Atario wrote:
Ohhh, this is nothing, my friend. This thread is still not even to the point of actual name-calling. I'd say we're keeping it more civil than the vast majority of online communities would do. Pat yourself on the back, everyone!
I know it's not bad yet, but my experience in coprometeorology indicates that all it takes is a high-pressure front meeting a low-pressure tolerance. Evne the two of us seem to be getting slightly on edge, despite our (apparent) self-awareness.
That may be. But even experts still need to make a case. Argument From Authority won't fly.
This is true. I suspect that it may be a matter of "one man's good point is another man's flippant and unserious dismissal."
That all depends on the individual. A lot of deaf people acquired their deafness after having been a speaking person.
Kinda funny how we're sort of coming full circle here, seeing as much of this newer discussion was started by a hypothetical in which Shizune was not deaf from birth.
As to how to answer this, it's certainly something above my pay grade. But, if I were to be so bold as to take a stab at it, I would be inclined to make the comparison to a young immigrant. From personal experience, I know that my grandfather came to the U.S. from Italy when he was about 12. Needless to say, Italian was his first language. But he spent his teenage years speaking English, and spoke English to his children, grandchildren, etc. He retained enough Italian that, when he went to visit Europe later in life, he was able to manage. But he was much more comfortable, at that point, speaking English.
In this context, what is his native language? Italian, because it was his first language? Or English, because it was the language he used all his life? Even if we grant that "native," coming from
natus (birth), allows only for Italian to be his "native" language, English is the language he used to live his life, his language of choice, and the one with which he was most comfortable.
So "native" may have not been the best word. But the (post-speaking) deafie who tries to communicate in a spoken tongue is not working with his language of choice - he is working with a memory of a language from his childhood. And this is the best-case scenario.
I realize that. But I'm neither saying that the deaf have it easy nor am I saying they should learn accommodative techniques or else screw them. I'm simply saying it's not in the same ballpark as, say, dragging yourself by your arms everywhere you go. Lip reading and deaf speaking are not easy, surely, but they're certainly doable, and effectively so, on a day-to-day basis. My "I've known people" statements are merely intended to establish that this is not some pie-in-the-sky impossible dream. If even someone who knows as few people as I do knows people who do it, then it can't be rare, nor herculean. People do it, and they do it all the time.
And this is where it fails. You're claiming that it's not in the same ballpark as dragging yourself by your arms everywhere you go. Personally, I'd argue that neither of us are competent to make that judgment. It's easy to see (or imagine) the physical struggles of a paralytic or an amputee. For deafies, most of the struggles are on a mental and cognitive level. Insofar as a comparison can be made, it's like saying Michael Jordan worked harder than Einstein (theoretical physics is hard and all, but it's simply not in the same ballpark as top-tier professional basketball).
And your argument of personal encounters is 100% anecdotal. It fails to account for the possibility of statistical outliers, to say the least. If a man lives in Chinatown, his personal experience supports the notion that the world population is 95% Chinese.
Then I guess we all have to shut up and let Kutagh declare what is true and what is not. Right? Come on, man.
That's not what I meant. What I'm saying is that your assertion is essentially hearsay, but without an actual statement. You are presenting evidence, so to speak, that deafies operating in a spoken world is possible, because you have encountered people capable of doing so. For the record, I do not believe anyone here absolutely opposes that statement. You appear to be willing to accept the nuance that not all deafies are capable of doing this, so we'll consider the following statement as uncontroversial:
"It is possible for many deaf people to learn lip reading and deaf speaking to an extent where they can operate in a hearing world with little apparent trouble."
The controversy comes in this next step. You use more nuanced terms, but your argument is being read as "I know a couple people who get along just fine, so it can't be that hard." Testimony from these people that it wasn't hard, that they get along fine, and they have few or no issues would have some relevance. Not much, because the expected response would be "I'm happy for you, but surely you realise that you're the exception to the rule." But, coming from a hearing individual, and phrased in a manner that implies you haven't actually directly talked to them about how hard or easy it is, it looks pretty bad.
To put this in less crude (or perhaps differently crude) terms, Kutagh is shitting a brick because you are presenting yourself as a walking, talking incarnation of the entire Bellite school - a hearing individual making a judgement on what deaf people can and can't do (and how easy it is) based solely on anecdotal evidence of his personal observations.
We can perhaps go on about whether or not this is an appropriate action, whether it's logical, justified, etc., but the fact remains - your well-intentioned efforts to present your opinion on this subject have, through no fault of your own, been worded so poorly as to appear explicitly designed to piss deafies off.
I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what it is you mean when you keep using that word — expects. It sounds like you mean if we were being fair, we'd all learn sign language.
I don't presume to have the right answer. But I use the term "expects" in a less extreme sense than you, evidently. "A good idea," "for the best," and "not beyond them," among others, are all phrases that, to me, imply expectation. It's a sort of "Yeah, I guess they can opt out if they really want to, but it's such a shame that they'd purposely cut themselves off from the world over some silly sense of tribalism and customs." That may not be a fair representation of what you feel, but it's a reasonable interpretation of what you've said.
That's fine. I'm not talking about replicating speech so flawlessly that no one can guess you're deaf. I'm talking about speaking well enough to be able to order your meal at a restaurant. You can be pretty sloppy and still manage that much.
For the record, that right there? That's an expectation. "In order to perform a basic task of social interaction, they should really try to do it our way. We're even willing to be patient with them."
Again, you're presuming two things: profound or total deafness; and a pre-consciousness onset.
1: Don't use the term "pre-consciousness" - it carries a whole raft of implications, baggage, and off-topic discussion that would be better for everyone if we leave it alone.
2: For this final detail, yes, that's the worst-case scenario. And for the earlier details, yes it's more extreme for the profoundly deaf. But if you were to have some kid with coke-bottle glasses try to draw a pig without his glasses, it probably wouldn't be much better than the normally-sighted people trying with their eyes closed.
3: Do you mean to imply that someone who is "merely" hearing impaired has much less of an excuse to choose deaf culture over hearing culture?
Are you suggesting all movies be shown with open captions?
Also, I don't know when the last time was you used an in-theater closed caption device, but all the ones I've used have been pretty new, worked flawlessly, and were no harder to carry than a baton.
I'm not suggesting that all movies be shown with open captions, but I challenge you to do a quick search. Do you have ANY theaters within a 60-mile radius that have ANY open captions? I don't, and I like in the DC Metropolitan area (the same DC Metro area that houses Gallaudet, so it's reasonable to expect there's a market). As for Captiview, the image you posted, it's not without criticisms. It and Sony Access are the dominant accommodations in my neck of the woods, but it's worth noting that these are both relatively new technologies that are leaps and bounds ahead of what used to be available.
As a side note, I will admit that I do find it intriguing that you actually have used closed captioning devices. From the way you've presented yourself, I wasn't aware that you'd have any need/desire to use something like that.
How is an English subtitle ever going to match the lips of a non-English film?
My point exactly. Many people assume that deafies have no issue with foreign films, because no one understands the words and they all read the subtitles. And you can probably guess how often they have subtitles in the language of the film itself (to accommodate the deafies in the audience who know more than their local language).
But I can agree that same-language subs should match spoken words. But whenever I say anything, I'm told that it's too hard to keep up unless they simplify the words. Dunno how anyone's coming to that conclusion, though. [shrug] I can only guess they're trying to accommodate slow readers.
Kind of unclear who is telling you this, and what position of authority/expertise they have on the subject.
It's not the association that's the problem. It's the enforcement of norms, the denigration or expulsion of the insufficiently devoted, the exclusion of "outsiders". Tribalism is the cause of a major chunk of the world's woes, and we'd all do well to do what we can against that.
You want the heads side of the coin without the tails side. You have no issue with people associating with each other, but object if there is a common thread that's considered a requirement for association? Without having societal norms, without having a sense of who is "in" (and, consequently, who is "out"), you gut the entire concept of community. You seem to imply that it's a grave and hateful offense to have a computer programming club where you aren't allowed to use the CD drives as cupholders and are required to at least know how to turn a computer on. That hits all thsoe points of enforceemnt of norms, denigration/expulsion of insufficiently devoted, and exclusion of "outsiders."
That's fine. I don't have a problem with that. When I start having a problem is when they start telling people they're traitors because of their personal choices instead of being supportive, or openly wish for children to be born deaf, or the like.
It may be hair splitting, but when you first mentioned the North American Deaf Community, you spoke of it as a monolithic whole that universally reviles CI users. You then drew a false equivalence, implying that everyone in the North American Deaf Community that dislikes AG Bell also hates CI users. It's a fair to interpret your comments as a denigration of the community as a whole. Any community has bad actors, so it's unfair to paint the whole community due to the actions of a few. It's also unfair to dismiss one position some members in a community hold because you disagree with another position that some (and rarely the same exact some) members of that same community hold.
In other words, if you disagree with the opposition to AG Bell, disagree on the merits of the issue. If you disagree with the idea that CI users are cultural traitors, disagree on the merits of the issue. That also goes for any other objection to any other position. There is simply no excuse for responding to "Parts of [Community A] hold [Position 1]" with "(Parts of) [Community A] also hold [Position 2], therefore the merit of [Position 1] is questionable."
To illustrate (via Godwin): "The Nazi party argued that the Treaty of Versailles was inequitable and an insult to the Germany's honor." "The Nazi party also supported systematic extermination of the Jews, so I think it's healthy to be skeptical of their criticism of the Treaty of Versailles."
Join the club. Groups of people being marginalized is a common refrain in the music of history. But reacting in an ugly way is a choice too.
It's a bit of a balance. While I can agree that it's better to be the bigger man, it can be hard to fight an emotional response. It may not be justified, but things get uncomfortable if the imagery too closely resembles past discriminations.
I'd love to know where anything I said sounded anything close to "stop whining" or "be more like us". As far as I have ever seen, deaf people don't whine about much. At least, not more than the rest of us, and even then it rarely has to do with deafness. And as far as "being like us" — they are, for good or ill.
You've repeatedly said (or implied) that deaf speaking and lip reading can't possibly be as hard as some deafies make it out to be; Your phone analogy is extremely clueless and tone-deaf (I'll be getting to that); and you've repeatedly protested that you have no issue with social groups - provided they are all-inclusive and have no expectations of their members.
You
are correct. Deafies are "like us." They are also "unlike us." No one denies the similarities, but many people (potentially yourself included) seek to minimise the differences. That's all well and good - within reason. But attempts to minimise differences need to respect those differences - something you consider trivial may be of extreme importance to the other side. You don't begin your outreach to Hasidic Jews with a pork rib cookout and a game of tackle football.
These things happen, though. Pen-pals used to be a beloved tradition. Then the Internet came along. Spinning thread and weaving cloth used to be widespread and had its own at-home industry and culture. Then the Industrial Revolution happened. I can see being sad for the passing of a nexus of shared interest. But I can't see wanting to preserve it at the expense of people. I mean, if there were a magic wand amazing technology that meant no one would ever have to be deaf again, would people argue that it should be banned? Some people sound like it, honestly. But pardon my gaucheness when I would say: hell yes we should use it. Having more options is always better.
Now, you see, you're comparing things which may be similar, but aren't the same. This isn't a concern of "no one (or far fewer people) will be spinning thread if it's not economically viable." It's not "this magic is demonhellwitchcraft!" This is probably more akin to (for the more reasonable parties) "Instant teleportation is great - when it works. I'm just a tiny bit concerned that we might be a little hasty in adopting it. We want to still have our current highway infrastructure intact for the cases when we can't use teleportation. And, well, the more people use teleportation, the harder it is to justify the expense of maintaining the highway infrastructure, which really sucks for the people who can't teleport at all. And I know it sounds silly, but I kind of like driving on occasion."
Obviously that's not a perfect example, but it does help illustrate part of the dilemma - an incomplete "solution" like a CI is wonderful for some of the people, but it (by definition) leaves others behind. And when it has a tendency to uproot everything that came before it, it becomes downright dangerous, especially to those left behind (who only become marginalised even further).
The main argument against a CI is that it is
not a magical cure for deafness. It is one tool of a whole assortment which can assist a deafie in living in a hearing world. For some, it's the only tool they need - and no one should begrudge them that. But when people - deafies and hearing alike - start believing and acting like it actually is a cure, other tools lose favor, and are likely to become abandoned. This is a detriment both to those who don't/can't get CIs and to those that do/can. Because it's not a cure, it's a tool. CI or not, a deafie is still a deafie, and there are times when the tool isn't enough. And if/when the tool isn't enough, the CI-wielding deafie will certainly want to have more tools at his disposal.
I'm not saying everything they say has to be wrong. I'm just saying they're not the single source of truth. "Take it with a grain of salt", the expression goes.
No one implied they were authoritative or a sole source. Metalangel said that there are many people in the community that oppose AG Bell; in response, you attacked the community itself. Whether or not that was your intended meaning, there's no way you can fault someone for making that interpretation.
And if I were? Would I refuse, and instead go through life cut off from most of the world out of spite, or pride? It's possible. But I wouldn't call it the wisest conceivable move.
Either you have a very dim view of many deafies, or we took a wrong turn somewhere in Analogysville. In our thought-experiment, the majority of society communicates directly through radio waves. You can't perceive those radio waves, and you don't know how to control your personal electromagnetic field to modulate the radio waves you broadcast (you don't know it, but your natural radio wave broadcasts resemble robot farts). You and other broadcast-impaired people have devised a rudimentary "language" by blowing wind through your food-consumption orifice and slapping a slab of meat in your mouth against other parts of your mouth.
In order to communicate with the rest of society, you need to use a tool that can translate your meat-slapping orifice wind into radio waves (and translate radio waves into meat-slapping orifice wind analogues). Or perhaps enlist a kind soul who is radio-sensate, but also decided to learn how to communicate with meat-slapping orifice wind. Those are workable, but the radio-sensate find it awkward, and a bit of a hassle. They'd much rather you learn to figure out what radio waves they're broadcasting by their body posture, and would really like it if you learn how to control your own radio-wave broadcasting - it doesn't need to be perfect, just good enough that they can understand what you're saying.
I could go on, but I think we've played out that analogy for all it's worth.
Would a deaf-to-hearing interface device designed by the deaf be better than one designed by others? Maybe. They should try! (Have they not…?)
Venture Capital. Investors. Plausible Market. There's generally one or two big companies that provide accessibility tools. So there's not terribly much competition - meaning high prices and glacial innovation. And very little opportunity for market disruption.
And yes, it is reasonable to expect that a device designed with input from people who have personal experience with deafness has significant potential to be more useful than one designed by a bunch of hearing people who have a vague idea of what deafness is, but no personal or practical experience.
(I'm also hoping you realise just how insulting your suggestion sounds. I hope you were being sarcastic due to honestly not believing that deafies could provide any insight (or believing that they're heavily involved in development of accessibility devices.)
(But you're forgetting what I said about voice being the least-used feature of the thing…)
I'm not forgetting it; I am pointedly ignoring it, because your cellphone example as a whole is a uniquely terrible analogy. The radio waves from a cellphone are derivative of meat-slapping orifice wind. The corresponding device for deafness would be a machine that translates Sign Language into unique auditory cues (to be interpreted by other telesigns back into Sign Language). The theoretical device used to talk to the radio-sensate would likely work like some bastard child of push-to-talk and speech-to-text.
And, while we're at it, your meat-slapping orifice wind grammar won't help you one bit when writing in the radio-sensate's visual language - you don't even have any concept of metanouns or parasitions. Not as discrete units, anyway - it's implied int he meat-slapping orifice wind.
(I think I'm enjoying the phrase "meat-slapping orifice wind" a bit too much)
Is someone saying sign language is illegitimate??
Not very often any more, but a quick glance at the history of Sign Language makes it clear that that's a
very recent development.
Doing things "the hearing way" or not, it's indisputable that they're better off being able to deal with the hearing world and not be confined to a deaf-only ghetto (regardless of how nice, or of one's own making or not). It's also indisputable that it's far easier for < 0.5% of a population to do something than the > 99.5% to do something. Even so, of course it's still the individual's choice based on the individual's ease and preference (and not the Deaf community extremists nor the Jigoros of the world to make for one). That goes both ways, by the way — a hearing individual has the choice of learning sign language (or whatever else) or not too.
As a society, we have enshrined in our laws that there are instances where the 99.5% are obligated to accommodate the 0.5%. The whole point of a marginalised group is that they lack the majoritarian influence to make their needs heard. It is certainly more efficient and more logical that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one), but that does not mean that it is necessarily right.
Of course it's better to swim to shore rather than complain about how no one's sending a life boat. It is far more profitable to do things yourself than it is to wait (or whine) for assistance. But when you're in charge of the life boat, you're the one at fault, not the guy who's drowning. Especially when he appears to be drowning, has explicitly indicated that he' having trouble keeping afloat, and your reason for not sending the life boat is because it's inconvenient. Whether or not he can get to shore on his own is irrelevant. (And yes, I'm being fluid with my analogies. Let's try to avoid getting sidetracked by the analogy and focus on the ideas and principles it's trying to illustrate.
I don't see how. A wheelchair replaces, imperfectly, the primary functionality of legs in a person who doesn't have a working pair of them; a cochlear implant replaces, imperfectly, the primary functionality of hearing in a person who doesn't have a working sense of hearing. It's just that one kind of device existed before any of us were born and is therefore the right and natural state of the world, whereas the other is an uppity newcomer that won't shut up like it's told.
Wheelchairs have never been billed as a cure for paralysis. Paralysis does not have a long and troubled history of being considered a mental deficiency (at least, not as long or troubled). Paraplegics have generally had a platform to express their own opinions on treatment received. A wheelchair is not a (semi-permanent) surgical process. I could go on.
Getting pretty snippy, aren't we?
I don't see where you addressed that. If you mean your assertion that being successful means being reasonable, and therefore he can't reject results not to his liking, then I'd have to say it's not Jigoro you have a problem with, but the writers. They've very clearly made him both unreasonable and successful. I would also posit that there are lot — a lot — of unreasonable-yet-successful people out there in the real world too.
If I'm getting snippy, it's because people seem to consistently miss my point on this front. Time and again, I have noted that yes, Jigoro could be a total asshole without any redeeming qualities; my argument has always been that there are other possibilities, which, it can be argued, are quite reasonable.
We do not get anything near a complete picture of Jigoro. We get a picture of him from the perspective of his daughter's boyfriend. The last panel of
this comic illustrates the general tenor of the relationship between prospective father-in-law and prospective son-in-law. When we see Jigoro being unreasonable, it is primarily in the context of his interactions with his daughter's boyfriend (and, as I've argued previously, there's a reasonable basis that Hisao was antagonising Jigoro - intentionally or otherwise).
So yes, he could be successful, in denial about his daughter's deafness, and unwilling to listen to experts who don't tell him what he wants to hear. I don't believe that that's likely (in my headcanon) when there are other possibilities that put a lesser strain on my credulity. There are all sorts of things that are theoretically possible (for example, Kenji's right, Hisao was the only hope for mankind, and each route is the unfolding of another feminist plot to enslave mankind forever), but I choose to develop a headcanon where everything is reasonably mundane, reasonable, and consistent.
And, as I noted before, I don't give two shits what the writers intended. They put onto paper what they put - in my opinion, that's essentially the end of their role (generally speaking). I'll certainly take their own interpretations into account when looking at things, but I do not consider it infallible. If the text supports something, it's a reasonable assumption; if the text contradicts, the interpretation fails; if the text doesn't say wither way, it's open to interpretation.
No, the key point is that you keep accusing me of "expecting". Where in that did I say I expected anything? Answer: nowhere. So please stop it.
What do I "expect"? I expect that if I can't converse with someone by talking and listening, I'm going to have to find some other way. Interpreter? Pen and paper? Typing on something? Ok. So what?
Looks like there's enough snippiness to go around. I concede that you never explicitly said that you expect anything. I will, however, note that you have repeatedly expressed ideas to the effect of "I don't understand why deaf people make such a big deal about learning how to talk;" "It makes more sense for the deaf person to put in the effort to accommodate hearing people than the other way around;" and "I don't see how people can take pride in being defective - especially when it's so easy to fix." You did not necessarily express those sentiments, and most definitely not in these words, but you have repeatedly presented a worldview in which the ideal is for deafies to learn to get by in a world which ignores them, marginalises them, and, in a very real sense, rejects them. You allow deafies to choose not to conform, but you make it clear that this is not ideal, and is most likely stubborn and shortsighted.
And you know what? You may be right. But you're still imposing expectations. If you consider one course of action to be superior to other courses, that's an expectation. Expectations aren't inherently bad, but it's absurd to deny that they exist.
Sorry I recognized what I said being independently invented by someone else. I hope I didn't offend you too badly by doing so.
This back-and-forth? It's called "scoring points." We both really should be above it. I'll try to do better on my part, and I apologise for any low blows I may have dealt (or have yet to deal - being hot-blooded gets to you like that).
There's discrediting everyone and everything about a community, and then there's discrediting at least some of the people and at least some of the things about a community. It's this latter thing that I did.
We probably want to condense these separate points, as we're repeating ourselves. You may have
intended a narrow scope, but "The North American Deaf community reviles people for getting cochlear implants to regain their hearing, too, branding them traitors. I wouldn't put a lot of stock in it." is both sweeping and unambiguous.
Not the textual stuff. Sometimes I don't know whether what I sent got there at all. Even in the best of cases, it's on the order of multiple seconds. Correcting a misunderstanding might take a full minute. Making up for something missed entirely might take all day.
Wrong feedback. Unless your screen is broken, you get instant feedback on the textual stuff. You push the button, the character comes up. The text response is the physical person replying to you. The text on the screen is you hearing yourself.
Plus, you're forgetting that even the deaf do have tactile feedback — they can still feel whether their tongues touch this or that feature of the mouth or not, where air has flowed or not, whether the vocal cords have vibrated or not, etc. It's not easy, it's not precise, and it takes some concentration, surely, but it's not just sending inputs 100% blindly into a black box and hoping for the best.
Uhm... yes, yes it is. Let's go back to the pig drawing (did you actually try that, by the way? It
is kinda fascinating). When drawing the pig, you can feel the pencil, probably the paper, the relative position of your hand, etc. Those give you a vague sense of feedback, but not near enough for most people to draw a good pig. The first time you do it, most people expect that their pig will turn out much better than it does.
And you keep talking about practical use. If you draw a pig, then show it to another person without telling them what it is, they
might guess it's a pig, especially if they sit down and puzzle over it for a bit, but it's very likely they will have no idea what they hell they're looking at.
Have I told anyone here to shut up? Have I accused anyone here of acting in bad faith? Answer to both is no. Which is more than I can say for the way I'm being treated (not specifically meaning by you). Defense rests, your honor.
Whether it's true or not, no one cares for the persecuted martyr act. It's a petty "holier than thou" rhetorical trick. As we've both touched upon, it's better to be the bigger man and let the evidence speak for itself.
As for the implicit accusation, I was more focusing on your derision of the "Deaf Pride" subset of the deaf community. You're perfectly free to find them distasteful, but please, if you want to bring up an idea you disagree with, I'd ask you to at least try to represent it in a manner that won't draw accusations of "strawman argument." If you want to convince someone that an idea is wrong(or unlikely, or ambiguous), you want to present the idea as strong as possible, then explain how this beefed-up idea is still insufficient. So no more of these "CI users are race traitors" or "I hope my kids are deaf" one-liners; a much better argument can be presented with "I have serious misgivings about CIs because A B and C" or "CODA have major struggles and alienation from their position straddling two cultures. I know it's terrible to say this, but I kind of hope my kids are deaf so they aren't left adrift in the confusing cross-currents of the CODA experience."
And if you feel I should take my own advice, feel free to call me out on it (using specific examples - people are notoriously bad at self-assessment). Please. I can't get better if I don't know what's wrong.