is unknown. Therefore, my argument goes, the shelter would more correctly be called Bastards of the Storm. She disagrees. 
The OP’s location is listed as London.
There are more than 750,000 welsh speakers around the world.
There are upwards of 2m users of ASL, and at least 50,000 BSL users.
Just for the record.
More syllables = not offensive!
No, the idea is that you should put the important part, “person”, first, and then the qualifier. At least, some twats of stupidity think so.
And I still don’t get the joke. Do you find calling people “dumb” funny, or do you find deaf people playing charades funny? I’m not trying to be snarky - I really don’t get it.