4 ms·

Controversial in the same way cochlear implants are. Many deaf/Deaf parents want children who hear. And I think absent the cultural consideration, almost all

by retrac 1y ago

Controversial in the same way cochlear implants are. Many deaf/Deaf parents want children who hear. And I think absent the cultural consideration, almost all would want children who hear. But you can't ignore the cultural consideration. If you are deaf, and have a deaf child, curing that child's deafness means they will move away from you later in life. It's a kind of alienation even when the child remains bicultural, they usually end up almost entirely in the hearing world. That said, most deaf people who have children have hearing children anyway. Hereditary deafness like that is relatively rare like that. But for people from such families, and who live in a culturally deaf world -- they are not disabled. The cultural environment they live in is ... one in which deafness is not disabling. And it's going to be a very high hill to climb to convince them that they are missing something. They certainly don't feel it. This is particularly true in the United States which has such a proud tradition of deaf culture and education -- you can go all the way to doctorate level studies in ASL, work in ASL, the hearing world being a strange foreign culture you only rarely wade into -- only rarely need to. I'd cure it for myself, and my child if I had one. No question. But I'm not culturally deaf. I feel isolated by it in the same way most hearing people anticipate deafness to be as an experience. But again -- people who live in the deaf cultural world -- they do not feel that, and they don't feel disabled because, in their context, they aren't. It's hard to communicate this to most hearing people. The usual response is dismissive, and unfortunately I think a lot of that ultimately goes back to very old metaphysical attitudes towards language and intelligence. A lot of hearing people still don't believe, deep down, that sign languages are equivalent to spoken languages, in particular. It's just gesture. You're lacking something essential to the human condition without spoken language. Etc. But for the culturally deaf, nothing is missing from their lives, except the perception of sound.

bigstrat2003 1y ago
There are few things that make me angrier than trying to hold back cures for deafness because of "cultural erasure" or whatever the phrasing is. It is utterly reprehensible. To try to keep someone disabled (yes - disabled, not "differently abled", they are objectively lacking a capability that a healthy human has) just so that there are more people in your community is objectively evil in my book. It is directly doing harm to people for one's own benefit. If a person wishes to not get a certain treatment - fine, that's their right. But when one starts trying to keep others down, that's not ok.
- retrac 1y ago
  I said "not disabling", not that deafness is not a disability. Those two things mean different things to me. Obviously deaf people cannot hear. Not able. Dis-able. Deafness is a disability. But not all disabilities are generally disabling of individuals. The only disability that deafness causes is a lack of perception of sound. Hearing people have a panoply of inferences about what that means -- about how it disables and how broadly it disables. And most of them are faulty. It doesn't result in isolation, in particular, in a deaf cultural context. In fact in the deaf cultural context about the only thing missing is some auditory alerts that would be nice as a visual complement, and some aspects of music and the like. Yes. Birds chirping is beautiful. I miss it deeply. It'd be nice to have a world where every kid gets to experience that. But all of the social and emotional and cognitive consequences imagined of deafness, are not innate to the lack of hearing.
  - MintPaw 1y ago
    I'm empathetic to this argument, but there needs to be some kind of differentiation between preserving culture and abuse for the sake of community. I can imagine the same argument applying to a cult with cruel traditions, or hazing in general.
    - smaudet 1y ago
      It's more than that (not deaf either) - if suddenly there is a new therapy to grow a third eye in the back of your head, should you? Or should a fish be able to breathe without water? In both cases there are ways to function without fundamentally altering the body, and neither is wrong. It is not so clear that there is "abuse", when there is an empathetic standard of living. Now to me, the best argument for taking this is that deaf people do have ears, whether or not they function. So it is reasonable for them to experience sound, but also, they have a right not to, if they so choose. What I think is harder, if you have experienced neither, to be able to make that decision well. And nobody is talking yet about reversing such a therapy...
    - guerrilla 1y ago
      Abuse by who? It's themselves who are against adopting it. It's just autonomy at work.
rfrey 1y ago
This is a super interesting comment, thank you. I am certainly guilty of believing the deaf experience is inferior to the hearing experience - but not because I think ASL is lesser than spoken languages or deficient as a communication channel. It's because deaf people don't hear music. I know people can dance to the beat and often distinguish songs by vibration patterns, but that is surely not equivalent to the emotional and intellectual experience most people can have listening to music. Less important but similar: birdsong, the sound of crashing waves, children laughing in a playground. Hearing brings us much besides transfer of information. On the other hand, from my brief number of ASL lessons (about a years worth taken as an adult in my mid 20s) the facial expressiveness inherent to ASL gives it something hearing people don't get in normal conversation. But to me that's a pretty small benefit compared to the things a deaf person is missing. I'd respect anybody who chose not to get treated for themselves, but I think I'd be pretty judgy pretty quickly for anybody who tried to deny or dissuade anybody else from becoming hearing, including their children.
- squigz 1y ago
  > On the other hand, from my brief number of ASL lessons (about a years worth taken as an adult in my mid 20s) the facial expressiveness inherent to ASL gives it something hearing people don't get in normal conversation. But to me that's a pretty small benefit compared to the things a deaf person is missing. I don't know ASL, so can you elaborate on this? Aren't facial expressions just as important for non-deaf people?
  - rfrey 1y ago
    Facial expressions were mandatory in ASL, at least according to my teacher. The best analogy I can think of is of a tonal language, where raised eyebrows, a somewhat astonished look, or a frown with a furrowed brow are the tones.
pcthrowaway 1y ago
> But again -- people who live in the deaf cultural world -- they do not feel that, and they don't feel disabled because, in their context, they aren't I can respect resisting pressure to be part of the hearing world, but there are certainly ways in which deafness impacts one's safety and opportunities. Not being able to hear sirens, or oncoming trucks, or cars honking their horns, or cyclists saying "on your left", or fire alarms makes the world less safe for you (and for others who may have the expectation you can hear them) I'm certainly not saying this to suggest people should be forced to join the world of the hearing if given the option, but I do think doing so would be the responsible option, if it's a readily available one. Kind of like I don't expect people to learn other languages than their native tongue, even when it's a language spoken by the majority in their place of residence. But if you don't speak the language spoken by the majority, and are presented with the opportunity to instantly learn it (like "I know Kung Fu"-Matrix style), I certainly think it would be more responsible to do so.
- zie 1y ago
  > I can respect resisting pressure to be part of the hearing world, but there are certainly ways in which deafness impacts one's safety and opportunities. I agree, but that's not a result of me being deaf, it's a result of the hearing world just blindly assuming everyone can hear these things. People screw up hearing sirens or "on your left" or whatever ALL the time, even if they are hearing (distracted, headphones, etc). If we took away the assumption that everyone can hear everything all the time, it would help everyone, not just people who are deaf. For instance, studies show that subtitles/captions being always on helps retention of the information you just watched[0]. Yet subtitles/captions not even being included is still the default for many types of media. When captions are included, often times they are wrong, either subtly or grossly. Even in education settings where one would think people want the information retained pretty much never ever bother to include or turn on captions. Despite decades of studies saying captions help a lot. Go to your local home improvement store and try to buy a battery powered smoke/fire alarm that will work for deaf people. I'm betting despite lots of options the chances are basically 0 for finding one(yet they do exist in the world). Finding one that works with wired 110V is a little above zero. What if it was the other way around instead, and it was hard/impossible to find a fire/smoke alarm that didn't work for deaf/HoH people? 0: UW-Madison did a comprehensive overview[0] of over 100 empirical studies in 2015 showing that captions are useful for everyone, not just deaf/hard of hearing people. "The empirical evidence is clear: Captions, also known as same-language subtitles, benefit everyone who watches videos." They recommended just always showing captions. source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5214590/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5214590/
magicalhippo 1y ago
> culturally deaf world What's this defined as? Keeping away from all non-deaf people?
- retrac 1y ago
  That happens naturally, due to the language barrier. I'd suggest a definition of "culturally deaf" as having sign language as your native language.
- UltraSane 1y ago
  The culture unique to native ASL users.
UltraSane 1y ago
I truly sympathize with deaf people not feeling disabled due to how well modern US culture has adapted to their needs but hearing is essentially a superpower compared to total deafness.
akoboldfrying 1y ago
> But you can't ignore the cultural consideration. We can and should, the same way we ignore the corresponding "cultural consideration" that mothers who have undergone female genital mutilation themselves will feel alienated from their daughters if they do not inflict the same treatment on them. In this case, most people have no problem recognising that the rights of the daughter to enjoy her own sensory experience far outweigh the (quite real) emotional isolation that would be experienced by the parent -- so why is deafness treated differently? Denying another person sensory experience is abuse. If that person is a child, it's child abuse. For me the harm inherent in this has nothing to do with whether sign languages are perceived as "real" languages on par with spoken languages. It's obvious to me as a hearing person that sign languages are indeed "real, full" languages, the same way written languages are, and, more generally, the same way that languages I don't personally understand but other people do, are. Sign languages are real, full languages -- and preventing a person who would be able to hear from hearing is still abuse. I think the reason this is not called out more frequently and stridently by hearing people is that many of us fear being labeled "prejudiced" or worse, and being associated with the political right, who have a long history of making absolute moral claims about outgroups. It's simply an unusual quirk of our times that this specific quality of being seen as culturally presumptuous is the thing that no Right-Thinking Person wants to be seen doing right now, resulting in many otherwise intelligent people bending over backwards to avoid the stigma, even to the point of denying obvious realities like "a life that includes access to more sensory experience is a richer life". ETA: To anyone who maintains that deaf parents should be able to prevent their children from being able to hear: Should illiterate parents be able to prevent their children from going to school? Should parents who grew up poor be able to starve their children?
8note 1y ago
i see an opportunity cost. i recently realized that my neighborhood soccer teams arent constantly yelling at eachother about where they are, and that stopping to look for who to pass to is costing us games. i started yelling on their behalf a couple games back and we started shooting and scoring. somebody who wants to remain deaf, couldnt play soccer at the same level as hearing people because they couldnt hear that information, even though their foot to ball skills might be amazing, and thats a travesty for soccer. im sure theres lots of things we tend to not think of where hearing is a gigantic advantage, that the deaf arent able to use, and were missing out on their related skills because of it

by retrac 1y ago

bigstrat2003 1y ago

There are few things that make me angrier than trying to hold back cures for deafness because of "cultural erasure" or whatever the phrasing is. It is utterly reprehensible. To try to keep someone disabled (yes - disabled, not "differently abled", they are objectively lacking a capability that a healthy human has) just so that there are more people in your community is objectively evil in my book. It is directly doing harm to people for one's own benefit. If a person wishes to not get a certain treatment - fine, that's their right. But when one starts trying to keep others down, that's not ok.

retrac 1y ago
I said "not disabling", not that deafness is not a disability. Those two things mean different things to me. Obviously deaf people cannot hear. Not able. Dis-able. Deafness is a disability. But not all disabilities are generally disabling of individuals. The only disability that deafness causes is a lack of perception of sound. Hearing people have a panoply of inferences about what that means -- about how it disables and how broadly it disables. And most of them are faulty. It doesn't result in isolation, in particular, in a deaf cultural context. In fact in the deaf cultural context about the only thing missing is some auditory alerts that would be nice as a visual complement, and some aspects of music and the like. Yes. Birds chirping is beautiful. I miss it deeply. It'd be nice to have a world where every kid gets to experience that. But all of the social and emotional and cognitive consequences imagined of deafness, are not innate to the lack of hearing.
- MintPaw 1y ago
  I'm empathetic to this argument, but there needs to be some kind of differentiation between preserving culture and abuse for the sake of community. I can imagine the same argument applying to a cult with cruel traditions, or hazing in general.
  - smaudet 1y ago
    It's more than that (not deaf either) - if suddenly there is a new therapy to grow a third eye in the back of your head, should you? Or should a fish be able to breathe without water? In both cases there are ways to function without fundamentally altering the body, and neither is wrong. It is not so clear that there is "abuse", when there is an empathetic standard of living. Now to me, the best argument for taking this is that deaf people do have ears, whether or not they function. So it is reasonable for them to experience sound, but also, they have a right not to, if they so choose. What I think is harder, if you have experienced neither, to be able to make that decision well. And nobody is talking yet about reversing such a therapy...
  - guerrilla 1y ago
    Abuse by who? It's themselves who are against adopting it. It's just autonomy at work.

rfrey 1y ago

This is a super interesting comment, thank you. I am certainly guilty of believing the deaf experience is inferior to the hearing experience - but not because I think ASL is lesser than spoken languages or deficient as a communication channel. It's because deaf people don't hear music. I know people can dance to the beat and often distinguish songs by vibration patterns, but that is surely not equivalent to the emotional and intellectual experience most people can have listening to music. Less important but similar: birdsong, the sound of crashing waves, children laughing in a playground. Hearing brings us much besides transfer of information. On the other hand, from my brief number of ASL lessons (about a years worth taken as an adult in my mid 20s) the facial expressiveness inherent to ASL gives it something hearing people don't get in normal conversation. But to me that's a pretty small benefit compared to the things a deaf person is missing. I'd respect anybody who chose not to get treated for themselves, but I think I'd be pretty judgy pretty quickly for anybody who tried to deny or dissuade anybody else from becoming hearing, including their children.

squigz 1y ago
> On the other hand, from my brief number of ASL lessons (about a years worth taken as an adult in my mid 20s) the facial expressiveness inherent to ASL gives it something hearing people don't get in normal conversation. But to me that's a pretty small benefit compared to the things a deaf person is missing. I don't know ASL, so can you elaborate on this? Aren't facial expressions just as important for non-deaf people?
- rfrey 1y ago
  Facial expressions were mandatory in ASL, at least according to my teacher. The best analogy I can think of is of a tonal language, where raised eyebrows, a somewhat astonished look, or a frown with a furrowed brow are the tones.

pcthrowaway 1y ago

> But again -- people who live in the deaf cultural world -- they do not feel that, and they don't feel disabled because, in their context, they aren't I can respect resisting pressure to be part of the hearing world, but there are certainly ways in which deafness impacts one's safety and opportunities. Not being able to hear sirens, or oncoming trucks, or cars honking their horns, or cyclists saying "on your left", or fire alarms makes the world less safe for you (and for others who may have the expectation you can hear them) I'm certainly not saying this to suggest people should be forced to join the world of the hearing if given the option, but I do think doing so would be the responsible option, if it's a readily available one. Kind of like I don't expect people to learn other languages than their native tongue, even when it's a language spoken by the majority in their place of residence. But if you don't speak the language spoken by the majority, and are presented with the opportunity to instantly learn it (like "I know Kung Fu"-Matrix style), I certainly think it would be more responsible to do so.

zie 1y ago
> I can respect resisting pressure to be part of the hearing world, but there are certainly ways in which deafness impacts one's safety and opportunities. I agree, but that's not a result of me being deaf, it's a result of the hearing world just blindly assuming everyone can hear these things. People screw up hearing sirens or "on your left" or whatever ALL the time, even if they are hearing (distracted, headphones, etc). If we took away the assumption that everyone can hear everything all the time, it would help everyone, not just people who are deaf. For instance, studies show that subtitles/captions being always on helps retention of the information you just watched[0]. Yet subtitles/captions not even being included is still the default for many types of media. When captions are included, often times they are wrong, either subtly or grossly. Even in education settings where one would think people want the information retained pretty much never ever bother to include or turn on captions. Despite decades of studies saying captions help a lot. Go to your local home improvement store and try to buy a battery powered smoke/fire alarm that will work for deaf people. I'm betting despite lots of options the chances are basically 0 for finding one(yet they do exist in the world). Finding one that works with wired 110V is a little above zero. What if it was the other way around instead, and it was hard/impossible to find a fire/smoke alarm that didn't work for deaf/HoH people? 0: UW-Madison did a comprehensive overview[0] of over 100 empirical studies in 2015 showing that captions are useful for everyone, not just deaf/hard of hearing people. "The empirical evidence is clear: Captions, also known as same-language subtitles, benefit everyone who watches videos." They recommended just always showing captions. source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5214590/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5214590/

magicalhippo 1y ago

> culturally deaf world What's this defined as? Keeping away from all non-deaf people?

retrac 1y ago
That happens naturally, due to the language barrier. I'd suggest a definition of "culturally deaf" as having sign language as your native language.
UltraSane 1y ago
The culture unique to native ASL users.

UltraSane 1y ago

I truly sympathize with deaf people not feeling disabled due to how well modern US culture has adapted to their needs but hearing is essentially a superpower compared to total deafness.

akoboldfrying 1y ago

> But you can't ignore the cultural consideration. We can and should, the same way we ignore the corresponding "cultural consideration" that mothers who have undergone female genital mutilation themselves will feel alienated from their daughters if they do not inflict the same treatment on them. In this case, most people have no problem recognising that the rights of the daughter to enjoy her own sensory experience far outweigh the (quite real) emotional isolation that would be experienced by the parent -- so why is deafness treated differently? Denying another person sensory experience is abuse. If that person is a child, it's child abuse. For me the harm inherent in this has nothing to do with whether sign languages are perceived as "real" languages on par with spoken languages. It's obvious to me as a hearing person that sign languages are indeed "real, full" languages, the same way written languages are, and, more generally, the same way that languages I don't personally understand but other people do, are. Sign languages are real, full languages -- and preventing a person who would be able to hear from hearing is still abuse. I think the reason this is not called out more frequently and stridently by hearing people is that many of us fear being labeled "prejudiced" or worse, and being associated with the political right, who have a long history of making absolute moral claims about outgroups. It's simply an unusual quirk of our times that this specific quality of being seen as culturally presumptuous is the thing that no Right-Thinking Person wants to be seen doing right now, resulting in many otherwise intelligent people bending over backwards to avoid the stigma, even to the point of denying obvious realities like "a life that includes access to more sensory experience is a richer life". ETA: To anyone who maintains that deaf parents should be able to prevent their children from being able to hear: Should illiterate parents be able to prevent their children from going to school? Should parents who grew up poor be able to starve their children?

8note 1y ago

i see an opportunity cost. i recently realized that my neighborhood soccer teams arent constantly yelling at eachother about where they are, and that stopping to look for who to pass to is costing us games. i started yelling on their behalf a couple games back and we started shooting and scoring. somebody who wants to remain deaf, couldnt play soccer at the same level as hearing people because they couldnt hear that information, even though their foot to ball skills might be amazing, and thats a travesty for soccer. im sure theres lots of things we tend to not think of where hearing is a gigantic advantage, that the deaf arent able to use, and were missing out on their related skills because of it