First I wish to make clear that I am not Deaf and therefore cannot speak as an expert on behalf of Deaf people or Deaf Culture. It is not my place to do so. However, as a student of Deaf Culture and as a supporter of many of the ideals that Deaf Culture stands for, I feel it within my realm to speak my mind and my opinions. In the interests of fairness, though, I implore anyone who reads this page and has a genuine interest in learning more about Deaf Culture--to learn from the experts, the Deaf people themselves. They know better than anyone what being Deaf is like and what influences Deafness has on their lives.
There has long been a debate on whether Deaf Culture could be considered a valid culture or not. For centuries, deaf people were considered stupid, unteachable, and were allowed either no or precious few human rights (education, property ownership, etc.). Even today, in this so-called "enlightened" era, there are people who believe in "deaf and dumb". It was not for a long time that the intellectual potential in the deaf population was realized--not just that they could be trained, but that they could actually learn as well, or in some cases better than their hearing counterparts.
Modern society, and I say that with some amount of cynicism as the word "modern" to me denotes open-mindedness, is primarily not deaf. Hearing doctors and hearing scientists with modern technology seek to cure and save Deaf people from their deafness. They see deafness as something that is wrong with a person and that the only way this person can be happy is to make them right again. I have my own quarrel with this which I'll get into later. For the most part, hearing society sees deafness as a hearing problem, and I've even seen it written that deafness is a health problem. Culturally Deaf individuals, however, do not view deafness in such a way. To them, being deaf is part of what makes them culturally unique. It has allowed them to share childhood experiences, turmoils with growing up and changing into adults, and the frustrations of functioning as adults. It is a common trait that binds the culture together.
Culture can be best defined as: the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations; the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes a group. You can add to this a language that is common to the members of a group and an understood set of rules for social interactions. Nowhere does it say in here that you have to be able to hear and speak. Nowhere does it say that everyone has to be carbon copies of one another and that medical or therapeutic intervention must be exercised to be accepted into the culture. Check it out-- Deaf Culture fits.
Even though I believe in Deaf Culture and respect it a great deal and support many things about it, I'm not fool enough to ignore the other side of the coin. There is certainly a negative side to Deaf Culture, the most striking of which, I think, is a limited view and an unwillingness to compromise. In order to be considered Deaf (that is, culturally Deaf), level of hearing loss is not the primary concern. However, there is a certain amount of snobbery among SOME parts of the Deaf population. You must sign ASL, you must act Deaf, you must support Deaf goals and ideals, etc. Now this does not sound so bad. In fact, it merely seems to be conforming to the culture. However, there are deaf people who choose to speechread (lipread) and who choose to develop speech skills and who choose to wear hearing aids. These people, more often than not, are shunned by SOME culturally Deaf individuals. It ceases to become a matter of "Things are different between us. How can we make them better?" but rather becomes a matter of "Things are different between us; therefore, I want nothing to do with you." This choice that some deaf individuals make to live differently is just that, a choice to live differently, not a treachery to the culture.
But then I never claimed anyone was perfect. Look at some of the dumb nonsense that people do. Hating people because of the color of their skin, killing people because they believe in a different god, looking down at people because they don't have as much money, sneering at people for what they wear or how they do their hair, ridiculing people for speaking differently. Being judgemental and sometimes stupid isn't a Hearing or Deaf thing... it's a human thing.
Now about what I said before about having my own quarrel for treating deafness like a medical condition that needs to be cured. Time for a little lesson if you didn't already know. There are different categories of deafness. Conductive & sensorineural; congenital, acquired, & progressive; prelingual & postlingual.
Conductive refers to the outer and middle ear and the structures found
within: the tympanic membrane (eardrum) and the ossicular chain (those three
little bones). Sound energy strikes the eardrum and causes it to vibrate. That
vibration in turn makes the ossicular chain vibrate. The ossicular chain is
attached to the cochlea at the oval window. I won't go into the list of things
that can cause a conducive hearing loss (it's too long), but I will say that
these kinds of hearing loss can be and usually are dealt with medically. In the
event that it can't be dealt with, hearing aids work very successfully with
people with this kind of loss, because all they need is a louder signal since
the cochlea is intact and waiting for a signal.
Sensorineural refers to the cochlea, the auditory nerve, and the part of
the brain where sound is ultimately "heard." Yep, it's the brain that hears,
not the ear. The cochlea is a snail shaped organ that has lots of little hair
cells inside. When the ossicular chain vibrates, it sets the fluids of the
cochlea into motion. The motion of the fluids vibrates the hair cells which
creates a tiny electric charge, and triggers the message to be sent to the brain
via the auditory nerve. Unlike a conductive loss which, if you look at it
medically, can be "corrected" to almost 100% the same as a hearing person hears,
a sensorineural hearing loss, even with cochlear implant surgeries, cannot
be brought to the same quality of sound as a hearing person has. Sensorineural
losses don't just need a louder signal, they need a clearer signal. If you give
the loud without the clear, the sound only becomes more distorted.
Congenital deafness, briefly put, can be thought of as deafness before,
at, or shortly after birth. There is any number of reasons why this can occur,
but primarily speaking, people with congenital deafness have never experienced
sound... or what little experience they've had with it has been incredibly
limited and distorted. This cannot properly be termed a hearing loss
since the hearing wasn't there in the first place.
Acquired hearing loss is just what it seems to be. It's a kind of
hearing loss that was received in some artificial manner (disease, over-exposure
to intensely loud sounds, etc.)
Progressive hearing loss is a kind of acquired hearing loss. However,
whereas an acquired hearing loss can be as abrupt as going to bed hearing and
waking up the next morning deaf, a progressive hearing loss is a gradual kind
of hearing loss that is acquired over a period of time.
Prelingual refers to a hearing loss that occurs before spoken language
has been acquired. Some even argue that it is before spoken langauge has been
mastered, which gives you a fuzzy age range of anywhere from birth to 5-7 years
old.
Postlingual refers to a hearing loss that occurs after spoken language
has been acquired/mastered. The age range for that would be anywhere from 5-7
years to old age.
After laying out these terms, it may be a little more obvious where my quarrel lies with viewing deafness as a medical condition. If someone was born hearing, lived to the age of 30 with what audiologists call normal hearing, and then suddenly found that hearing to be fading, certainly it would be understandable that they would be calling doctors and wanting to get surgery or hearing aids. If a person lives to the age of 12 with normal hearing and then wakes up with it gone, it is understandable for them to be scared or frantic and want to get the problem fixed. However, it is also understandable for someone who lost their hearing at the age of 2 or who was born deaf to not feel like they are missing out on sounds they've never heard or can't remember, to not want to have to deal with doctors or hearing aids or evaluations or speech therapy, to just live their life by what is normal to them. It is also understandable that these people, when met with people who seek to fix what these people do not consider broken, will react in an emotionally charged manner. Congenitally, prelingually deaf individuals feel normal just the way they are. To to tell a congenitally, prelingually deaf individual aged 25 years that you're going to make them hearing is as disturbing as telling a hearing person aged 25 years that you're going to make them deaf. Turning a person's world upside down is no way to promote cultural harmony.
