Deaf culture as point of pride? It’s more a curse

Jiro said:
interesting. I can see how his message can be misconstrued as something else but I sympathize with him. It's more like - he views deafness as a curse and I understand. I assume that he has tried to adapt to deaf culture but with no success. He simply doesn't fit in. It's not his type of world and it will never be. no different with me being in Korea right now and never fitting in.

He is bitter. frustrated. the society has shunned him - both hearing and deaf. you're already shunning him now. this is the result... his bitterness. frustration.
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That's what I meant by part of the blame.....I agree
 
TXgolfer,
Not every deaf community are like that. Although, I heard from a friend that Austin deaf community has a Deafer than thou mentality going on.
Hopefully the SF deaf community is different.

Back to the article. There's always two sides to a story. Too bad Mr. Osgood did not elaborate further on why he's bitter.
 
Taking it a step further, this was also another stereotypical comment for him to make:

Hispanic mothers want Hispanic babies
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After all, Hispanics do sometime marry outside of their race or ethnicity. I know some of them myself!
 
That was what Lane said, right, about deaf mothers wanting deaf babies the same way that Hispanic mothers want Hispanic babies? That struck me as being a strange comment too, all the way around.

If you think about Mr. Osgood's life (the man who wrote the letter), he is 85 years old now. That means his working life probably stopped about 20 years ago, if he retired at age 65.

Think about 20 years ago. Closed-captioning on TVs was just beginning to become wide-spread. The Internet was still in its infancy. Digital hearing aids were only in initial development. The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990.

Although he mentions ASL, even if he had learned it, that would not have opened doors for him at work or with his own family and friends, who probably did not know it. It's as isolating as the ability to speak Russian, say, if none of your friends and family speak Russian.

So, for essentially all of this man's adult, working life, he had to cope with hearing loss, and eventual near-deafness, caused by his military service. If he had hearing aids at all, they were analogue aids that would have helped some, but probably didn't have directional microphones, or variable programs. They might have given him problems with feedback, embarassing in a group situation when the user doesn't know his ears are whistling!

Culturally, he was from a generation where the man was expected to be the main breadwinner to support his family. But there were NO employee accommodations that were mandated by law. He had to do the best he could on his own.

So his working life and social life was pre-Internet, pre-captioning, pre-amplified telephones even. He came back to the U.S. as a young returning serviceman, maybe with a family to support, and he is not the man he was when he went in. No wonder he felt frustrated.

I thought his second paragraph in the letter was a very succinct summary of what his life had been like. He is not addressing what life might be like for HoH young people today; he's talking about his own struggles and challenges that were with him after his WWII service. It's incomprehensible to him that someone like Lane might talk about people actually choosing such a life when there is technology available to compensate for it.

He makes sense to me. He certainly doesn't sound ignorant, or insulting to anyone other than Lane, with whom he vehemently disagrees.
 
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Miss-Delectable said:
TXgolfer,
Not every deaf community are like that. Although, I heard from a friend that Austin deaf community has a Deafer than thou mentality going on.
Hopefully the SF deaf community is different.

Back to the article. There's always two sides to a story. Too bad Mr. Osgood did not elaborate further on why he's bitter.
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Oh yeah I know...Like I said almost everone at NSAD was nice. There were a couple that were jerks the but thousands of nice people. The Dallas DHH is a tough crowd but not near as tough as Austin...I met some nice people there. Here in Norcal I have met a few deafies.....all nice. Austin was just strange.

I might add......There was a very cute deaf actress in Austin that spent alot of time talking to me.....so in their defense some of their treatment may have been jealousy.
 
TXgolfer said:
He is late deaf.....many late deaf people are treated poorly by the deaf community. Some take it personally. I made some great friends at NSAD but I also met a few jerks. At the Austin DHH I encountered almost nothing but jerks and almost got into a fight. If he has only encountered the jerks I can see how he might feel this way. Being LD is tough. You have to have thick skin because not only are you having to adapt to a different life, you have to deal with losing friends and family members who just can't deal with the communication barrier while trying to join a new group and learn their language. That group isn't always the most welcoming either. To me I think it is pretty closeminded to judge this man for his opinion. A better response IMO would be to ask what happened to make him feel this way.....perhaps the deaf community deserves some of the blame. :dunno:

That is my 2 cents.
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If someone want to blame, it would be me, not them. Yes, I would rather to take all that blame from Mr. Lane to put it on me instead of the Deaf community (those Deaf people and us). But if someone have a lot of bad experiences from few Deaf groups, then don't make it our faults.

Funny, I'm frustrate while I read it... O.o

But I commend Mr. Lane for his service. I just wish he could find some friendly Deaf groups... It would be better a bit more...
 
Beach girl said:
That was what Lane said, right, about deaf mothers wanting deaf babies the same way that Hispanic mothers want Hispanic babies? That struck me as being a strange comment too, all the way around.
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I don't find that strange. It tells me that Deaf is a culture thing rather than just a disability. I don't have kids but I can imagine the situation I would be in. Bookended by hearing people (my parents and my children) who might not have high regard for deaf people. That would cause me to be stressed out. A deaf child would be more of an ally.
 
I can't imagine a parent "wanting" their child to be deaf....
 
TXgolfer said:
I can't imagine a parent "wanting" their child to be deaf....
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Well, there are some who do. For example a deaf lesbian couple wanted a deaf child, so they got sperm donation from a deaf man with at least 5 generation worth of deafness in the family tree. Result: deaf baby.

For me, I only want a healthy child.
 
The "wanting a deaf child like a Hispanic woman wants Hispanic babies" struck me as strange on all levels. For instance, I'm Italian by background. I didn't seek out an Italian man to marry; I ended up with a Brit. We didn't have children, but if we had, they would have been a mix of the both of us. I wouldn't be looking to clone myself.
 
TXgolfer said:
I can't imagine a parent "wanting" their child to be deaf....
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It's all about an interest. In this case, there is a visualization I hear from time to time that Deaf culture is slowly dying on its way out, one way to save it is by genetics, keep reproducing with people who are deaf by genes. That means keeping the hearing world out of Deaf marriages..

Not everyone follows it, though.
 
Miss-Delectable said:
Well, there are some who do. For example a deaf lesbian couple wanted a deaf child, so they got sperm donation from a deaf man with at least 5 generation worth of deafness in the family tree. Result: deaf baby.

For me, I only want a healthy child.
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That would be my wish as well....
 
an't imagine a parent "wanting" their child to be deaf....
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Overall, all in all it is a very benign condition. You can ADAPT to it. For us, hearing is nice but it's not.....VITAL. If a Deaf couple has a Deaf baby, that means that a culture and ASL will live on.....It's like if a Navajo couple has a Navajo baby it means Navajo culture will live on and so on.
 
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