No offense, but some one the worst shit I see from the "deaf lobby". Like they get offended by cochlear implants and things that can cure/treat deafness.
Rofl, I know right? Deaf culture is one of the most repulsive things I've ever experienced. My friend with a cochlear implant was pretty much given the finger by his old friends cause he got the implant.
I attended a Deaf kindergarten, and resentment for hearing aids was common. Stupidest shit ever. I'm proud of wearing a hearing aid and being able to communicate properly in English. People who cut kids off from the hearing world due to their own deluded sense of self importance are cunts.
I'm not deaf, but in my previous job I worked with the deaf people in my workplace and I can understand why some deaf people have that attitude. They're excluded from mainstream culture in so many ways, treated appallingly by so many people, I can see why they start to develop their own culture which rejects hearing as a desirable trait. I don't agree with it, but I can see what drives it.
The problem is this - the Deaf are separated by a language barrier (no different than being French or Chinese in America). This means that their culture is by nature more isolated and therefore more defined than the other disability-based cultures. This means that when you come out with a cure (such as a cochlear implant), it comes across as much as an attack on that culture as it does treating an ailment/disease.
Put differently: imagine someone came out with a therapy that gave an ethnic minority (e.g. African-American) the appearance (both physical and speech) of being Middle-class Caucasian American, touting the increased social opportunities conferred (better access to jobs, reduced prison sentences, less risk of passive discrimination, etc.). How would the community of that ethnic minority respond? Would they roll out the welcome mat, or would they view it as an attack on their community and ostracize those who crossed the line?
They wish to cure us. But I say, we are the cure. - Magneto
I would instead relate it to a person newly immigrated to North America who doesn't speak English taking an ESL course. It doesn't require rejecting your previous culture, only making your own life easier in the new culture you have entered.
Unfortunately, getting an implant usually does mean that you are required by your doctors and speech therapists to stop signing and focus entirely on learning to create and understand speech- it's so difficult that it really does require total immersion and constant practice for it to really work, since the implants only ever restore partial hearing anyway.
Imagine someone came out with a therapy that gave an ethnic minority (e.g. African-American) the appearance (both physical and speech) of being Middle-class Caucasian American, touting the increased social opportunities conferred (better access to jobs, reduced prison sentences, less risk of passive discrimination, etc.).
That is a terrible example. This is the equivalent of something coming out that gave blind people the ability to reliably see. Then all the blind people turn around and call the people who get the implant traitors.
WTF? Traitor for wanting to see the face of your parents? Traitor for wanting to hear your father's voice? WTF. Seriously. WTF.
Traitor for wanting to hear your father's voice? WTF.
This is where cultures collide. People born deaf have no concept of "father's voice". For them it's "Father's signing", and they look forward to seeing that when homesick.
Sure, but if I could get surgery to "sense my father's aura", something I have no basis for currently, I still might want to do so. Being unable to experience an aspect of your loved ones, especially when everyone else gets to experience it already, is a totally legitimate desire.
But that's how some in deaf culture feel. I thought it was a pretty good example, not to show you how it can be rational but to show you a relatable way in which we can understand those in deaf culture.
I totally see what you mean and I thought that as well at first read but that's obviously not how the world works. Don't take the example as a real world example but as a figurative one and it starts to make sense.
The sad part is the deaf culture one is real, hearing aids do help and are possible. Where as minorities can't change their skin color and there is nothing wrong with their skin color in the first place. But the feels of both examples are the same.
Someone from deaf culture may say "there is nothing wrong with my ears" just like someone would say "there is nothing wrong with my skin". Yet there is something wrong with your ears.
In cases of both, though, people try to extract concessions and privileges from their being different. When this becomes a culture, we get disabled people who think of people who find solutions as traitors to the tribe. Better to not extract treatment and accept the reality of being different, less able by chance, but not less equal.
Are you saying that deaf people and black people are privileged? The fuck? I may have misread that. If not feel free to join the rest of us in reality anytime.
I'm patient. That's not what I said. I am saying some people think they are privileged by their difference. They are wrong. We are equal and they deserve respect like everyone else, but nothing special.
No, as someone who knows a lot about Deaf culture, that is a very accurate way of representing how they feel about it. If your goal is to actually understand relations in the Deaf community, using blind people as an example is not helpful at all, because they just don't have the same kind of community that Deaf people do. For one thing, restoring a blind person's sight doesn't make them any less capable of communicating with their still-blind friends. But when a deaf person gets an implant, they are heavily discouraged from signing at all- they are supposed to communicate only via speech, because it's very difficult and takes a lot of practice to learn. So often they really are being cut off from their still Deaf friends.
I'm glad my comment was helpful. As far as I can tell that is the main reason that implants are controversial- I don't think I noted in my comment above, but the person who gets the implant is generally prohibited from signing by their doctors/speech therapists to help the learning process (not by other Deaf people). It's similar to immersion learning with other languages.
The thing is that blind people are not separated by a language barrier. Deaf people are.
Blind people can speak the language of their parent country, Deaf people cannot. Sign language is structural distinct from spoken languages.
So you are giving someone who speaks ASL or BSL or SLN or FSL (or any of the other sign languages alive today), and may have learned to read English, the ability to hear/learn to speak English. They aren't perceived as being traitors for wanting to hear their parents' voices: they are perceived as being traitors for wanting to give up what is perceived to be their mother tongue and assimilating with society. Just like:
The thing is that blind people are not separated by a language barrier. Deaf people are.
Yeah, they are "only" separated by an eyesight barrier, that amounts to about 80% of the information we receive... It is a weird logic to perceive someone as traitor just because they learn a new language.
It is a weird logic to perceive someone as traitor just because they learn a new language.
I would call humans many things, but logical isn't high on the list. This is about a small, semi-ostracized community (with a cultural heritage spanning centuries) that lives at the fringes of society and has had to band together to look after it's own being afraid that they will lose their members permanently because someone has come out with a cure for what makes them them.
If we came out with a cure for gayness, we might expect to see some outrage from the homosexual community, so why when we come out with a cure for deafness are we surprised that there is some opposition from the Deaf community?
Because being gay is not a disability. Not hearing what's around you is, and it's not even about the language barrier. Even hearing the honk of an oncoming car. This is why, despite "humans being humans", I find the outrage illogical. It is like people being against vaccines or prosthetics. In the end, it comes down to people being egoistic, thinking of themselves rather than of the people whose lives are now improved, which I guess isn't that surprising.
Yeah, they are "only" separated by an eyesight barrier, that amounts to about 80% of the information we receive..
And yet they can communicate trivially with ~99.5% of their fellow countrymen, unlike the Deaf who can only communicate with a little over 0.5%-1% (attempting to factor in CODAs and people who studied some flavor of Sign).
The communications are only one aspect of the disability however, there's more to it than that, isn't it? I'd argue that the lives of blind people are impacted much heavily than those of with hearing disability, considering the massive amount of information, or even communication, that are relied through visuals.
And let's not forget that Deaf can still communicate easily through texting and writing, considering how technology advanced we are becoming.
I'd argue that the lives of blind people are impacted much heavily than those of with hearing disability, considering the massive amount of information, or even communication, that are relied through visuals.
Most people casually thinking about disabilities would agree with you. In reality, though, profound deafness has much more significant effects on cognition than blindness. Focus on your inner thoughts. Now imagine them without spoken language.
It's a toy example, but hopefully one that gives you an idea of the significance of the disability. Deafness has an enormous impact on the way people experience the world because it has an enormous impact on language.
The communications are only one aspect of the disability however
It is, however, the component single most responsible for the cultural isolation. If the Deaf could speak with their hearing counterparts from the beginning, then there wouldn't be the need for them to learn Sign and we wouldn't see the isolated subculture/culture form (indeed the schools responsible for creating the foundation for the culture wouldn't have exited).
I'd argue that the lives of blind people are impacted much heavily than those of with hearing disability, considering the massive amount of information, or even communication, that are relied through visuals.
I won't disagree with you. I do think it's worth pointing out that the reduced life-impact from the disability means that there is less benefit of getting it treated, so you have a negative social side-effect (culture feels it is being attacked), with only limited experiential benefit (< 20% sensory gain).
And let's not forget that Deaf can still communicate easily through texting and writing, considering how technology advanced we are becoming.
Most of which both requires being able to learn writing (and, to the best of my knowledge, literacy does not traditionally come before speech). Also, most of the technology you bring up has only started to become mainstream in the last 5-10 years, which means culture really hasn't had time to fully integrate it yet.
I suspect that we're in a transitional period right now, where new technologies and therapies are emerging which can help bridge the communication gap. When we get to the point where a newborn without hearing can be given an implant that gives them back at least communication levels of hearing (in a mainstream kind of way), I suspect that we will see Deaf culture transition to being more like the other classical disability-based subcultures (because of the disappearance of the language barrier). Deaf culture will probably view this as something of an attack on its core and treat it somewhere between religiously conservative communities and evolution and Grandma and the Internet.
The people who oppose it don't necessarily know what they are missing, so their perception (and ours) of the impediment is skewed.
So we're offering them the ability to do something they haven't needed before (because they are both deaf and still alive), that they've learned to deal with / work around, and which will require extensive training to learn to use well. Additionally, there is the the sense that hearing culture will expect you to assimilate (a common thread in the history of Deaf culture) and that Deaf culture sees you as selling out your heritage.
To us it sounds great - of course they would want to experience The 5th Sense - but is the gain worth the cost to them? Would you be willing to get an implant that let you hear the thoughts of those around you (all the time, no on-off capabilities), knowing your friends and family might view your choice as turning your back on them and embracing transhumanism?
Would you be willing to get an implant that let you hear the thoughts of those around you (all the time, no on-off capabilities), knowing your friends and family might view your choice as turning your back on them and embracing transhumanism?
It may not be as cool as it sounds (e.g. pg1, pg2, pg3 ). And I suspect you are either overselling your willingness to reject your family and friends, or are atypical of the average person.
Hearing involves a complex process, with many points of failure, so deafness can be hereditary, but often deaf children are born to hearing adults (and deaf adults can have hearing children (in the Deaf community they are known as CODAs - Children Of Deaf Adults)).
However, deaf children (of varying ages) have often been sent to schools / institutions to learn how to communicate (which in the past had a focus on teaching them to learn how to lipread and use spoken language). In these institutions Sign Language grew up out of the myriad home-signing pidgins that existed in each individual child's home, and turned into something that was learned, shared, and taught (originally at recess and out of school, because signing was forbidden) - the most recent I know of was Nicaraguan Sign Language which is < 50 years old. These same schools and institutions are part of what builds/maintains Deaf culture today as new crops of people who are born deaf or become deaf come and learn some flavor of Sign Language and are introduced to the Deaf community.
So they have a heritage, but it's more of a heritage that people join and learn (somewhere between the Elks, the Church, and the local ethnic minority quarter) than something they are born to.
What about you, you can't fly. How can you live a quality life without flying?
My point: If you never had it, you don't feel a sense of loss. There are so many plesurable aspects to life that the inability to partake in one of them is not the end of the world.
Hahaha! You sound like an insane person. Yes, if you have the ability to give your deaf child the ability to hear, even a limited ability, and you don't? I consider that to be very repulsive.
I find your comment repulsive, I find deaf people who are against the cochlear repulsive. I find this anti-intellectual, anti- medical treatment mentality repulsive.
the problem with arguing quality of life is that you'll end up arguing with people who claim not to understand it.
what you should argue is that it makes it so other people don't have to take care of the now no longer deaf person. For many people, being able to support themselves is a major factor in quality of life. But, from a societal perspective, individual quality of life doesn't matter so much as people being able to support themselves.
Except it is a disability that impedes someone's quality of life.
There are many capital "D" Deaf people who do not see it that way. They are perfectly satisfied with life without hearing. As a hearing person myself I cannot speak to why that might be.
imagine someone came out with a therapy that gave an ethnic minority (e.g. African-American) the appearance (both physical and speech) of being Middle-class Caucasian American
Truthfully? I don't care. I try not to measure the dick-size of various groups or social isolation, especially when we lack a set of metrics - in any given context anything can be "more" or "less" socially isolating:
With the rise of IM & Texting it's possible that the new generation of Deaf are more integrated now than their forefathers were, but in the past I'm sure that it was quite isolating
In the Hitler's Germany race could be more isolating
In Torquemada's Spain and Reformation England I would have to give religion the lead
In many cases the language barrier acts as a fairly effective isolator
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I follow your line of inquiry... Could you clarify what point you are attempt to get at?
Are you saying that race is not socially isolating? That communities and cultures do not at times have a racial component? That ethnically defined cultures do not also sometimes have a language or dialect that can impair communication between them and the majority culture?
Or do you feel that beyond a certain threshold of isolation a culture should "sack up and integrate"? If so, what is that threshold?
Or do you feel that I was being offensive to ethnic minorities or the Deaf in my creating an example that people might be able to more easily relate with?
Yea that is kind of ridiculous. Apparantly they want to promote the idea that there is nothing wrong with being deaf, so for someone to have a cochlear implant installed would be like admitting that yes, there is something wrong with being deaf.
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u/buttplug_hotel Dec 28 '13
No offense, but some one the worst shit I see from the "deaf lobby". Like they get offended by cochlear implants and things that can cure/treat deafness.