How Cochlear Implants Are Being Blamed For Killing Deaf Culture 510
First time accepted submitter Maddie Kahn (3542515) writes "Deaf culture has its own language, its own social norms, its own art forms, its own theater. But it's under threat. Why? Because most parents of deaf children now choose to use technology to help their kids hear. This piece explores why a revolutionary technology stands accused of killing a culture."
Let it die (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean seriously. There is no down side to going from not hearing to hearing except for having to listen to contemporary "music".
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Insightful)
This. Deaf "culture" is significantly responsible for many of the problems facing the deaf community, such as the outrageously high unemployment rate, and abysmally low literacy rate, and unimaginably poor deaf schools.
Deaf "culture" can't die soon enough.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Funny)
Pardon?
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Interesting)
Some parts of "Deaf Culture" do not foster literacy. They've wound up isolated, culturally and economically, by this lack. Much like the Amish, who refuse to participate in a great deal of modern technology, they wind up profoundly hampered in education and employability by their steadfast isolation.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Informative)
Its been 15 years. I still sign fairly well. Not as well as I used to, but I can still hold a conversation in SEE/Pidgen. I can understand ASL, but being so far out of practice, the syntax trips me up.
Deaf culture needs to go away.
One of its core beliefs is that hearing people exist to support deaf people. They look at hearing people as second class people.
They look at those that get implants as traitors.
Yes, deaf culture needs to go away.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Insightful)
In so many ways this mirrors black culture and I'm willing to accept down-modding for this. But it's basically true.
1. Self-improvement is viewed as traitorous.
2. Entitled to royal treatment and royal public assistance.
3. Highly exclusive.
4. Views others with suspicion and contempt.
I think point #1 is especially important. EVERYONE, myself included, are perfectly comfortable around people who simply want to join in and be one of the crowd. We've got common interests and what have you and that's okay. We're co-workers and we can get along, work and play well together. But the moment words like "traitor" or "sell-out" get asserted by their other identity groups, things get pretty screwed up.
I don't mean to say being black is a disability. I don't mean to say being deaf is a race. I mean to point out that identity groups can be harmful at times. ID grouping is NATURAL. I'm a man. I'm white. I'm southern. I'm [fill in the blank]. And I like to do and share things with people who are like me. That's natural. But I might also identify with groups which tend to disagree with my other ID groups such as being atheist. Being atheist does not 'require' that I hate anyone else. Being white does not require that I hate anyone else.
But in the case of certain, let's say 'radical' members of these ID groups, they believe it IS license to hate.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Insightful)
To be honest, that's pretty much ALL cultures.
Re:Let it die (Score:4, Interesting)
Black culture has escape clauses, as in so many subcultures. Becoming rich but still being a hood rat--assuming you live in an area where blacks are generally hood rats and not just people with darker skin--makes you a celebrity. You got a good job--a real one, not pimpin' or drug dealin'--that makes you a traitor; but if you got a good job, flash your cash around, get highly flashy suits, drive a pimped-out car, and blast rap music, you're that rich nigga down the street that stick it to da man!
We can see this again and again. Remember every fucking band that ever changed their music? All your songs sound the same, you suck. Oh shit look! Metallica changed the way their songs sound! THEY ARE SELL-OUTS TO THE RECORD COMPANY! I liked them before they were cool, but now they're just RIAA mafia shills.
Remember gays? Those people? I had a gay friend once. There was a pride parade on campus, he went. He came back almost immediately, bitched about how they were marching into classrooms half-naked and screaming at people taking tests, and acting like militants (i.e. not-gay people are the enemy). In gay pride parades, they've historically been hostile or passive-aggressive to bisexuals. He came back with all this new information from his first participation in a gay event, and also with the experience of people shouting at him and getting angry when he said maybe they shouldn't be such assholes. Gay traitor.
Try being in IT and going into management. For that matter, try being an IT guy and going into infosec. Holy living hell, do IT muggles hate security engineers! These dudes used to be your crew, now you are a fucking traitor.
Keep towing the party line.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
You mean like the poor white people who talk about accumulation of wealth and barriers of entry into the marketplace and stuff like that? I agree. It's not quite enough to explain it as "racial" or like that.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Horror!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe your description is grossly exagerated. In this world, deaf people are second class citizen, no doubt. This culture is just trying to counter balance the effect to be considered everyday of your life as a second zone citizen. It can be understood that some of them don't want to let go everything that was build around them to compensate for the handicap. This is a normal and perfectly understandable reaction. What I don't understand is why are you so angry against deaf people?
Most people without an
Now replace "deaf culture" in your text (Score:4, Insightful)
Put any sectarian culture in place of "deaf culture" and it would apply just as much. The anger isn't aimed at deaf people (a common misconception amongst deaf people) but against the separatist deaf culture that this group tends to practice against the rest of the population. Being part of society is a verb, it's called "participating" and it requires you to actively engage with others. If deaf people want to be accepted, they have to participate and not choose their own culture at the expense of being isolated. Any time this sort of choice is made, it is a clear sign of dangerous sectarian behavior and it is almost always damaging to those inside the culture.
I understand that there is certain humor that will get lost in translation and the way deaf people use other senses to compensate for their lack of hearing and it would be nice of those could be preserved. If the price for that preservation would be to withhold a minor from medical care that could enable them to be part of a hearing society, I think the parents should lose custody and the child should get proper medical care. "Special" does not always mean better, you wouldn't operate on a hearing child to make it deaf, just so it would better be able to communicate with it's deaf parents, would you? The decision to operate or not should never be about the parents culture, but about giving your child the best chances it will have in a world were the vast majority of people is able to hear one way or the other.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Interesting)
My ex-girlfriend is a certified sign language interpretor. Becoming one obviously requires you to immerse yourself in Deaf culture, and all of the teachers at the schools are deaf. I have met a lot of them, and while they are extremely friendly people, they are also staunchly conservative when it comes to things like cochlear implants and what they see as the erosion of Deaf culture. They truly do not see being deaf as a handicap, some of them even consider the ability to hear an unnecessary burden, as bizarre as that seems. An enormous amount of misinformation around implants is also constantly spread around the Deaf community, probably in a desperate attempt to keep people deaf.
Nothing quite like it exists among the blind, because being deaf is an enormous burden, and a much larger handicap. Deafness causes linguistic isolation, unlike being blind, which still allows you to communicate effectively with non-handicapped people.
The Deaf community needs to wise up and accept that being deaf is a handicap. We have the tools and technology to mitigate and almost eliminate this handicap.
There is a reason we don't see "Blind culture" or "Wheelchair-bound culture" or "Scoliosis culture" or whatever, and it's because creating an insular, conservative and backwards culture based on a handicap, and then claiming that particular handicap makes you superior to everyone else, is a monumentally stupid idea.
Re:Let it die (Score:4, Insightful)
They truly do not see being deaf as a handicap, some of them even consider the ability to hear an unnecessary burden, as bizarre as that seems.
That doesn't seem bizarre at all to me, it just seems like human nature. "I get by quite fine without being able to hear. In fact, I'm better off not being able to hear!" Substitute the ability to hear with basically anything else that some people have and others don't, you get the same sort of thing. Bald people who tell you that it's a sign they've got more testosterone and are therefore better in bed, for example. "I'm better than people with a full head of hair." It's natural to (want to) see what makes you different from everyone else as something that makes you better than everyone else.
Personally, I try to avoid doing shit like that. There are certain conditions* I have which are a disadvantage to me, that some people say means I have advantages in other ways. If an actual cure were developed for them, I'd be celebrating. And beating the shit out of anyone who tried to prevent others from taking it because "it's killing [condition] culture!" A culture born of a reduced quality of life is a culture we can stand to lose.
*I don't like advertising the specifics, and they're not really relevant.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, "evidence" is hard to provide, but to (accurately) invoke the old saying "The plural of anecdote is data":
My older brother, his wife, and their son were all born profoundly deaf. I have a number of relatives that were born profoundly deaf due to an inherited genetic defect in my father's family line (which was identified by researchers in part by sequencing my brother's family's genomes--his wife is a distant relative)
Neither my brother nor his wife sign...at all. They both learned to read lips (they are in their 40s) so they could interact more fully with society. My sister in law briefly attended a university that is very popular among deaf culture and she left after one semester. She was ostracized because she saw lip reading as a superior alternative to ASL. She was ostracized because most of her friends were hearing.
The stories they have about their own interactions with deaf culture are astounding. To a great extent, they will have nothing to do with it if possible. My brother is a well-known athlete in the deaf community, and so he interacts with many more of the deaf than he'd prefer. Not because they are deaf, but because of their attitude. When my nephew was born, there was never any doubt that he would have a cochlear implant. At one point, they prepared to pay cash for it (50k+) because of a fight with the insurance company (this was ~16 years ago). When this decision got out, they received more scorn from the community for 'betraying' it.
They can regale you with stories about 'deaf culture' advocates angrily leaving restaurants when confronted with a waiter who doesn't sign. Or about the lack of grammatical structure in ASL, which leads to a serious deficit in the writing abilities of most signers.
The list goes on. That you aren't aware of 'deaf culture' doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And that it exists in not necessarily a bad thing. But technology has provided an amazing cure for this condition, yet instead of embracing it, they reject it as an assault on their culture. Can you imagine this from the blind community? Or the wheel-chair bound community?
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Funny)
Some parts of "Deaf Culture" do not foster literacy. They've wound up isolated, culturally and economically, by this lack. Much like the Amish, who refuse to participate in a great deal of modern technology, they wind up profoundly hampered in education and employability by their steadfast isolation.
On the bright side: They never heard Justin Bieber.
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I . . S . a . i . D . . . never mind.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Insightful)
A good friend of mine has two autistic sons. She would give anything for them to be cured. Alas, she knows that isn't going to happen.
As for the deaf, one of the activist's arguments is "we aren't broken." Uh, yes you are. It's great when you can overcome a handicap, but it is still a fucking handicap. Here's a few reasons why you don't want to be deaf:
1. Beethoven's Ode to Joy
2. Children laughing as they play
3. Birds singing
4. A smoke alarm waking you from sleep and saving your life
5. The best part of farts
Re: (Score:3)
You misunderstand what that slogan means. They are just saying that they should not be treated like a broken machine, to be discarded or replaced with a "working" one. Bad choice of words, perhaps, but slogans for placards need to be short.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Funny)
OMG you're such an intolerant bigot!!! The answer, comrade, is to make everyone deaf.. then we can all be aurally correct!!
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Insightful)
A written guarantee that my uniform would be either gold or blue, and that I'd not have to accompany the captain on landing parties until my own rank is at least Lieutenant Commander; and I'm in.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Interesting)
Or hell, keep using sign language on your kid even after getting the implant.
It's only dying because people are lazy.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Funny)
It's only dying because people are lazy.
I was about to write a long-winded diatribe lambasting you for this brazen slight of lazy culture but... whatever
Re:Let it die (Score:4, Insightful)
Or hell, keep using sign language on your kid even after getting the implant.
It's only dying because people are lazy.
Did you listen to yourself before you wrote this?
My thought is that anyone who was deaf and can now hear due to technology would be too busy learning about the wonderful world of sounds that we live in, hearing the voices of friends and family, exploring music, catching up on their education, etc.. None of this falls under the heading of being lazy.
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Well, cretins that think they are better than others exist in any body variant. That the deaf have them is not a surprise. But supremacy-fantasies are by now well studies: The work by having one or a few leaders and a lot of people that look up to them and accept anything they say as gospel. Bob Altemeyer has written a nice book about this, based on solid research data (it is free): http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~a... [umanitoba.ca]
Basically, the only thing this shows is that deaf people are on average just as stupid as non
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to forget how modern antibiotics is killing leper culture!
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, we don't send them to the colony on Molokai Hawaii any more. We've deprived the poor lepers of their tropical paradise.
How do you figure? (Score:3, Funny)
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Don't you mean Deaf One-armed Leper?
Re:How do you figure? (Score:5, Funny)
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Thank you! I'll be here all week!
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Let kids remain deaf so that we can have our own little group.
Wow. Just listen to yourself for a moment... (ducks)
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the culture, it's the supportive society and power they're lamenting the loss of. The more deaf there are the more pressure they can exert politically for support, the more people the deaf have with which to share something in common, and the more they can feel special/different/unique/etc. It's 100% selfishness on the part of the deaf community; particularly for those which cannot utilize the implants for various reasons. They're attempting to use political correctness to equate handicap to beauty instead of individuality to beauty.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Insightful)
Mental and physical "disabilities" are different (Score:4, Interesting)
Mental issues are different from physical ones. I can't rightly comprehend how someone who is physically unable to do something that other people can do (like see or hear) could consider that something worth preserving, but there are large communities of people with autism spectrum "disorders" who consider the way that they think and feel to be not less capable than how other people think or feel, but just different.
It's more akin to if society said raw strength was the standard of physical ability, and agility or stamina were neat bonuses to that, but not really important; and then there were other people who were weak by the social standard but had their own physical talents less-valued by that standard, elegant dancers or endurance runners in a world where only power lifters were valued, who refuse to accept that their body's different kind of physical ability is a "disability". (We've actually got something akin to that in body-image discrimination: different healthy body types are usually adept at different kinds of physical activity, but we tend to call e.g. the stocky guy who can lift a car or walk for many miles without even tiring "fat", because he doesn't have a lean body built for running and jumping that we think of as "fit").
In the end, if someone doesn't suffer intrinsically from a trait (thus excluding suffering due only to society's reactions to that trait), then the trait shouldn't count as a "disability" or an "illness".
And whether it does or not, the person with that trait is still a person deserving of the same respect either way.
Re:Mental and physical "disabilities" are differen (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let it die (Score:4, Insightful)
or believed to be fostering a culture
With regard to culture: deaf people have had to invent new languages since the usual sort don't work well for them. That's a neutral fact as is, in that regardless of the reasons it's trivially observable.
Culture is not so easy to define, but a group of people sharing a common language is not a bad place to start. Culture is more finely divided than that of course, but there is a strong language component to it.
As a result, being deaf does foster a culture in much the same way that growing up in a region speaking a given language fosters a culture: I gather sign language is a complete language in its own right, not a straightforward transliteration of English.
It's an artefact of deafness which happens to foster a culture. I believe that's a neutral fact.
Whether the consequences are good or bad, I'll leave to others to argue.
Follow the money (Score:5, Interesting)
Close, but there's a more powerful factor than feeling "special/different/unique/etc." Money. The vast majority of the Deaf Culture advocates come from the ASL-oriented* state schools for the deaf and universities like Gallaudet. There is a very cozy relationship between the state schools and the state early intervention specialists who visit parents with informational materials. Most of these people are basically recruiters for the ASL state schools who downplay cochlear implants and related educational pathways. If the parents instead chose a cochlear implant and a (usually) private school that specializes in teaching their kid to speak and listen, then the ASL state school has one less student, less money, etc. This is big money in some states. Just drive past the local school and look at their grounds, buildings, and vehicles. My local ASL-oriented state school has a coach bus that rivals most sports teams.
Now, look at the stats. Numerous longitudinal, NIH-funded studies show that kids who get implants early enough to take advantage of the language development window (before 5 years old, and preferably before 1 or 2) and receive intensive speech and listening instruction [oraldeafed.org] are mostly mainstreamed into regular classrooms by the K-2 range. This has a secondary effect since mainstreaming into regular schools at this age is one of the strongest indicators of literacy in deaf kids, regardless of communication method. As we all know, literacy impacts employment and independence. (Side note, Gallaudet almost lost accreditation due to poor student literacy.) Unfortunately, many ASL kids end up in the ASL state schools and generally have poor literacy when they graduate 13 years later. Remember, ASL is not English and has a completely different linguistic structure.
The second major stat is that 90% of the kids are born to hearing parents. Aside from the better life outcomes, forcing deaf kids into ASL schools to learn a language and culture differing from their parents essentially removes parental choice from the equation. As a parent, this is seriously messed up. I should have the right, and access to information, that will allow me to raise my kid with my language and culture if I wish. This isn't an immigrant language issue either since I grew up in my society's culture and a native speaker of my society's predominant language.
I have deep knowledge of this, both personally and from a scientific perspective. So why am I posting anon? There are Deaf Culture advocates who are particularly nasty. I have a friend who received death threats at home and wears a flack jacket in certain venues. People find their windshields greased, tires deflated, etc. Proud parents who post videos of they child's cochlear implant activations and progress on YouTube are targeted, insulted, and told they are horrible parents. Extremists pretend to be academics and reporters, but then twist interviews out of context on blog posts. The list goes on.
Again: it comes down to money and parental choice.
* Some state schools claim to be Bi-Bi or Total Communication. This is just propaganda. These are basically ASL instruction with token instruction in lipreading, cochlear implant use, and speaking. Imagine trying to learn to speak or listen with only a couple hours of instruction each week from instructors who are not experts in the topic.
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Speaking of Gallaudet University, in 2006, a deaf woman named Jane Fernandes was chosen to be president of Gallaudet. There were student protests because the students thought she didn't fit into their culture, and her appointment was rescinded.
According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], her family "chose to raise her in an oral education program, meaning her education focused on teaching her to speak." "The generations of white deaf and hearing people in my [her] family have never signed; they have always been oral people." Sh
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> Why the heck is ASL not American English? Perhaps there is a good reason, but it just seems silly to m
Bandwidth. Take the paragraph you wrote above, and try to turn it into signed English (which is a different language). It's much slower and less efficient than ASL, because ASL will leave out a lot of detail not critical to the conservation. There's a good description of the distinctions at http://www.signingsavvy.com/bl... [signingsavvy.com]. A lot of gestural, not necessarily linguistic bandwidth becomes more important
You're painting with a fairly broad brush... (Score:3)
"All Polish people are stupid"
"All Mexicans are lazy"
I'm sure some deaf people are as cynical and mean-spirited as you say. Based on the number of deaf children who have received cochlear implants (and the number I've heard about from time to time that want their children to get them but can't afford it), I'm going to say you need to use a somewhat narrower scope there.
(NOTE: I hope I wasn't out of line with those cracks about black, Polish and Mexican people)
I get the reference (Score:3)
I get that reference! I remember reading it back in high school.
"Harrison Bergeron", by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean seriously. There is no down side to going from not hearing to hearing except for having to listen to contemporary "music".
The technology is neither that good, nor that cheap, so 'no downsides' is a bit much; but I do find the notion that lacking access to useful world-state information would ever be a good thing rather baffling. If anything, I am always a bit disappointed that the 'visible spectrum' is as small as it is, that humans appear to lack the magnetic sensors some other species have, and so forth.
As for the cultural aspects, it seems like it's the usual battle: somewhere between most and all cultures have an interest in continuity(or at least some new people because being the last few survivors dying off alone would pretty much suck); but continuity demands that a steady supply of children be given to the culture(and while people can achieve some degree of fluency in multiple ones, you can't be 'native' in more than a small number, given that being 'native' is pretty much a full-time job) and, by so doing, denied some or all of whatever other cultures are on hand.
Even if you wish to assert that having an additional sense is 'different' rather than 'better, you still have the fact that 'culture' is something where network effects count. There are certainly niche cultures with interesting and unique features; but unless something about a specific culture turns standard humans into fantastic superhumans at abnormal rates, the bigger ones are going to tend to have better opportunities on tap.
I'm certainly sympathetic to the people who get the sense that they are probably going to enjoy the notable nonpleasures of being the dwindling survivors of a dying breed; that has to suck; but I'm much less sympathetic to the notion that this entitles them to a replacement-or-better supply of new members.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Interesting)
I dated a girl who was a "deaf studies" major. She even got her Masters at Galludet, and is a signer somewhere on the East Coast.
I really dodged a bullet when she broke up with me. I was seeing myself having to agree with her as to the validity of "Deaf Culture" to maintain peace in the house.
But, seeing as she stomped my heart flat, I can say this without fear of reprisal: It's a support group, not a culture. Once technology has advanced such that it is no longer an issue, it will fade. Take that, Carrie Coffey (nee Rogers)!
Re:Let it die (Score:4, Insightful)
I was seeing myself having to agree with her as to the validity of "Deaf Culture" to maintain peace in the house.
To her, it was always peaceful.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Insightful)
By the way, and ass is an ass no matter what 'culture' they claim.
I used to ride the bus that went by the deaf school, so there were always deaf people on the bus.
A rather attractive deaf lady was visibly upset, but she didn't do anything. So I asked her what was wrong. She kept insisting nothing, but it was pretty obvious what was going on, so I asked her, "Is it the two assholes there that keep insulting everyone because they think nobody else can understand them?".
She was shocked that I knew what was going on and turned even more red. I explained that I wasn't fluent, but I knew enough. She then confronted the two idiots and chewed them out thoroughly. I never caught anyone doing that on the bus again.
That just goes to show, that separation breeds contempt.
There's no reason that the art and other positive things from 'deaf culture' need to be left behind, just the discrimination and hate that isolation invariably brings.
Re:Let it die (Score:5, Informative)
Steve Jobs had a type of pancreatic cancer that is far more curable than the average variety. If he had gotten medical treatment immediately instead of using alternative medicine, there's a good chance he would have lived. Two minutes Googling would have brought up this information.
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I'm just curious. No, on second thought, I'm confused. Steve Jobs made a personal decision which he believed was the best, most correct solution to the problem he faced. I'm somewhat saddened that (in retrospect) he made a very bad decision, but it was his decision to make. It's not like a whole legion of technically-aware pancreatic cancer sufferers have risen up to declare that pancreatic cancer makes the
Really? Who the fuck cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
What a BS reason to get angsty. Technology has enabled clidren to hear so a new generation can NOT have the problems of being deaf. Rejoice that children dont need to be deaf, rather than mourn the disappearing kludges they had to do.
Re:Really? Who the fuck cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
i went to a deaf magnet grade school. i was a hearing kid just filling the rest
of the building. there is such a thing as deaf culture, and it's a culture of arbitrary
difference, just like racism defines a certain kind of (unacceptable) culture.
and the battle ax deaf teachers sure made sure we didn't mingle with the deaf
kids. which sucked, since one of my best friends was deaf.
i found the same thing later on living near the deaf uni in washington dc.
You really can't be serious (Score:5, Interesting)
What a travesty! We can't allow deaf people to hear! It will destroy their culture!
Why don't you tell this woman you want her to be deaf again and see what she says:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:You really can't be serious (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of great videos of people hearing the first time do to this technology. Some of them gave me an allergy attack, or maybe there happened to be some dust in the air. I certainly was NOT crying..um.. sports reference!
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Bloody hell, she looks REALLY upset that she can now hear, probably thinking of the culture she will give up, destroy these evil technical whatsits that have allowed this to happen NOW!!!
Re:You really can't be serious (Score:4, Informative)
One day we may have cures for just about all disease, maybe even "old age" itself. And think about how horrible that will be! Knowing that you are still going to die, but it won't be peacefully in your home with your family at your bedside. You could end up like Draco, smothered to death by gifts of cloaks and hats showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre [620 BC]. Or you might end up like martyr Saint Lawrence, patron saint of cooks, who was roasted alive on a giant grill during the persecution of Valerian [258AD]. Prudentius tells that he joked with his tormentors, "Turn me over — I'm done on this side".
As we grow older we could end up dying in ways we could not have ever imagined, like Hans Steininger, the burgomaster of Braunau, Austria, who died when he broke his neck by tripping over his own beard [1567 AD].
If age alone is one day no longer terminal, then we will probably have to keep working indefinitely. This only increases the odds of dying while pursuing our occasionally dangerous professions, such as Clement Vallandigham, a lawyer and Ohio politician defending a man on a charge of murder, who accidentally shot himself demonstrating how the victim might have shot himself while in the process of drawing a weapon when standing from a kneeling position.
So maybe you plan on spending eternity very carefully, not even to venture outside to avoid such horrendous impending deaths waiting to happen. Well, that didn't work for Joao Maria de Souza, who was killed while asleep, by a cow that fell through the roof of his house onto his bed in 2013.
Just thinking about all of the horrible ways to die can drive a person to madness, but in the end maybe there is one next-best-thing to knowing how you are going to die in six months while counting down the last days on your death bed, with enough time to tell your loved ones goodbye or changing your will to cut out your less-than-loved ones. And maybe that's taking matters into your own hands, like David Phyall, the last resident in a block of flats due to be demolished near Southampton, England, who decapitated himself with a chainsaw to highlight the injustice of being forced to move out. Ya. That'll show 'em!
Good? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to see deaf culture go away because there are no more deaf people.
Also:
I'd like to see paraplegic culture go away, blind culture, Amputee culture, and furries culture. That last one may be tricky
I wonder how many people were angry and vaccine destroying the polio culture?
Yes I did.
Re:Good? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't see anyone complaining about Viagra, etc, ending the limp dick culture, do you?
Bedwetters.
Re:Good? (Score:5, Funny)
You don't see anyone complaining about Viagra, etc, ending the limp dick culture, do you?
People complained alright, it's just that limp dick culture couldn't stand up to the criticism.
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I'd like to see deaf culture go away because there are no more deaf people.
Also:
I'd like to see paraplegic culture go away, blind culture, Amputee culture, and furries culture. That last one may be tricky
I wonder how many people were angry and vaccine destroying the polio culture?
Yes I did.
Well, now that explains Jenny McCarthy.
Of course, being dropped on her head at birth also explains Jenny McCarthy.
Re:Good? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder how many people were angry and vaccine destroying the polio culture? Yes I did.
Well, there are a lot of people that seem to be very angry that we're now very strongly selecting against Down's syndrome. Some 90% of the women who get tested and find out their child will have it take an abortion. It's full of the "sorting society" rhetoric and worse slippery slope arguments than /. where first they take Down's, next we'll stomp out all individuality until we all look like we came from a cloning factory. I'm sorry I'm sure they're lovely people but more people with huge handicaps, genetic diseases and so on don't have to be born into this world than necessary. In a strict variety of that, I might not have been born myself... but I wouldn't care, since I wouldn't exist. As much as I like to think I'm a special little snowflake I'm sure my mom would have had a different kid she'd love just as much.
Re: (Score:3)
Selective breeding is far different than being able to fix a problem later.
Re:Good? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think that allowing parents to select their child's traits will ever lead to "clones"; things like Down's syndrome get weeded out in 90% of cases because it's a horribly debilitating condition ensuring that parent nor offspring will never live a normal life. Physical traits, though, are in the eye of the beholder: one person making a designer baby to their idea of beauty will result in a totally different set of traits than another.
Re:Good? (Score:5, Funny)
Because culture is important.
If you make yogurt.
Re:Good? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretending the handicapped are just "differently-abled" is perhaps the cruellest form of bigotry by low expectations. People who have disadvantages that are not of their choosing deserve sympathy and support, but celebrating disability is condescending to the point of madness.
Re: (Score:3)
Erm, what? Are you saying that being a furry is a debilitating condition that we need to work on "correcting"?
Photographic evidence suggests so. I mean, have you seen some of the suits people are wearing? That cheap faux fur is so tacky.
I had deaf friends. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I had deaf friends. (Score:5, Funny)
gosh dang it, 4 senses was good enough for me and it's good enough for my children.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say: Poke out their eyes. Then those people can enjoy not only one, but two cultures: The deaf and the blind. Should even out the numbers.
Re:I had deaf friends. (Score:5, Insightful)
it takes a village.
to create wheels squeaky enough to get money handouts.
I totally get it. (Score:5, Funny)
Look what happened to polio culture. Not cool, man. Not cool.
Re:I totally get it. (Score:4, Funny)
Look what happened to polio culture. Not cool, man. Not cool.
I would not worry about it. With the right environment, you can always grow polio culture.
Evolution man (Score:3)
reductum ad absurdum... (Score:3)
...that all cultures are equally to be valued. Otherwise, why not create more varieties of people with partial physical deficits, so as to have more such cultures?
It is a loss. (Score:3)
But that loss is tremendously outweighed by the benefits of including the (previously?) deaf in the greater culture which is humanity (where they belonged all along, I think?).
I've got mod points (Score:4, Interesting)
but I can't find how to mod TFS as troll.
Glad the comments are unanimous so far...
Vaccines killed measles culture... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cars killed horse culture.
Airplanes killed passenger rail culture.
Woman's rights killed (harmed) misogynistic culture.
The civil war killed slave culture.
The Internet killed letter-mailing culture.
Seriously, what the fuck is the point of this?
Re: (Score:3)
What is the point of inferring that all "cultures" are equally valuable? What a ridiculous argument.
Is that a straw man for the claim that deaf culture is as valuable as hearing culture?
Abolition of Slavery.. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
That actually happened. Slavery was protected, not abolished, as it was reserved to the government. Read the exception clause in the 13th amendment, examine the commercialisation of the prison industry, and consider that the United States now has a higher incarceration rate than Russia and China combined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
Parallel (Score:5, Interesting)
For fear of being modded down into oblivion, I'll post anonymously.
"The very existence of cochlear implants wrongly presupposes that a deaf person is in need of fixing."
This just smacks of self-conscious defensiveness. It is wrong.
The very existence of cochlear implants presupposes that some people who cannot hear may want to hear - much in the same way that the very existence of prosthetic limbs presupposes that some people may wish to use [some limb]. Even better, the very existence of wheel chairs presupposes that the paralyzed may wish to move around from point A to point B.
There is no presupposition of defectiveness in any of those products, only the presupposition that someone may wish to add new functionality to their life. If eye-implants that enable me to see in UV or IR come available, I'll jump! Not because I think I am defective, but because I think it'd be nice to enhance what I am already capable of.
A friend of mine is an interpreter, and she has expressed many of the same concerns -- but I'd be interested in seeing numbers regarding how many in the deaf community are getting the implants. If there's already a stigma in the subculture against them, I can't imagine that this technology really poses a significant threat to the subculture.
You may se in UV latter in life (Score:3)
Since the christaline is opaque to UV while some intraocular lenses are not, some people report that after cataract surgery, they can see in augmented colour, probably due to some sensitivity to UV.
slashdot talked about it a while back
http://ask-beta.slashdot.org/story/11/10/02/1937232/ask-slashdot-how-to-exploit-post-cataract-ultraviolet-vision
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/02/14/165202/followup-ultraviolet-vision-after-cataract-surgery
So if/when the time comes to replace your christaline, make sure
Oh I'm so sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to be a deaf person, that's fine by me, but it doesn't give you any moral imperative to suggest that parents should deny their children their right to hearing.
Jealousy is a bitch (Score:4, Insightful)
That and fear of change are the only reason to make such statements.
I cherish the thought of killing deaf culture, just like I cherish the thought of killing the smallpox and malaria culture. I get that some are proud of what they've accomplished while deaf, but that's a selfish reason to hold against someone who chooses not to have a disability.
Suddenly starting to hear does not detract from the accomplishments of the deaf, it just opens doors to accomplish new things and new possibilities. It doesn't make their art any less valuable or beautiful, it doesn't make their language any less valuable. My 11 month old son knows som sign language! He can hear fine, but kids can sign before they can talk! My family now knows a bit of American sign just for that alone.
Sure, it's not going to be as common, but implants don't fix every reason for being deaf either.
Simple fear of change is all it is.
I understand the fear, all of us have it to some extent in some form. I fear rapid changes in technology that make me out dated and behind younger software engineers, but that's just my fears, not the end of something great. As a result, though I still fear those changes, I adapt and take on a different roll from that 20 something, code for 72 hours straight until I can't see straight age to leading those 20 something's and guiding them with my experience so that they can be more effective.
I don't know what that means for the deaf, but I'm certain those that remain have other things of value ... Being deaf didn't make them worthless, neither will implants. The fact that they can create culture without the ability to hear is proof enough of their alternative skills.
In a cochlear implant users own words: (Score:5, Interesting)
I will get down modded for this, but how about a testimony from a actual user of a cochlear implant (Rush Limbaugh in this case).
CALLER: Hey. I'm just wondering, when you listen to music with your hearing aid, how's it sound?
RUSH: Music?
CALLER: Yeah, like if you're listening to music on an iPad or something?
RUSH: Well, not very good. I cannot listen to music that I've never heard before and identify the melody.
CALLER: Oh.
RUSH: I have a cochlear implant. It doesn't have nearly the sensitivity of the human ear, it's not even close.
CALLER: I was just wondering.
RUSH: Like violins or strings sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.
CALLER: Oh, well, I was just wondering.
RUSH:What I have to do, I can still listen to music, but it has to be music that I knew and that I've heard before I lost my hearing. And what happens is that my brain, fertile mind, provides the melody. I actually am not hearing the melody, and the way I can prove this to you, sometimes it will take me, even a song that I know, it will take me 30 seconds to identify it if I don't know what it is. Now, if I'm playing a song off iTunes and the title is there and it starts then I can spot it from the middle, but if I'm listening to a song from the beginning, and I don't know what it is, it sometimes can take me 30 seconds to recognize it, if I knew it before. But the quality of music that I hear is less than AM radio, in terms of fidelity. I can turn the bass up on an amplifier and I don't hear any difference at all. I can feel the floor vibrate, but I don't hear any more bass. I can turn highs up and I can hear the difference in the highs, but on the low end I actually cannot -- (interruption) I'm getting a note here that says: "You're not missing anything. There aren't any melodies in music today." (laughing) At any rate, you adapt to it. I've adapted.
The worst part of my hearing is being in a crowd. Like right now, I hear myself as well as I heard myself when I could hear. If I'm talking to one other person in a quiet room I can comprehend 90-95% of what they say depending on how fast they're speaking. There are some words that sound alike. But you add room noise, like if Kathryn and I are watching TV and she wants to talk to me about what we're watching, I have to hit pause or the mute 'cause I cannot hear what she's saying. Even if she's sitting two feet away I will not hear as long as there are other noises there. Any room noise when added to other room noise is gonna be louder than the one voice that I'm trying to hear. I've got the implant on my left side so if we go out in a public place, anybody on my right side, it's hopeless. I'll have to literally turn to them, and sometimes as I turn to them they turn with me. They don't know what I'm doing so we'll do pirouettes 'til I finally say, "No, you stay where you are. I'm trying to position my ear so I can hear you."
The way I look at this, though, because when I tell these stories, "Oh, that's really horrible." No, it's not. 'Cause if you look at the timeline of humanity, however long it is, 10,000 years, a million, billion, whatever the number is, my little time on it is not much larger than a grain of sand. And yet I happen to lose my hearing at the same time technology had evolved to the point where cochlear implants had been invented. If I had lost my hearing 15 years ago, it would have meant the end of my career. I would not have been able to hear. And the doctor said you might think that you could speak normally just by virtue of memory and feel, the way voice feels when you speak, but eventually your speech would deteriorate, and it would sound to people as though you had a speech defect. It would just be automatic no matter how good you are, no matter how professional you are at it. So that's really fortunate. It's almost miraculous that my being afflicted with this autoimmune disease happens to coincide with technology. Some call it divine intervention. Some call it the age of miracles. We're all one way or anot
Re:In a cochlear implant users own words: (Score:5, Informative)
I am deaf myself, with a loss of 60+ db up to about 500-600 Hz and about 110db after that. Though I know ASL to a passable degree, I don't generally consider myself Deaf. I wore very high power hearing aids up till this year, when I had a cochlear implant put in.
I'm now at week 3 after having my Med-El cochlear implant activated.
I had basic speech understanding with lipreading about five minutes after being activated, and could easily follow the melody of music on the car ride home. Music sounded about the same as it does with hearing aids, or with it cranked way up on speakers/headphones... In other words, the sound quality of the implant was nowhere near AM radio quality... a bit off from CD quality, but not hugely.
After three weeks, I'm starting to be to understand speech without lipreading for some people, and lyrics in music are starting to come in for me, and music has smoothed out in the upper frequencies that i couldn't hear properly in before.
I now hear with around a 15db loss, and that is still being adjusted and programmed as my ears adjust.
As an example of the difference in hearing, I tried dropping a raisin on the ground a few weeks ago, and clearly heard it hit the tile.. before I'd have to drop the whole bag of them. I can clearly hear the claws of the dog walking across the floor.. from another room. Could never hear the turn signal or headlight warning in the car before, now they're louder than the car to me.
Everyones experience varies with the implants, but it's not always as bad as Rush's has turned out.
My wife has the same cochlear implant as me, and has had it for about three years. The most clear sign that they can do almost miracles was about a year or two ago when we went to a friends wedding.. about 150-200 people in a very large and noisy room. My hearing aids were doing nothing for me in the noise, even telling that someone was talking was impossible. She was able to listen from across the room with her implant and interpret into ASL for me.
Re:In a cochlear implant users own words: (Score:5, Funny)
How do you work that? You get it Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays alternate weeks, or what?
Loss of culture for those left behind (Score:3)
Putting aside the radicalism, there is a legitimate issue: the fix does not work for everyone and those left behind will face a diminished culture as their numbers dwindle. Specifically, those profoundly deaf who reached adulthood never able to hear will never learn to speak even if they get the implant. There are probably others who are medically not able to accept the implant but the articles I have found do not discuss this issue.
Re:Loss of culture for those left behind (Score:5, Interesting)
This certainly is a valid issue (but the solution is not to leave people deaf, although that isn't what you're saying).
There are people who are unable to receive cochlear implants (CIs): people who have damaged auditory nerves (nerve aplasia or hypoplasia, Neurofibromatosis Type-II (NF2) [wikipedia.org] or other auditory nerve tumors [wikipedia.org], severed auditory nerve due to accident etc) or abnormal cochlea (calcification due to meningitis sometimes prevents implantation, etc). There is one type of alternative implant for these individuals - the Auditory Brainstem Implant (ABI) on the Cochear Nucleus - but performance of the ABI implant tends to be quite a bit poorer than the CI. This may be because of the problems which lead to needing a ABI rather than a CI but the evidence isn't yet clear on the matter. One group (NF2) almost always do more poorly than other with an ABI but no-one is quite sure why.
There are also two experimental implants (that I know of) which have been or are being tested in humans: the penetrating ABI implant (stabs electrodes into the cochlear nucleus whereas the current commercial device puts electrodes on the surface) and the penetrating Auditory Midbrain Implant (AMI). The penetrating ABI testing looked pretty good, but actually getting it in place was damn near impossible because the cochlear nucleus is basically wrapped around the brainstem in the middle of everything. The AMI seems like a cool idea, but the Inferior Colliculus (where the implant is places) is a pretty complex structure and a lot of processing has already happened by the time input would get there in a functioning auditory system. As a result, people with the experimental implants get things like having hearing at the beginning of the day that tails of across the day but returns the next day and so on.
The result is that the number of people who can't get cochlear implants or brainstem implants and are deaf from birth (which are the people for whom the deaf community is most important) is pretty small and quite geographically distributed which makes it quite isolating. As you're saying, there is a real issue with an inability for normal-hearing people to communicate with these individuals. Speech-to-text and text-to-speech engines will be helpful as they improve because it will mean that someone can use their phone as a 'translator' of a sort. As people get faster and faster at typing on phones, using a phone for textual communication can actually be pretty good too. Ideally, you would want two devices with real-time duplex transmission between them and people able to glace at the phones when typing and reading so facial expressions can still be used.
Hell, maybe that is a use for Google Glass. I type to you (where you are deaf), and you can look at me and my facial expressions while what I'm typing appears in your field of view. You then respond the same way. Or something.
Wow. That turned into a massive blag.
Bloody HELL! (Score:5, Insightful)
Deaf culture Destroyed? These parents are assholes, and I'd never write a story about them other than that letting people know I turned them into child protective services.
The fucking nerve of doctors and their trying to help people. What's next, People wanting to let paralyzed people rot because we don't want to destroy Quadriplegic Culture?
And what about the always jolly brotherhood of cancer culture? Gotta preserve that.
And if the child were to need something simple like glasses, hell, there is a blind culture too. Wouldn't want to miss out on that. As a (nearly)deaf person, All I can say to these parents is that if you did that to me, I'd seek emancipation as soon as possible, and then have your sorry whack-a-doodle asses arrested for willfiul negligence and child abuse.
Good (Score:3)
Its a good thing that we can directly address a disability like this and practically eradicate it from society. Lets hope it happens tomorrow.
Or does the poster think its great to go deaf with no hope?
The distinct "black middle class" is dying/dead (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the days of race-based "red-lining" and "Whites-only" legally-enforced racially-segregated neighborhoods, rich and middle-class African-Americans had to live in the "non-white" part of town, along with the poor African-Americans and other non-Whites.
Once the zoning laws, deed restrictions, and race-based morgtage- and homeowners-insurance redlining disappeared, non-Whites had as much choice as white people when it came to where they wanted live. Money or lack of it still limited their choices, but their skin color was no longer a barrier.
Now, middle-class African-Americans who move into a city are likely to move into a "middle class" neighborhood, not a "Black" neighborhood.
We went from a society that had a more distinct "Black middle class" that was created out of racial discrimination into one where if there is a "Black middle class" that's distinct from a "Middle class" the distinction is much weaker than it once was, but where there is no legally-enforced racial discrimination and much less (and someday soon I hope, no) racial discrimination denying African-Americans and other non-Whites the same rights and opportunities enjoyed by White people.
I for one don't want to undo the last 50 years of racial desegregation just to bring back the distinct "Black middle class."
Likewise, I don't think we should deny today's children the ability to hear - albeit in a limited way - just to preserve "Deaf culture."
Alexander Graham Bell was right... (Score:5, Interesting)
Alexander Graham Bell's central interest of his life was deaf education or that he was one of the most prominent proponents of oralism in the United States... After emigrating from England to Canada in 1870 Bell began to teach speech to deaf students using a universal alphabet invented by his father called "Visible Speech." In 1872 he opened a school in Boston to train teachers of deaf children.
Bell's second chief interest was the study of heredity and animal breeding, - you can see where this is headed...
----
Bell warned of a "great calamity" facing the nation: deaf people were forming clubs, socializing with one another and, consequently, marrying other deaf people. The creation of a "deaf race" that yearly would grow larger and more insular was underway. Bell noted that "a special language adapted for the use of such a race" already was in existence, "a language as different from English as French or German or Russian." Some eugenicists called for legislation outlawing intermarriage by deaf people http://www.pbs.org/weta/throug... [pbs.org]
Found that by accident. I was searching for mass killings of the deaf; due to the mentioning that "the deaf can't have faith" - I would assume the Catholics alone would have a history of it.
Only came across the Holocaust where they were treated very badly (considering).
Could be the deaf weren't found in large numbers in the past.
This pisses me off. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, for me, this is more about "minority culture" in general than "deaf culture" in particular. "Deaf Culture" is an adaptation for people who can't hear. Once you can hear, you no longer need the social adaptation.
I'm a member of a minority. For those of you who don't know, I'm black. At one time, black people were denied access to educational opportunities an that in turn lead to fewer career prospects. My parents and grandparents worked very, VERY hard to give me opportunities and I took advantage of them. I finished high school. I attended college. I earned a Master of Science degree. Consequently, I have a pretty good job. I've been accused of turning my back on "African American culture" because I speak like I paid attention in school. I don't use the "What up dawgg?" vernacular that some other people (who happen to look kind of like me) do. I have been accused of having "forgotten where you came from", as if I didn't come from a middle-income, racially diverse suburb.
Once we were no longer denied access to quality education, it was no longer necessary to speak AAVE (African American Vernacular English) or "Ebonics" that some people like to call it. We were able to learn standard American English and it benefits one to do so.
I understand the desire for deaf people to adopt the mantra "There's nothing 'wrong' with the way we are." but in reality there is. You can't hear!
I'm sorry if people take it personally that their social adaptation is becoming less necessary for future generations. I'm sorry that they feel lonely or abandoned. This is a good thing. This is progress. This means that fewer people will have to live with the handicap(sorry for the loaded term) of not being able to hear.
LK
Deaf Culture? (Score:4, Interesting)
These friends I lost, when I decided to go ahead and get myself implanted. They couldn't understand why I wanted to be a part of something I never could have been, and I reminded them that the deaf panthers (same vein as the black panthers) never really did accept me as a part of the deaf culture, and I was really sick of being neither "deaf" or "hearing".
They viewed their deafness as something to be proud about. I viewed it as something that was holding me back. They day I let them know I was going to get implanted, and hoped that they would understand, they looked at me as if I was something disgusting. Being called a traitor, could have been nicer than some of the things they called me then.
Deaf Pride? Deaf Culture? Pshaw. While I have nothing really to compare the quality of the sound that the implant has given me, I can compare them to the $1200 digital hearing aid I had purchased an year earlier. When I left the store, and fired up my car, the song I was listening to before sounded completely different. It sounded better, and I realized I was hearing things I never really could with the old crappy hearing aids I had before. Then when I got my implant turned on, there was no comparison. I've tried listening with both my hearing aid (right ear, 90% loss) and my implant (left ear, previously 100% loss), and found that I could not stand the hearing aid any more. It's been sitting in my desk drawer in the 8 year since I had my implantation.
If some people wants to fool themselves into thinking that Deafness is something to be proud of, then by all means, let them. I'm going to get my right ear implanted soon, and while I'll never truly be a hearing person, at least, I'll leave a major part of my deafness behind.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, not just that. Cochlear implants were invented 50ish years ago, and this exact same complaint has been raised ever since. It's the non-story of the generation.