I’ve heard from more than one source that deaf parents of deaf children often take that stance—and that some deaf parents intentionally choose to have deaf children, even to the point of getting a sperm donor involved if the genetics require it.
I rather sympathize—if I ever get serious about procreating, stacking the deck in favor of having an autistic offspring will be something of a priority. (And, as I think about it, it’s for pretty much the same reason: Being deaf or autistic isn’t necessarily disadvantageous, but having parents that one has difficulty in communicating with is—and deaf people and autistic people both tend to find it easier to communicate with people who are similar.)
What do you mean by necessarily disadvantageous, then? I disagree that a difficulty in communication with parents is a more necessary disadvantage than deafness, but maybe we interpret the words differently. (I have no precise definition yet.)
Being deaf or autistic (or for that matter gay or left-handed or female or male or tall or short) is a disadvantage in some situations, but not all, and it’s possible for someone with any of the above traits to arrange their life in such a way that the trait is an advantage rather than a disadvantage, if other aspects of their life are amenable to such rearranging. (In the case of being deaf, a significant portion of the advantage seems to come from being able to be a member of the deaf community, and even then I have a little bit of trouble seeing it, but I’m inclined to believe that the deaf people who make that claim know more about the situation than I do.)
For contrast, consider being diabetic: It’s possible to arrange one’s life such that diabetes is well-controlled, but there seems to be a pretty good consensus among diabetics that it’s bad news, and I’ve never heard of anyone intentionally trying to have a diabetic child, xkcd jokes aside.
When a being is submitting a threat, through an audio-only channel, to destroy paperclips if you don’t do X, when that being prefers you doing X to destroying paperclips.
(The example generalizes to cases where you have a preference for something else instead of quantity of existent paperclips.)
So far, most of the answers are variations on being able to avoid unwanted noise or indirect effects of that ability (e.g. being able to pay less for a house because it’s in a very noisy area and most people don’t want it). There’ve also been comments about being able to get away with ignoring people, occasionally finding out things via lip-reading that the people speaking don’t think you’ll catch, and being able to use sign language in situations where spoken language is difficult or useless (in a noisy bar, while scuba diving).
These advantages look like rationalisations made by the parents in question, while I suspect (without evidence, I admit) that they simply fear their children being different. Seriously, ask a hearing person whether (s)he would accept a deafening operation in order to get away with ignoring people more easily.
Any condition can have similar “advantages”. Blind people are able to sleep during daylight, can easily ignore visual distractions, are better piano tuners on average. Should blind parents therefore have a right to make their child blind if they wish? Or should any parents be allowed to deliberately have a child without legs, because, say, there is a greater chance to succeed in the sledge hockey than in the normal one?
I get the point of campaigns aiming to move certain conditions from the category “disease” to the category “minority”. “Disease” is an emotionaly loaded term, and the people with the respective conditions may have easier life due to such campaigns. On the other hand, we mustn’t forget that they would have even more easier life without the condition.
“Disease” is an emotionaly loaded term, and the people with the respective conditions may have easier life due to such campaigns. On the other hand, we mustn’t forget that they would have even more easier life without the condition.
Obligatory Gideon’s Crossing quote:
Mother [to a black doctor who wants to give cochlear implants to her daughter]: You think that hearing people are better than deaf people. Doctor: I’m only saying it’s easier. Mother: Would your life be easier if you were white?
With that said, I agree those sound like rationalizations.
Or should any parents be allowed to deliberately have a child without legs, because, say, there is a greater chance to succeed in the sledge hockey than in the normal one?
All of which are either obtainable through merely being hearing-impaired*, wearing ear-plugs, being raised by signing parents, or simple training.
Some benefits are bogus—for example, living in a noisy area doesn’t work because the noxious noises (say, from passing trains) are low-frequency and that’s where hearing is best; even the deaf can hear/feel loud bass or whatnot.
* full disclosure: I am hearing-impaired myself, and regard with horror the infliction of deafness or hearing-impairedness on anyone, but especially children.
I have the opposite problem, so perhaps I can add some insight.
Basically, I have Yvain’s sensitivity to audio distractions, plus I have more sensitive hearing—I’ll sometimes complain about sounds that others can’t hear. (And yes, I’ll verify that it’s real by following it to the source.)
Ear plugs don’t actually work against these distractions—I’ve tried it (I can sometimes hear riveting going on from my office at work). They block out a lot of those external sounds, but then create an additional path that allows you to hear your own breathing.
I agree that I wouldn’t be better off deaf, but there is such a thing as too much hearing.
Have you tried noise cancelling headphones? I found them pretty effective for cutting out audio distractions at work (when playing music). I stopped using them because they were a little too effective—people would come and try to get my attention and I’d be completely oblivious to their presence.
I’ve tried noise-cancelling headphones, but without playing music through them, because that is itself a distraction to me. It only worked against steady, patterned background noise.
I find certain types of music less distracting than the alternative of random background noise. Trance works well for me because it is fairly repetitive and so doesn’t distract me with trying to listen to the music too closely. It also helps if I’m listening to something I’m very familiar with and with the tracks in a set order rather than on shuffle. Mix CDs are good because there are no distracting breaks between tracks.
Seconding all of this except the bit about set order rather than shuffle, which I haven’t tried—it otherwise matches the advice I was going to give. Also, songs with no words or with words in a language you don’t speak are better than songs with words, and if you don’t want or can’t tolerate explicitly noise-canceling headphones, earplugs + headphones with the music turned up very loud also works.
I dunno, i don’t agree with deaf parents deliberately selecting for deaf chldren but there is definitely a large element of trying to medicalise something that the people with the condition don’t consider to be a bad thing.
Anyway, I think Silas nailed deaf community attitudes with the comparison between being deaf and being black, the main difference being that one is considered cultural (and therefore the problem is other people’s attitudes towards it) and the other medical.
Edit: After further thought, I think I am using necessarily disadvantageous to mean that the disadvantages massively outweigh any advantages. Since being deaf gets you access to the deaf community, an awesome working memory for visual stuff, and (if you live in urban America) doesn’t ruin your life, I don’t think it’s all disadvantage.
the main difference being that one is considered cultural (and therefore the problem is other people’s attitudes towards it) and the other medical
I don’t see being black or white any more cultural than being deaf, in either case you are born that way and being raised in different culture doesn’t change that a bit. The main difference is that the problem with being black is solely result of other people’s attitudes. It is possible not to be a racist without any inconvenience, and if no people were racists, it wouldn’t be easier to be white. On the other hand, being deaf brings many difficulties even if other people lack prejudices against the deaf. Although I can imagine a society where all people voluntarily cease to use spoken language and sound signals and listen to music and whatever else may give them advantage over the deaf, such a vision is blatantly absurd. On the other hand, society (almost) without racism is a realistic option.
In an isolated community with high genetic risk of deafness (not as high as I thought—I remembered it as 1 in 6, it was actually 1 in 155), everyone knew the local sign language, deaf people weren’t isolated, and deafness wasn’t thought of as a distinguishing characteristic.
I wonder whether societies like that do as much with music as societies without a high proportion of deaf people.
Sorry, to clarify my comment about culture: I meant the problem is the surrounding culture’s atittude towards it, not the culture of the people with the possibly disadvantageous condition.
I am not advocating that the rest of society gives up spoken language (and the complaint about music is just silly), I am advocating a group’s right to do their thing provided it doesn’t harm others. And I am not convinced that trying to arrange for your genes to provide you with a deaf child qualifies as harm, any more than people on the autism spectrum hoping and trying to arrange for an autistic child qualifies as harm. Deaf and severely hearing-impaired people are going to keep being born for quite a while, since the genes come in several different flavours including both dominant and recessive types, so I would expect services for the deaf to continue as a matter of decency for the forseeable future.
I am advocating a group’s right to do their thing provided it doesn’t harm others.
Do the rights include creating new group members? What about creationists screening their children from information about evolution, or any indoctrination of children for that matter, does that qualify as harm, or is it the group’s right to do their thing? (Sorry if I sound combative, if so, it’s not my intention, only inability to formulate the question more appropriately. I am curious where do you place the border.)
I find the fact that raising someone to be creationist involves explicitly teaching them provably false things—and, in most cases, demanding that they express belief in those things to remain on good terms with their family and community—to be relevant. Having a child who’s deaf or autistic doesn’t intrinsically involve that.
(Yes, if I procreate, I intend to make a point of teaching my offspring how being autistic is useful. Even so, they’ll still be completely entitled to disagree with me about the relative goodness of being autistic compared to being neurotypical.)
This may be a bit personal, but are you concerned about having a child on the highly autistic end of the spectrum? (ie. no verbal communication, needs a carer, etc.) To me that seems like a possible cosequence of deliberately stacking the deck, and it would make me wary of doing so.
In the sense of ‘consider it a significant enough possibility that I’d make sure I was prepared for it’, yes. In the sense of ‘would consider it a horrible thing if it happened’, no. I’m not going to aim for that end of the spectrum, but I wouldn’t be upset if it worked out that way.
I’m still working that out for myself. There’s definitely a parallel between deaf people insisting that their way of life is awesome and weird religious cults doing the same. I guess I’m more sympathetic to deaf people though because once you’re deaf you may as well make the most of it, while bringing up your child religiously requires an ongoing commitment to raise them that way.
Ah, ok, I just found my boundary there. Kids brought up in a religious environment can at least make their own choice when they’re old enough, but deaf people can’t. I don’t support the deliberate creation of people with a lifelong condition that will make them a minority unless the minority condition is provably non-bad, but neither do I find the idea of more being born as horrifying as you seem to.
Ah, ok, I just found my boundary there. Kids brought up in a religious environment can at least make their own choice when they’re old enough, but deaf people can’t. I don’t support the deliberate creation of people with a lifelong condition that will make them a minority unless the minority condition is provably non-bad, but neither do I find the idea of more being born as horrifying as you seem to.
Wow, you’re drawing your boundary squarely in other people’s territory there. I would actively support others in their attempts to disempower you and violate said boundary.
Shrug. I actually have a lot of personal problems with children being taught religion (anecdotally, it appears to create a God-shaped hole and train people to look for Deep Truths, and that’s before getting into the deep end of fundamentalism) but as far as I’m concerned a large percentage of the values that parents try to teach their kids are crap. If I took a more prohibitive stance on teaching religion then I would also have to start getting a lot more upset about all the other stupid shit, plus I would be ignoring the (admittedly tangential) benefits that come from growing up in a moderate religious community.
Disclaimer: I was brought up somewhat religious and only very recently made the decision to finish deconverting (was 95% areligious before, now I finally realised that there isn’t any reason to hold on to that identity except a vague sense of guilt and obligation). So I wouldn’t be too surprised if my current opinion is based partly on an incomplete update.
I can empathise with your heritage. It sounds much like mine (where my apostasy is probably a few years older).
I, incidentally, don’t have an enormous problem with teaching religion to one’s own children. Religion per se isn’t the kind of fairy tale that does the damage. The destructive mores work at least as well in an atheistic context.
I’ve heard from more than one source that deaf parents of deaf children often take that stance—and that some deaf parents intentionally choose to have deaf children, even to the point of getting a sperm donor involved if the genetics require it.
I rather sympathize—if I ever get serious about procreating, stacking the deck in favor of having an autistic offspring will be something of a priority. (And, as I think about it, it’s for pretty much the same reason: Being deaf or autistic isn’t necessarily disadvantageous, but having parents that one has difficulty in communicating with is—and deaf people and autistic people both tend to find it easier to communicate with people who are similar.)
What do you mean by necessarily disadvantageous, then? I disagree that a difficulty in communication with parents is a more necessary disadvantage than deafness, but maybe we interpret the words differently. (I have no precise definition yet.)
Being deaf or autistic (or for that matter gay or left-handed or female or male or tall or short) is a disadvantage in some situations, but not all, and it’s possible for someone with any of the above traits to arrange their life in such a way that the trait is an advantage rather than a disadvantage, if other aspects of their life are amenable to such rearranging. (In the case of being deaf, a significant portion of the advantage seems to come from being able to be a member of the deaf community, and even then I have a little bit of trouble seeing it, but I’m inclined to believe that the deaf people who make that claim know more about the situation than I do.)
For contrast, consider being diabetic: It’s possible to arrange one’s life such that diabetes is well-controlled, but there seems to be a pretty good consensus among diabetics that it’s bad news, and I’ve never heard of anyone intentionally trying to have a diabetic child, xkcd jokes aside.
In what situations is being deaf an advantage?
When a being is submitting a threat, through an audio-only channel, to destroy paperclips if you don’t do X, when that being prefers you doing X to destroying paperclips.
(The example generalizes to cases where you have a preference for something else instead of quantity of existent paperclips.)
/handwaves appeal to UDT/TDT/CDT/*DT
And by allowing yourself to remain deaf, you have defected and acausally forced other beings to defect, rendering you worse off.
Wakarimasen.
I don’t understand.
Exactly.
I’m researching this.
So far, most of the answers are variations on being able to avoid unwanted noise or indirect effects of that ability (e.g. being able to pay less for a house because it’s in a very noisy area and most people don’t want it). There’ve also been comments about being able to get away with ignoring people, occasionally finding out things via lip-reading that the people speaking don’t think you’ll catch, and being able to use sign language in situations where spoken language is difficult or useless (in a noisy bar, while scuba diving).
I’m still looking; there may be more.
These advantages look like rationalisations made by the parents in question, while I suspect (without evidence, I admit) that they simply fear their children being different. Seriously, ask a hearing person whether (s)he would accept a deafening operation in order to get away with ignoring people more easily.
Any condition can have similar “advantages”. Blind people are able to sleep during daylight, can easily ignore visual distractions, are better piano tuners on average. Should blind parents therefore have a right to make their child blind if they wish? Or should any parents be allowed to deliberately have a child without legs, because, say, there is a greater chance to succeed in the sledge hockey than in the normal one?
I get the point of campaigns aiming to move certain conditions from the category “disease” to the category “minority”. “Disease” is an emotionaly loaded term, and the people with the respective conditions may have easier life due to such campaigns. On the other hand, we mustn’t forget that they would have even more easier life without the condition.
Obligatory Gideon’s Crossing quote:
Mother [to a black doctor who wants to give cochlear implants to her daughter]: You think that hearing people are better than deaf people.
Doctor: I’m only saying it’s easier.
Mother: Would your life be easier if you were white?
With that said, I agree those sound like rationalizations.
Also airplane dogfights, I’m given to understand.
All of which are either obtainable through merely being hearing-impaired*, wearing ear-plugs, being raised by signing parents, or simple training.
Some benefits are bogus—for example, living in a noisy area doesn’t work because the noxious noises (say, from passing trains) are low-frequency and that’s where hearing is best; even the deaf can hear/feel loud bass or whatnot.
* full disclosure: I am hearing-impaired myself, and regard with horror the infliction of deafness or hearing-impairedness on anyone, but especially children.
I have the opposite problem, so perhaps I can add some insight.
Basically, I have Yvain’s sensitivity to audio distractions, plus I have more sensitive hearing—I’ll sometimes complain about sounds that others can’t hear. (And yes, I’ll verify that it’s real by following it to the source.)
Ear plugs don’t actually work against these distractions—I’ve tried it (I can sometimes hear riveting going on from my office at work). They block out a lot of those external sounds, but then create an additional path that allows you to hear your own breathing.
I agree that I wouldn’t be better off deaf, but there is such a thing as too much hearing.
Have you tried simplynoise.com? For me, their Brown noise generator is the best thing for eliminating sound distractions.
I’ll have to give that a try, thanks.
Have you tried noise cancelling headphones? I found them pretty effective for cutting out audio distractions at work (when playing music). I stopped using them because they were a little too effective—people would come and try to get my attention and I’d be completely oblivious to their presence.
I’ve tried noise-cancelling headphones, but without playing music through them, because that is itself a distraction to me. It only worked against steady, patterned background noise.
I find certain types of music less distracting than the alternative of random background noise. Trance works well for me because it is fairly repetitive and so doesn’t distract me with trying to listen to the music too closely. It also helps if I’m listening to something I’m very familiar with and with the tracks in a set order rather than on shuffle. Mix CDs are good because there are no distracting breaks between tracks.
Seconding all of this except the bit about set order rather than shuffle, which I haven’t tried—it otherwise matches the advice I was going to give. Also, songs with no words or with words in a language you don’t speak are better than songs with words, and if you don’t want or can’t tolerate explicitly noise-canceling headphones, earplugs + headphones with the music turned up very loud also works.
Fair enough. It would be surprising if everyone had exactly optimal hearing.
I dunno, i don’t agree with deaf parents deliberately selecting for deaf chldren but there is definitely a large element of trying to medicalise something that the people with the condition don’t consider to be a bad thing.
Anyway, I think Silas nailed deaf community attitudes with the comparison between being deaf and being black, the main difference being that one is considered cultural (and therefore the problem is other people’s attitudes towards it) and the other medical.
Edit: After further thought, I think I am using necessarily disadvantageous to mean that the disadvantages massively outweigh any advantages. Since being deaf gets you access to the deaf community, an awesome working memory for visual stuff, and (if you live in urban America) doesn’t ruin your life, I don’t think it’s all disadvantage.
I don’t see being black or white any more cultural than being deaf, in either case you are born that way and being raised in different culture doesn’t change that a bit. The main difference is that the problem with being black is solely result of other people’s attitudes. It is possible not to be a racist without any inconvenience, and if no people were racists, it wouldn’t be easier to be white. On the other hand, being deaf brings many difficulties even if other people lack prejudices against the deaf. Although I can imagine a society where all people voluntarily cease to use spoken language and sound signals and listen to music and whatever else may give them advantage over the deaf, such a vision is blatantly absurd. On the other hand, society (almost) without racism is a realistic option.
Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness in Martha’s Vineyard
In an isolated community with high genetic risk of deafness (not as high as I thought—I remembered it as 1 in 6, it was actually 1 in 155), everyone knew the local sign language, deaf people weren’t isolated, and deafness wasn’t thought of as a distinguishing characteristic.
I wonder whether societies like that do as much with music as societies without a high proportion of deaf people.
Sorry, to clarify my comment about culture: I meant the problem is the surrounding culture’s atittude towards it, not the culture of the people with the possibly disadvantageous condition.
I am not advocating that the rest of society gives up spoken language (and the complaint about music is just silly), I am advocating a group’s right to do their thing provided it doesn’t harm others. And I am not convinced that trying to arrange for your genes to provide you with a deaf child qualifies as harm, any more than people on the autism spectrum hoping and trying to arrange for an autistic child qualifies as harm. Deaf and severely hearing-impaired people are going to keep being born for quite a while, since the genes come in several different flavours including both dominant and recessive types, so I would expect services for the deaf to continue as a matter of decency for the forseeable future.
Do the rights include creating new group members? What about creationists screening their children from information about evolution, or any indoctrination of children for that matter, does that qualify as harm, or is it the group’s right to do their thing? (Sorry if I sound combative, if so, it’s not my intention, only inability to formulate the question more appropriately. I am curious where do you place the border.)
I find the fact that raising someone to be creationist involves explicitly teaching them provably false things—and, in most cases, demanding that they express belief in those things to remain on good terms with their family and community—to be relevant. Having a child who’s deaf or autistic doesn’t intrinsically involve that.
(Yes, if I procreate, I intend to make a point of teaching my offspring how being autistic is useful. Even so, they’ll still be completely entitled to disagree with me about the relative goodness of being autistic compared to being neurotypical.)
This may be a bit personal, but are you concerned about having a child on the highly autistic end of the spectrum? (ie. no verbal communication, needs a carer, etc.) To me that seems like a possible cosequence of deliberately stacking the deck, and it would make me wary of doing so.
In the sense of ‘consider it a significant enough possibility that I’d make sure I was prepared for it’, yes. In the sense of ‘would consider it a horrible thing if it happened’, no. I’m not going to aim for that end of the spectrum, but I wouldn’t be upset if it worked out that way.
I’m still working that out for myself. There’s definitely a parallel between deaf people insisting that their way of life is awesome and weird religious cults doing the same. I guess I’m more sympathetic to deaf people though because once you’re deaf you may as well make the most of it, while bringing up your child religiously requires an ongoing commitment to raise them that way.
Ah, ok, I just found my boundary there. Kids brought up in a religious environment can at least make their own choice when they’re old enough, but deaf people can’t. I don’t support the deliberate creation of people with a lifelong condition that will make them a minority unless the minority condition is provably non-bad, but neither do I find the idea of more being born as horrifying as you seem to.
Wow, you’re drawing your boundary squarely in other people’s territory there. I would actively support others in their attempts to disempower you and violate said boundary.
Shrug. I actually have a lot of personal problems with children being taught religion (anecdotally, it appears to create a God-shaped hole and train people to look for Deep Truths, and that’s before getting into the deep end of fundamentalism) but as far as I’m concerned a large percentage of the values that parents try to teach their kids are crap. If I took a more prohibitive stance on teaching religion then I would also have to start getting a lot more upset about all the other stupid shit, plus I would be ignoring the (admittedly tangential) benefits that come from growing up in a moderate religious community.
Disclaimer: I was brought up somewhat religious and only very recently made the decision to finish deconverting (was 95% areligious before, now I finally realised that there isn’t any reason to hold on to that identity except a vague sense of guilt and obligation). So I wouldn’t be too surprised if my current opinion is based partly on an incomplete update.
I can empathise with your heritage. It sounds much like mine (where my apostasy is probably a few years older).
I, incidentally, don’t have an enormous problem with teaching religion to one’s own children. Religion per se isn’t the kind of fairy tale that does the damage. The destructive mores work at least as well in an atheistic context.