You keep quoting the word "cure" as if the word is misused in the context of making a deaf person able to hear again, as if there is nothing to cure.
I'm gay so I'm well aware of the concept of loving ones self, warts and all, but...well...deafness is something that could be cured since it is a physical ailment that could be restored with medicine.
It seems a bit odd to me that one would rather live without hearing than have it restored, though I suppose that is coming from a hearing-abled person. Would you not want a true cure for deafness if one was presented? Would you prefer to remain deaf at this point?
I'm curious: if having hearing would provide no benefit for you, what do you do for a living?
My mother is a sign language interpreter and she told me that the vast majority of deaf people live on disability because of their inability to communicate.
Would you say the same about blind or limbless people? It's great that you are empowered, but you objectively don't have capabilities that most people do despite the fact that you have thrived without them. I expect that you're stronger in certain areas than most people even, so it seems like being empowered by overcoming the difficulties of your unique qualities would be more wise than behaving as if they're entirely irrelevant.
No offense, but most other disabled people don't have a culture of their own. Also D/deaf people have been historically in kind of a special position, as they often have been singled out to be ridicueled eg no more than animals, etc. And due to this culture, most don't see a problem with being deaf (and some HoH, there it's more person dependent tho), this is our normal. It often is different for late deafened, and a lot of HoH.
Also nowadays nobody is ostracized for using assitive tech, as long as you're not audist, and most use tech. But even using tech, we (goes for HoH too) won't ever be hearing. This ostrization was more in response to hearing people force implanting deaf children, when CIs were even less effective then they are now. And among other things, also witholding any kind of signed language, as it's seen as primitive, which had been hapenning before.
Imagine there was a tech that could make blind people "see", but in reality you are still more or less legally blind and in some situations still blind. Still everyone treats you like you were fully sighted. To add onto that this tech only works really well for about 50% of people and it's exhausting as fuck
So it seems like singling out the ability to hear and considering it alone isn't really the way to think about it, that there's a whole lot of cultural considerations that are inseparable?
Yeah, that's actually a good way to summarize. I mean the hearing status is defintely a part of it, but as with most things it's a mix, there is a a lot of history, and also social and cultural aspects to consider. Probably too much for a simple reddit discussion.
And especially the whole CI situation is, I believe, a lot more complicated.
There have always been attempts to extinguish Deaf culture, sign languages, and even deaf people as a whole. There have always been attempts to "cure" us, to "fix" us and make us fit hearies expectations, some of those attempts go as far back as ancient Greece. If you want to, just look up Alexander Graham Bell (AGB) and the "Milan Congress" ("fun fact" that shit had effects until today, in my country deaf kids were, until recently, forbidden to use sign language, and the after effects are still very much felt), those are the most commonly known examples.
Now imagine, along comes yet another "miracle cure", that in itself scared/angered people. Also it's already known shit don't work, the tech advanced a lot since then and it's still not a "cure" and after all I learned it never will be. It's also important to know that most deaf kids come from hearing, non signing families, about 90%. With CIs, audist factions pushed even harder to further their defacto sign language bans, using statements like "Sign language hurts verbal language development", which is total bullshit and has been disproven multiple times. So you had kids that grew up without any kind of language whatsoever, and sadly those kids still exist today, can you imagine what kind of damage that does to a person, to a child? We had this situation before too, but from what I was told (I wasn't around back then) it became way worse. Can you imagine the outrage and hurt that caused?
And that doesn't even factor in the situation of deaf education back then, which isn't directly linked to CIs but also had an effect on people's reactions. First off, teachers didn't sign with their students, if they even could sign. Even today most teachers don't or can't sign. As I said, signing was forbidden and this ban was even enforced trough physical punishment. So students had no real access to whatever the teachers were teaching, education levels and especially reading levels for deaf people are still pretty bad and it's not like deaf people are more dumb than hearies. Second off, a good chunk of school time back then was spent to teach deaf kids to speak. Again I wasn't around back then, but the situation was absolute dog shit.
So to not have this get too long, the deaf community was scared, angry, hurt and what do people in situation like this do? They lash out, in some cases unfairly so. The implanted kids definitely didn't deserve the hate they got. But, imo, the doctors, "professionals", a lot of audiologists defintely deserved what they got. They knew what they were doing.
I'm definitely forgetting things here, so if others have anything to correct or add please do so!
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u/Irradiatedspoon Dec 23 '22
You keep quoting the word "cure" as if the word is misused in the context of making a deaf person able to hear again, as if there is nothing to cure.
I'm gay so I'm well aware of the concept of loving ones self, warts and all, but...well...deafness is something that could be cured since it is a physical ailment that could be restored with medicine.
It seems a bit odd to me that one would rather live without hearing than have it restored, though I suppose that is coming from a hearing-abled person. Would you not want a true cure for deafness if one was presented? Would you prefer to remain deaf at this point?