h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't usually join in with this type of conversation, but I can't keep quiet any longer and read this b**lsh*t...

I apologise to Lucinda and anyone else who supports his point of view in this thread, but, it is blindingly obvious that you are not parents yourselves... I would have thought that most 'mentally normal'
parents all want one important thing for their children. That their lives be happy and that they have advantages that the parents themselves did not have.

In answer to Lucinda's complete and utter rubbish

1) better connection to deaf culture

Your example of being capable of entering into Iraqi culture is correct in one way... YOU couldn't - however, your situation is not the same as this potential child... If both your parents are Iraqi and you were brought up with Iraqi and western culture you'd quite probably fit in (or at least you'd have the choice of which culture you prefered).

2) better peripheral vision and possible other improvements in the other five senses (including balance)
So... they chose a sperm doner who was deaf... did they check if he wore glasses? Alternatively, look at it mathematically, are you seriously trying to tell me that there would be a 20% increase in the ability of the other senses - to make up for the fact that the parents have deliberately deprived their child of 20% of the senses (s)he could have had???

3) better ability with sign language
Being bought up in a home where both parents already use sign language the child would automatically pick up sign language... as the father of a bilingual four year old I can categorically state that learning two languages (of whatever form) is an advantage... Is a slight improvement in the ability to use one form of communication an advance on being able to hear music, listen to Hootoo on the radio or just being able to get on with life in this less-than-perfect world we live in where sometimes being deaf is a disadvantage...

4) overcoming adversity bringing out benefits in human spirit and similar wishy-washy nonsense

Yeah, lets all chop off our legs and make ourselves better people...
Sorry but just what planet are you on Lucinda?
There are good and bad people in all walks of life and situations

5) ability to access complete silence

I can sell you a set of earplugs if you like... alternatively I can surgically remove your ears... Which one would you prefer???

Now, please try to come up with a serious reason why being deaf is an advantage...

whisky
(who is now going for a cigarette before he kicks the computer out of the window)

Now THATS fightin' talk! (You see Mycroft, you don't need all them big words...)
Morning Whisky. How are you today? A perfect ray of sunshine, obviously...

.... back from cigarette break and much calmer now

I really aught to have had one before typing that last post, it would have probably been a lot better put together.... even if the result would have been the same...
'what a load of rubbish' - sort of covers it all really

You really *must* watch that blood pressure, old bean.

Whisky, I like when somebody says just what I want to, so I don't get the blame for any of it

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to chop both my legs off so I can be better at being cripled.

>>>Heh, name one part of having children that isn't a gamble one way or the other. Of course it's a gamble. Aren't the best people to decide whether that gamble is worthwhile the parents involved?

Oh well that is all right then, 'Sorry love, we thought you'd like it.'

Would you be arguing the same point if they wanted to use some artificial chemical means to create deafness in the foetus? After all the outcome would be the same.

who? me?

> " ... Lucinda and anyone else who supports his ..."

For the record, Lucinda takes a female pronoun ('her') or a gender-neutral pronoun of your choice. I, Martin, take a male pronoun (or, again, a gender-neutral pronoun of your choice). No big deal, but I should mention it.

> "it is blindingly obvious that you are not parents yourselves"

No, but I do recall being a child at one point.

> "I would have thought that most 'mentally normal'
parents all want one important thing for their children. That their lives be happy and that they have advantages that the parents themselves did not have."

Which is why, barring any evidence that this couple are mentally abnormal, I think we should respect their decision. Do you have evidence that this couple is mentally abnormal? Or are you following Blues Shark-style circular reasoning?

1) I totally agree - if the child in question was born hearing sie would still be connected to deaf culture. It's less clear whether sie would be as well connected as if sie was deaf. Again, it's not about what is and isn't possible, it's about what's easier and what's harder.

2)
> "are you seriously trying to tell me that there would be a 20% increase in the ability of the other senses"

Firstly, the most important sense by a huge margin is vision, in terms of brain area and bandwidth and any other measure you care to use. Something like 90% of all the information we get through our senses is from vision.
Secondly, I'm not trying to tell you that at all. I've already said that, in general, deaf people are at a net disadvantage to hearing people. But I was asked for advantages, and better peripheral vision is one that's been scientifically proven.

As for what else they checked about the sperm donor - they chose a male friend, because all of the sperm banks they approached went all media-shy about it, so I guess they knew the donor better than most people who use donated sperm. I'm pretty sure the articles would have mentioned if he was blind as well as deaf, or indeed anything that would make it more controversial than it already is.

3)
> " I can categorically state that learning two languages (of whatever form) is an advantage"

No you can't. Learning two spoken languages is, and that's been proven by plenty of studies on bilingual children. There's no way you can generalise that to cover two completely different languages, where one is visual and one is aural. If you have evidence for your categorical statement, that's great - could you share it with the rest of the class?

4) I'm dissapointed nobody's mentioned the tHGttG reference - I'd do it myself, but I can't remember the name of the archeologist.

I didn't mean to imply that having a disability made you a better person. I did mean to imply that overcoming adversity has benefits that are rather wishy-washy and hard to pin down, but no less real for that.

Or, put another, do you have greater admiration for Richard Branson, or the Queen?

5) There's no place you can go to to get silence, because your own body makes noises. And there's no set of headphones that cancels out all noise. Hence, *complete* silence is unavailable to the hearing.

Is it an important advantage? Obviously not. It's still an advantage.



As I said before, and will no doubt have to say again, I consider that being deaf is, in general, a net disadvantage. But to act like there are *no* advantages is to oversimplify the world, and ignore what deaf people actually say. It amazes me that this seems to matter so much. We both agree that being deaf is a net disadvantage - why is it so important whether there are a few minor compensations as well as problems?

-Martin

> "Sorry love, we thought you'd like it."

As my parents said to me after I said that I'd rather have gone to a different primary school to the one I was sent to. This kind of thing happens all the time. (though clearly school A vs school B isn't the same as hearing vs deaf, before someone complains) Life is full of regrets, whether we regret our own decision, or we regret the decisions of others that effected us.

> "Would you be arguing the same point if they wanted to use some artificial chemical means to create deafness in the foetus?"

Umm, I've already been asked that in a different form - somebody suggested surgery. And the answer's pretty much the same: if it was painless and done before any hearing has developed, and had no other negative impacts on the baby's development, then yes.

-Martin

Is so boggled by one part of post 108 simply cannot take part in discussion further.

How are you defining negative impacts though? Isn't deafness a negative impact?

What if the parents wanted to wipe out one of the other senses? Or do you make a special case for deafness?

I did say *other* negative impacts. Of course deafness is a net negative impact. I'd take any other cases on their merits, judging them as they came. I don't know whether there's such a thing as blind culture, so I couldn't really comment.

Not that lack of knowledge has stopped me before...
-Martin

Lucinda, at one moment you are extolling the virtues of deafness and the next you are stating that deafness is a 'net disadvantage'...

As far as I am concerned - no loving parent in their right mind would want to knowingly put their future child at a 'net disadvantage' to other children when they had a choice... and it seems to me that every person in this thread (including yourself) is in agreement that being deaf is a net disadvantage...
IMO either the future parents are quite aware of this fact, that their child will be 'at a net disadvantage' and have taken the decision that they don't care, or they are so self-engrossed that they can't even look objectively at the situation.

Either way, I can not see how you can defend a situation where two people wish to handicap another and say it is for that third persons own good...

Sounds somewhere close to being in agreement with compulsary frontal lobotomies for psychiatric hospital patients because 'they'll be happier like that'...do you agree with that idea too?


PS Collins Thesaurus:
Handicap: Noun 1. block, disadvantage, limitation, etc...

There's no contradiction: deafness has some advantages, but is a net disadvantage. It is a disability and also a difference. Life is not black and white and it is entirely possible for something to be both an advantage in some ways and a disadvantage in other ways. And I've not complained about the use of the term 'handicap' (though I'm slightly less comfortable with terms like 'cripple' that have been used on this thread).

But I'm not ruling out the possibility that in some circumstances the advantages of being deaf may outweigh the disadvantages, and in these cases it'd be the ability to hear that would be the handicap. This may be one of those, or it may not. People who know more about the situation are better placed than you and I to decide.

> "no loving parent in their right mind would want to knowingly put their future child at a 'net disadvantage' to other children when they had a choice"

So it *is* circular then. Choosing a deaf child is wrong, so the parents must be out of their mind, so their judgement is irrelevant, so their choice of a deaf child is wrong. That's not just a debating point: if you come to this situation thinking that it's the wrong decision, then everything about it will scream wrongness at you. If you come to it with an open mind, then you may percieve things differently.

Both parents seem to agree that their child will be at a net disadvantage. They say that being black also puts you at a net disadvantage in the USA, and use that as an analogy with being deaf. It seems to me that they do care, but think there are more important factors for them to consider than their child's future wages or biological perfection.

> "Sounds somewhere close to being in agreement with compulsary frontal lobotomies for psychiatric hospital patients because 'they'll be happier like that'"

Frontal lobotomies were done to make patients more manageable, not to make them happier, no matter what the PR people may have said at the time. I don't favour them, because while they may possibly increase base pleasure, they also cut out (quite literally) any potential for higher forms of happiness. Also, they were typically done against the desires of the patients involved, and satisfaction of desires is an important part of happiness.

-Martin

>Also, they were typically done against the desires of the patients >involved,

Oh yeah? And who asked these ratlings if they would rather be deaf?

Lucinda, I am a very open-minded person and I think your ideas on this matter are completely wrong.

You have to take into account that these deaf people are a part of an emerging culture surrounding deafness. It's a very new thing. They want their child to be a part of that culture whose membership requires that you be deaf. It may sound a little strange to some, but who are we to judge?

When looked at in a cultural perspective, it is a difference, but from a medical/physical point of view it is a disability. Why can't it be both?

"Political correctness gone mad"? Daily Mail Headline-esque thread topics gone mad more like...

Ste

"It may sound a little strange to some, but who are we to judge?"

Well, I'm going to judge. They want to deny their child the ability to hear for what are, at the end of the day, selfish reasons. I'm quite happy to be judgemental about that.

Perhaps they have found a culture that is inclusive with respect to them instead of being outsiders in "our" culture. Perhaps they think this new place is full of wonderful and supporting like minded people and they want their child to be a part of it because it would benefit that child.

Look at it one way it seems selfish, look at it another it is not. That's why I'm not judging.

Ste

"Perhaps they have found a culture that is inclusive with respect to them instead of being outsiders in "our" culture. Perhaps they think this new place is full of wonderful and supporting like minded people and they want their child to be a part of it because it would benefit that child."

being deaf is not like being black or homosexual. The problems it causes are not about social prejudices, they are about the fact the deaf cannot hear. This means they are incapable of appreciating certain things and communicating in certain ways. That is a disadvantage.