What is deaf people's opinion about hearing people sometimes pretending to be deaf. I want to clarify that I don't mean deaf wannabes or hearing people who are with a deaf person and do this to be polite or something like that. I mean e.g. sign language students who do this once in a while to avoid talking to someone they don't want to talk to. I know that lots of sing language interpreter students from my university have done this sometimes. So what do you think or what does Deaf community in general think (of course there are always different opinions)?
As an explanation to this behavior:
I am a sign language interpreter myself and have also done this couple of times, although not after I graduated. I have done this mostly on a public transport when a drunk usually old man has come to talk to me about something obviously not important. I have signed something like "What?" or "I can't hear". The reason is that I have been tired and haven't felt like talking to anyone, especially to someone that couldn't even form sentence.
Once it was drunk teenagers, but they still tried to communicate with me. I thought it was great and couldn't pretend I was deaf anymore and let them know I was actually hearing. Sometimes my classmates have done this to avoid people hitting on them at bars. Some occasions have also been to learn something about being deaf (e.g. would that random guy still try to hit on me if he thought I was deaf or how would we communicate etc.). But mostly the reason has just been to avoid awkward conversation with random people.
I also know that some deaf people that know how to read lips, also do this. They don't want to have conversation, so they pretend that they don't understand, even though they could read lips.
So what do you think? Is it wrong and is it different whether you are actually deaf or not? Also why? I have been wondering about this for a while and I haven't found answer here or elsewhere online so hopefully this topic hasn't been totally worn out.
As an explanation to this behavior:
I am a sign language interpreter myself and have also done this couple of times, although not after I graduated. I have done this mostly on a public transport when a drunk usually old man has come to talk to me about something obviously not important. I have signed something like "What?" or "I can't hear". The reason is that I have been tired and haven't felt like talking to anyone, especially to someone that couldn't even form sentence.
Once it was drunk teenagers, but they still tried to communicate with me. I thought it was great and couldn't pretend I was deaf anymore and let them know I was actually hearing. Sometimes my classmates have done this to avoid people hitting on them at bars. Some occasions have also been to learn something about being deaf (e.g. would that random guy still try to hit on me if he thought I was deaf or how would we communicate etc.). But mostly the reason has just been to avoid awkward conversation with random people.
I also know that some deaf people that know how to read lips, also do this. They don't want to have conversation, so they pretend that they don't understand, even though they could read lips.
So what do you think? Is it wrong and is it different whether you are actually deaf or not? Also why? I have been wondering about this for a while and I haven't found answer here or elsewhere online so hopefully this topic hasn't been totally worn out.
I'll just avoid this and pretend to be Deaf instead of confronting the issue head on like an adult dur dur dur... like we don't have enough of a.... Oh lord Mew let it go and walk away... just walk... away....
