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The way you talk about it makes some of the disabled community sound like a savage, bitter, clique. Or am I getting the wrong impression?

Cazzah wrote:The way you talk about it makes some of the disabled community sound like a savage, bitter, clique. Or am I getting the wrong impression?

Honestly I'm kind of getting that impression too from that last post. I can understand not taking kindly to people trying to "fix" them (who WOULD appreciate that?) but rejecting people who decide to "fix" themselves just seems kind of odd to me. It seems like... say if Emi was an outcast because she wears prosthetics.

Maybe I'm just understanding it wrong?

That is the impression I have gotten from deaf culture as well, actually. The deaf consider themselves a culture of their own, but unlike most other cultures of the world, they are not (generally speaking) interested in mingling and exchanging ideas. Obviously everyone is an individual, but yeah, that's the image I have of deaf culture as a whole.

As a related thing, the deaf culture exists in Yamaku canonically as well, but it's fairly invisible in KS because the only deafmute character is not in a deaf class. However, we did envision the deaf classes to be fairly insular, based on what research we did on the issue. At some point we threw around all kinds of plans regarding the portrayal of the social structure of several hundred crippled kids living together at a campus, but this was dropped because we didn't really want to make KS into a commentary on disability and its social repercussions (more than it naturally is, anyway)

Cazzah wrote:The way you talk about it makes some of the disabled community sound like a savage, bitter, clique.

You mean like most social niches?

This must just be a deaf thing. cuz I've certainly never heard of a legless or armless "community" or been a part of any "legless cliques", and I haven't had a leg for 20 odd years.

I also wish every day I had it back, as while I never considered myself "disabled" I certainly consider myself "goddamn irritated"

This thread actually really makes me want to have a sit down chat with a deaf person and trade experiences and see how different they would be, there's obvious a great gulf between legless and deafness, but I really understand that "bat to the face" metaphor that was brought up before..

Cazzah wrote:The way you talk about it makes some of the disabled community sound like a savage, bitter, clique. Or am I getting the wrong impression?

..... ehhhhhhh. I don't know quite how to answer this. Hmmmm..... well, first and foremost.... I'm speaking in stereotypes. In general, stereotypes take the worst of a group and slam it in your face. It's easy to swallow that way. But, like all else in the world, every person within a stereotype is a individual. They have varying degrees of resentment or lack thereof, and they all are bothered by different things to different degrees. However it's a stereotype because it's a common enough of a trend to be recognized and labeled.

Is deaf culture a group of bitter people who hate the world? Meh, that's putting it too far, but they will be around you, but never part of you. Very rarely will you be able to get welcomed with open arms, moreso among the CDP's (Children of Deaf Parents) and those who spent their lives on deaf campus. You'll get more welcome from those, such as myself, who have spent just as much time around hearing people as deaf. But as you probably have seen, even I, who don't particularly have anything against hearing people, have a whole load of emotional baggage in regards to the issue.

You don't bother them, and they wont bother you. I think that's the fundamental way they are.

Honestly I'm kind of getting that impression too from that last post. I can understand not taking kindly to people trying to "fix" them (who WOULD appreciate that?) but rejecting people who decide to "fix" themselves just seems kind of odd to me. It seems like... say if Emi was an outcast because she wears prosthetics.

Maybe I'm just understanding it wrong?

It's kind of the same as your Emi example, but also not. What must once again be understood is that... unlike most disabilities, deaf is a culture, and a identity. Someone who fixes themselves, is in essence demostrating that being deaf is something to be fixed. The idea is that you should accept that you are deaf, and it's not something to fix. While I said earlier that I would not want to be deaf, it is my own decision and has nothing to do with others. I would not discriminate against someone for wanting to get their hearing back. So I don't agree with this view that every deaf person should accept it.

However that doesn't change the whole thing that... simply by fixing your hearing, you're essentially a walking proof that there was something to fix in the first place, and thus rejected. In elementary nobody cares, but my middle school, the CDP's will acquire this influence from their parents ranting about it, and spread that among other friends, and then the ones with hearing aids and cochlear implants would get discriminated against and bullied. It's a vicious cycle and unfair.

But again.... you can't judge them all based on this observation. They are all individuals and saying "this is wrong" and "that is bad and they shouldnt be like that" is irrelevant because there are many who are not like that.

That is the impression I have gotten from deaf culture as well, actually. The deaf consider themselves a culture of their own, but unlike most other cultures of the world, they are not (generally speaking) interested in mingling and exchanging ideas. Obviously everyone is an individual, but yeah, that's the image I have of deaf culture as a whole.

As a related thing, the deaf culture exists in Yamaku canonically as well, but it's fairly invisible in KS because the only deafmute character is not in a deaf class. However, we did envision the deaf classes to be fairly insular, based on what research we did on the issue. At some point we threw around all kinds of plans regarding the portrayal of the social structure of several hundred crippled kids living together at a campus, but this was dropped because we didn't really want to make KS into a commentary on disability and its social repercussions (more than it naturally is, anyway)

Yeah, considering that people write PhD's on not just this subject, but simply singling out several portions of it... yeah, making a game THAT realistic would be insanely hard and read like a textbook. But yeah, your observation of deaf culture is pretty much spot on.

This post has forced me to register.

I really just wanted to thank you to everyone for this extremely informative post, though especially stalk. The insights provided here have done even more to open my eyes to sub-cultures and levels of society that, prior to this week of playing Katawa Shoujo, I wasn't very well aware of. It wasn't that I didn't know of the existence of it all, it just wasn't a part of my life because it didn't need it to be. I feel that I have been decent at treating disabled people no different than other people, though now I'm reflecting on it all and wondering if my good intentions have ever been misperceived. It is a very interesting conversation that this project has opened up and I look forward to seeing more about it and possibly participating here and there.

stalk wrote:

I don't know if this is the case with deafness, but it seems likely. I remember reading about a man in a book by Oliver Sacks who went blind at 5, and then 50 or years later got an experimental surgery or something to let him see. He didn't know how the hell things looked like actually related to how they felt or sounded or what they really were; if you turned off the sound on a TV, he'd be absolutely lost as to a show's plot. He was damn miserable, and when his eyesight failed again it was actually a relief. I'd imagine it'd be the same with deaf people and sound: they wouldn't know what the hell to make of it all.

I havent really heard anything like that among deaf people getting cochlear implants. But then again, it's not as jarring as re-acquiring vision. They start slow, and build you up, teach you sounds, and so on.

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Blind dude, if I recall, was just given eyesight, like someone had hit an on-off switch. I think they tried to help him get used to things, but since it was all at once he still never got it.

My speech is.... okay. It is not something you just hear and understand. But once you understand the patterns of my speech and are used to it, it's pretty easy to understand me. Most deaf people have problems controlling volume. And further, it often is in the too-loud range. I was like that when I was younger, but my insecurities as I got older put it in the opposite direction so I'm too quiet usually. People often are wondering if they should ask me to speak louder or not because they arent sure if it's rude to or not.

I can feel my own voice, but beyond that I have been taught in speech classes in regards to what mouth movement creates what sound. So I can tell what I'm speaking based on how I move my mouth as well.

A lot of deaf people probably do lose their voice though. If they are sent to a school for the deaf and live on campus, there's almost no chance for them to use their voice. Not using it for years will probably cause them to go mute.

You're probably able to speak as you can because you could hear for those four years. It may seem a really short time, but kids learn a lot about phonetics/phonology and articulation during that short space. As long as you didn't go mute for a few years, you should've gotten some practice which allowed you to retain part of the information. The mute kids you're talking about didn't.

If you look at people who are born deaf, they simply don't get the information you got. If you told them to say a "t", they'd probably look rather blank. Moreover, even though you might be able to show them where it and other sounds are, speech is hitting targeted places of articulation rapidly and accurately. It's pretty damn hard to do. Even hearing people mess it up, but if their mistake is retained and spreads then it's no longer a mistake: it's language change.

Linear B wrote:

stalk wrote:

I don't know if this is the case with deafness, but it seems likely. I remember reading about a man in a book by Oliver Sacks who went blind at 5, and then 50 or years later got an experimental surgery or something to let him see. He didn't know how the hell things looked like actually related to how they felt or sounded or what they really were; if you turned off the sound on a TV, he'd be absolutely lost as to a show's plot. He was damn miserable, and when his eyesight failed again it was actually a relief. I'd imagine it'd be the same with deaf people and sound: they wouldn't know what the hell to make of it all.

I havent really heard anything like that among deaf people getting cochlear implants. But then again, it's not as jarring as re-acquiring vision. They start slow, and build you up, teach you sounds, and so on.

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Blind dude, if I recall, was just given eyesight, like someone had hit an on-off switch. I think they tried to help him get used to things, but since it was all at once he still never got it.

I think it has just as much to do with the difference in dimensions that hearing and seeing provide.

With hearing, you have volume, frequency, direction, and distance.

With seeing, you have brightness, color, and three dimensions to work with.

For me, I can only detect volume, frequency, and distance - I need to make educated guesses about direction. Someone who is blind in one eye loses the ability to accurately judge distance, but can still infer it by the size of objects and can naturally still detect direction. So hearing is two-dimensional while seeing is three-dimensional.

...of course, I'm not even entirely sure that's how hearing with two ears works. I don't know if hearing is indeed three-dimensional or not, but in practice it's only two-dimensional so it still wouldn't be too jarring (if someone were to re-acquire hearing I mean).


Edit:

stalk wrote:Being able to switch it on or off might be a incentive, but I still dont think I would do it. I do listen to music, I just perceive it in a different way than you do - through feel rather than sound.

So I take it you listen to a lot of rap music?

stalk wrote:But again.... you can't judge them all based on this observation. They are all individuals and saying "this is wrong" and "that is bad and they shouldnt be like that" is irrelevant because there are many who are not like that.

For the record, I didn't mean to suggest that I thought all deaf people thought that way, so sorry if I gave that impression. It just, I guess, seems strange to me that ANYONE would ignore or reject someone for trying to restore their hearing just because it's not something they themselves would do, so it's even harder for me to wrap my head around the thought of the deaf community in general (or the majority of it) thinking that way, and that was the impression I got.

Fir3y wrote:This post has forced me to register.

I really just wanted to thank you to everyone for this extremely informative post, though especially stalk. The insights provided here have done even more to open my eyes to sub-cultures and levels of society that, prior to this week of playing Katawa Shoujo, I wasn't very well aware of. It wasn't that I didn't know of the existence of it all, it just wasn't a part of my life because it didn't need it to be. I feel that I have been decent at treating disabled people no different than other people, though now I'm reflecting on it all and wondering if my good intentions have ever been misperceived. It is a very interesting conversation that this project has opened up and I look forward to seeing more about it and possibly participating here and there.

A neutral stance is really the best you can do when dealing with disabled people. They have individual reactions to treatment just like anyone else. It's a no win situation. If you see someone who seems to need help, offering a hand is a nice thing to do but whatever reaction you get, don't take it personally. The next guy is just as likely to appreciate it.

So I take it you listen to a lot of rap music?

Hahaha NOPE!!

Rap is right at the bottom of my list. I LOVE classical music, especially solo pieces (Piano, guitar, drums, etc). My favorite is Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I also love a good singer, the feel on the chest is beautiful. Very few have the confidence to let me touch them while they sing, though, which makes me sad.

tyren wrote:

stalk wrote:But again.... you can't judge them all based on this observation. They are all individuals and saying "this is wrong" and "that is bad and they shouldnt be like that" is irrelevant because there are many who are not like that.

For the record, I didn't mean to suggest that I thought all deaf people thought that way, so sorry if I gave that impression. It just, I guess, seems strange to me that ANYONE would ignore or reject someone for trying to restore their hearing just because it's not something they themselves would do, so it's even harder for me to wrap my head around the thought of the deaf community in general (or the majority of it) thinking that way, and that was the impression I got.

The world is a mysterious place :p Who knows why we do what we do.

stalk wrote:The world is a mysterious place :p Who knows why we do what we do.

Indeed.

stalk wrote:Rap is right at the bottom of my list. I LOVE classical music, especially solo pieces (Piano, guitar, drums, etc). My favorite is Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I also love a good singer, the feel on the chest is beautiful. Very few have the confidence to let me touch them while they sing, though, which makes me sad.

So you like solo pieces because it's easier for you to focus on one instrument instead of many?

I figured you would like rap because rap is pretty much engineered to be felt and they focus on simple basslines. The lyrics are typically awful, of course, but I figured you wouldn't care about that either.


What about electronic music? A lot of people just lump all electronic music into "techno," and I wonder if you do the same thing (or if deaf people are any more likely to do so than any average person). Or do you recognize and appreciate the differences between trance, house, breaks, progressive, hardcore, etc.?

Anyone anywhere approaching as interested as I am in electronic music should have a decent library of tracks with really wonderful vocals, beautiful melodies, and energetic basslines.

Caesius wrote:

stalk wrote:Rap is right at the bottom of my list. I LOVE classical music, especially solo pieces (Piano, guitar, drums, etc). My favorite is Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I also love a good singer, the feel on the chest is beautiful. Very few have the confidence to let me touch them while they sing, though, which makes me sad.

So you like solo pieces because it's easier for you to focus on one instrument instead of many?

I figured you would like rap because rap is pretty much engineered to be felt and they focus on simple basslines. The lyrics are typically awful, of course, but I figured you wouldn't care about that either.


What about electronic music? A lot of people just lump all electronic music into "techno," and I wonder if you do the same thing (or if deaf people are any more likely to do so than any average person). Or do you recognize and appreciate the differences between trance, house, breaks, progressive, hardcore, etc.?

Anyone anywhere approaching as interested as I am in electronic music should have a decent library of tracks with really wonderful vocals, beautiful melodies, and energetic basslines.

I don't like the sound of vocals coming from a box. It just feels impersonal to me. I like to feel it on the person, not in the box.

I can tell that there are differences, however I won't realize that they are different "genres" unless someone identifies them as such. If I have the identification, I can associate the type of music with the identification well. So since most music is not pointed out to me, I can tell they are different, however I can't tell what they are.

As for why I don't like rap.. I don't like things that are loud and harsh. I like calm and soothing things. Rap is made to be felt, yes, but it's not the type of feeling I enjoy.

I like playing music at other people's houses, its kind of fun to do. But I don't have a collection of my own.

And the reason I like a single instrument, I guess part of it is focus, but the other part is because of the clarity. For instance, when I feel the guitar along with a drum beat, it's difficult for me to isolate the two and it's distracting. Actually no, it's not difficult to isolate them, but once I listen to one type, the others just interfere with it so I can't enjoy it. There are some music that I enjoy the whole more than the parts, but in general it's easier for me to understand and feel solo pieces.