a friend's query
Arnold Zwicky
to post a query here, but would have appeared as a complete stranger
using a pseudonym, and so would have been very unlikely to be taken
seriously.
the background: e lived a more or less ordinary heterosexual male life
until he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, underwent the surgery,
and then was chemically castrated (to eliminate testosterone from his
system, since it feeds tumor growth). he then found himself in a
third-sex world, physically feminized (he lost his body hair, though
not his facial hair, his breasts swelled, and his penis shrank to boy
size; and of course he ceased to have erections) and, as he sees it,
psychologically and emotionally feminized in several ways as well.
after a while he began to feel attracted to some men, wanting to kiss
them and (most recently) to serve them sexually.
so he now sees himself as both a eunuch and a bisexual, and he finds
this all astonishing, and more than a bit scary, but he's doing his
best to find a new way in the world. he's an intelligent and
intellectually adventurous person.
there are two obvious communities (of sorts) open to him: men who've
had prostate cancer, and eunuchs. men who've had prostate cancer
(especially with chemical or surgical castration) tend to be in denial
- they emphasize how active, athletic, etc. they are, and they are
extremely reluctant to talk honestly about the situation they're in.
(the rates of divorce, depression, and suicide are pretty high.) not
a promising place for e to find support; he's yet to find anyone else
who says they've ended up in the place he is now, by the same route.
there is, i was amazed to discover, a significant eunuch community,
comprising men who have been castrated or want to be, men who want to
do the cutting for them, and men who want eunuchs as partners. this
is pretty grim stuff, the far edge of s/m relationships, meaning
*both* slave/master and sadomasochism. not what e has in mind at all,
and some of the people who've approached him sound to me like very
dangerous loonies.
but... e is not only a eunuch but also (some kind of) a bisexual, so
maybe there could be some place for him in the lgbt world. he's been
talking to gay friends, both male and female, and wondering whether
he could fit in somehow.
e's original proposal for a soc.motss posting was the following:
>I am a middle-aged eunuch who has recently discovered bisexuality a
>year after being castrated. Are there others on this list, who
>identify themselves as eunuchs?
since i'm fronting for him here, i feel entitled to add some analysis
and commentary of my own. my reading of him - this week; things
change all the time as he discovers new feelings and thinks further
through this situation - is that he wants two things. the easier of
these is some reassurance that there could be a place for him in the
lgbt word, that he wouldn't simply be shunned as a freak. he'd like
a place to feel comfortable in. (having come late and slowly and
painfully to the wider gay world, i appreciate his desire, and his
concern.) about this, i've been encouraging.
the more difficult of the two things he wants is some reassurance that
he could find an affectionate relationship (not slavery) with another
man, that there's someone in the world for him. this isn't obviously
the case, given his physical/anatomical condition. i've impressed on
him the diversity and variety of gay men's feelings and desires - he's
still learning not to see gay men through the stereotypes of his
previous heterosexual life and the public surfaces of gay male life -
and tried to say something along the lines of "no matter who you are,
there's someone who wants just that", but it could be dauntingly hard
to find any such person that you can actually connect with, and he's
sharp enough to see that *i* haven't found any such person for seven
years now, despite my being so much closer to gay male standard than
he is.
but it starts with a simple question, about whether there are readers
who identify as eunuchs (and would be willing to talk with him).
probably public posting is not in order. what e says about this is:
>I guess I'd like to post under the name "eunuchunique" initially,
>with the email address: eunuch...@yahoo.com. [Sorry about this
>wave of cowardliness.]
public responses to my description of his condition would be
appropriate, of course, though neither he nor i would expect actual
advice. this is not a good advice medium.
b a in p a
David Kaye
> he then found himself in a
> third-sex world, physically feminized (he lost his body hair,
> [....] as he sees it,
> psychologically and emotionally feminized in several ways as well.
I'm troubled by the use (not just yours but common use) of words such
as "feminized", implying that the lack of hair or the lack of
testosterone somehow turns the person in to a female. Being female is
not a *lack* of anything.
I bring this up because many people, especially the people who have
been castrated, tend to think of themselves as less of something, of
being somehow incomplete, and there is this age-old problem that many
men do not want to think any aspect of themselves is woman-like.
These guys are still guys. They're still male. They're still XY.
> there are two obvious communities (of sorts) open to him: men who've
> had prostate cancer, and eunuchs.
To be honest, both "communities" sound pretty sad. What I mean is
that I think it's unhealthy to socialize based on a negative aspect of
one's life. Most people I've known with physical deformities have
wanted to be a part of mainstream life, not marginalized.
I'd suggest that the "community" he needs to get involved with is one
based on his interests, his assets, his passions.
> there is, i was amazed to discover, a significant eunuch community,
> comprising men who have been castrated or want to be, men who want to
> do the cutting for them, [....]
I've seen some of these websites and Yahoo groups, and I'll say one
thing: there are a lot of twisted people out there. I think society
has no room for genuine sadists, and there are plenty of creeps out
there who want to castrate people or feed them until they die (do a
Google on "feeders"), or do any number of other reprehensible things.
I feel these sadists need to be locked up for the good of society.
Period. I'd advise your friend to stay away from any of these
"communities" because they attract sadists like flies.
> but... e is not only a eunuch but also (some kind of) a bisexual, so
> maybe there could be some place for him in the lgbt world. he's been
> talking to gay friends, both male and female, and wondering whether
> he could fit in somehow.
Why does he have to fit into a GBLT "community"? The GBLT "community"
today is a very wretched place to be, filled with a lot of
self-loathing speed freaks. The happiest I've been in my life has
been this past 7 or so years that I decided not to try to fit into the
GBLT community at all. I feel much richer for it.
Relationships? Well, the good relationships are usually hard to come
by, whether you be a eunuch or a "Men's Fitness" model.
Geoff Miller
David Kaye <sfdavi...@yahoo.com> writes:
> I'm troubled by the use (not just yours but common use) of
> words such as "feminized", implying that the lack of hair
> or the lack of testosterone somehow turns the person in to
> a female. Being female is not a *lack* of anything.
Oh, David; you are *so* PC. While a lack of hair or
testosterone doesn't _ipso facto_ turn someone into a
female, a lack of those things, along with (ObNicholson)
reason and accountability, *is* undeniably characteristic
of being female.
But if it makes you feel any better, it goes both ways.
Being male is a lack of a few things, also: neuroses,
shallowness, hyperlogorrhea, emotional instability,
manipulativeness, self-centeredness, and insecurity,
to name but a few. And tits; let's not forget tits.
Hooters. Headlights. Jugs. Jubblies. (I always
liked that one.)
Feel better now? Not so much the oppressive "penis
person?"
> I bring this up because many people, especially the
> people who have been castrated, tend to think of
> themselves as less of something, of being somehow
> incomplete, and there is this age-old problem that
> many men do not want to think any aspect of themselves
> is woman-like. These guys are still guys. They're
> still male. They're still XY.
But they can't get a hard-on. Ergo, they're incomplete.
> To be honest, both "communities" sound pretty sad. What
> I mean is that I think it's unhealthy to socialize based
> on a negative aspect of one's life. Most people I've
> known with physical deformities have wanted to be a part
> of mainstream life, not marginalized.
Contrast this with the militancy of some deaf people, who
insist that efforts to cure deafness amount to a form of
attempted genocide. Which is silly, of course, but that's
not the point.
Don't you think it's natural for people with a shared dis-
ability to want to associate with others of their kind
(I can see you bristling at my turn of phrase, but I
really don't feel it's at all inappropriate) for puposes
of commisseration and coping and solution-sharing, if
nothing else? That old saying about misery loving company
exists for a reason.
> I'd suggest that the "community" he needs to get involved
> with is one based on his interests, his assets, his passions.
You mean like popping a boner? Wait, that's gay community
in general, isn't it? Talk about "mainstreaming"...
Geoff
--
"The wise man's understanding turns him to his right.
The fool's understanding turns him to his left."
-- Ecclesiastes 10:2
Ken Shan
> Contrast this with the militancy of some deaf people, who
> insist that efforts to cure deafness amount to a form of
> attempted genocide. Which is silly, of course, but that's
> not the point.
Or, for that matter, the militancy of some homosexual people, who
insist that efforts to cure homosexuality amount to a form of attempted
genocide.
--
Edit this signature at http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/ken/sig
Europe Day is the 9th of May!
http://europa.eu.int/abc/symbols/9-may/index_en.htm
* * * * * * * * * * * *
David Horne
> Ken Shan:
> >Geoff Miller:
>
> >>Contrast this with the militancy of some deaf people, who
> >>insist that efforts to cure deafness amount to a form of
> >>attempted genocide.
>
> Does that actually exist?
I've heard about it, and I didn't think it was mythical. I doubt if it's
widespread though. Tangentially, there are certainly some deaf people
who are quite clear that they wouldn't want to be "cured" if they could
be, but that's a different matter entirely, I think, and comes about for
a wide variety of reasons.
If search hard enough, you'll probably manage to find surprising
attitudes towards anything.
David
--
David Horne- www.davidhorne.co.uk
davidhorne (at) davidhorne (dot) co (dot) uk
Ken Rudolph
> Ken Shan:
>
>>Geoff Miller:
>
>
>>>insist that efforts to cure deafness amount to a form of
>>>attempted genocide.
>>
>
Yes. One example is the how some people think that
cochlear implants are wrong because they work towards the
destruction of deaf culture as they perceive it. They also believe
that all deaf children should learn signing rather than adaptive
strategies like lipreading and talking, however poorly, in order to
be true to deaf culture. There was an amazing documentary a couple
of years ago called SOUND AND FURY, which was about this. It was
so good, it should have won the Oscar that year.
>>Or, for that matter, the militancy of some homosexual people,
>>who insist that efforts to cure homosexuality amount to a form
>>of attempted genocide.
>
>
> Is that actually comparable? Or are you being merely ironic?
Never thought of it that way; but it does explain my visceral
loathing of the fundies and groups like Exodus International. And
I'm not even militantly pro-gay culture.
--Ken Rudolph
Ellen Evans
[]
>Being male is a lack of a few things, also: neuroses,
>shallowness, hyperlogorrhea, emotional instability,
>manipulativeness, self-centeredness, and insecurity,
>to name but a few.
Sparkling wit, and at this time in the morning.
--
Ellen Evans 17 Across: The "her" of "Leave Her to Heaven"
je...@panix.com New York Times, 7/14/96
Ellen Evans
[]
>Yes.
Well, being again cochlear implants isn't exactly calling "curing"
deafness genocide.
> One example is the how some people think that
>cochlear implants are wrong because they work towards the
>destruction of deaf culture as they perceive it.
It's an inherently dangerous surgical intervention with decidedly mixed
results, justified purely on the basis of fixing something that is broken.
A fair number of deaf folks don't think of themselves as broken.
Ellen Evans
>In article <3EB67273...@attbi.com>, Ken Rudolph <ke...@attbi.com> wrote:
>
>[]
>
>>Yes.
>
>Well, being again cochlear implants isn't exactly calling "curing"
>deafness genocide.
Michael Pastor
"Ellen Evans" <je...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:b95spc$jqn$1...@panix3.panix.com...
I find the phrasing "justified purely on the basis of fixing something that
is broken" somewhat inflammatory.
In its most abstract, there are two ways to look at it:
purely logical and factual - they are indeed physically malfunctioning based
on an absolute standard (but then so are color blind people)
based on values - there is nothing wrong with them, as humans are capable of
overcoming their limitations (we wear clothes to survive in winter), and as
long as there is a supportive community of like-minded folks. Without other
folks, there is no 'deaf culture.'
those are the two theoretical extremes: reality is somewhere in between -
there is nothing wrong with striving to give hearing to those that don't
have it, but there is also nothing wrong with reinforcing and supporting
deaf culture. Yellow and blue make green.
The gay community is stuck in the same bind - as we gain our equal civil
rights - marriage, adoption/reproduction, anti-discrimination statutes,
etc - we effectively erode the very things that forced us together as a
community and subsequent creation of 'gay culture.' At what point is the
prejudice against us responsible for our segregation, versus self-selection
and self-segregation that have created the institutions of 'gay culture' (if
only to make sure persecution never happens again)?
michael pastor
Clay Colwell
> Geoff Miller <geo...@u1.netgate.net> wrote in article <b951qh$k...@u1.netgate.net> in soc.motss:
> > Contrast this with the militancy of some deaf people, who
> > insist that efforts to cure deafness amount to a form of
> > attempted genocide. Which is silly, of course, but that's
> > not the point.
>
> Or, for that matter, the militancy of some homosexual people, who
> insist that efforts to cure homosexuality amount to a form of attempted
> genocide.
False comparison. It can be argued that the full deprivation of a
sense is indeed a defect, whereas such cannot be dont convincingly
for homosexuality.
Michael Thomas
Oh, I dunno. We have to go to pretty heroic lengths to
participate in the Pink Mystery, and I'm sure lots of hets
think that's pretty darn defective.
--
Michael Thomas (mi...@mtcc.com http://www.mtcc.com/~mike/)
Oh, the Bible is full of dribbling sperm-like fluids. All that
begetting and begotting! A race of genetic inbreds, that's us!
*X*
Cornelia Wyngaarden
wrote on 5/5/03 10:37 AM:
>
> Oh, I dunno. We have to go to pretty heroic lengths to
> participate in the Pink Mystery, and I'm sure lots of hets
> think that's pretty darn defective.
Huh? Jacking off in the kitchen's measuring cup is now heroic?
corry
Michael Thomas
No, but making it into a spunk omelet is.
Nick Fitch
Getting it all in certainly is. We have enough trouble peeing into
something the size of a toilet bowl without splashing and we have a lot
more control over aiming urine. Anyone who can jack off onto a measuring
cup without having to spend several minutes on his knees scraping it off
the floor with a palette knife has earned some sort of minor medal.
Besides, personally speaking and no offense intended to the female
contingent, but I'd want a bloody big medal given what happens to it
next. I'm not having any part of my cellular material go through that,
even by one remove and a turkey baster, without some sort of national
recognition of selfless service to a process about which I could come up
with a limitless number of things I'd rather do even on a slow day.
--
** To email, replace CRAPFREE with dircon **
DRS
wrote:
>
> []
>
> >Yes.
>
> Well, being again cochlear implants isn't exactly calling "curing"
> deafness genocide.
"One of their stated goals [in the book] is to overcome the “either-or”
thinking that has characterized the debate over pediatric cochlear
implantation, with the medical establishment and the media touting it as
little short of a miracle, and the Deaf community likening it to cultural
genocide."
http://gupress.gallaudet.edu/reviews/CIICchoice-revw.html
Even a cursory Google search turns up lots of hits on the supposed genocide
of deaf culture. One hit turned up this:
"Confronted with the mainstreaming tragedy in Britain, members of the
British National Union of the Deaf formally charged their government with a
violation of the United Nations' Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide. That treaty prohibits inflicting mental harm on
the children of an ethnic group, and it prohibits forcibly transferring them
to another group. According to this deaf organization, mainstreaming will
gravely injure 'not only deaf children but deaf children's rightful language
and culture.' Their published CHARTER OF THE RIGHTS OF THE DEAF asserts that
'deaf schools are being effectively forced to close and therefore children
of one ethnic/linguistic minority group, that is, deaf people, are being
forcibly transferred to another group, that is, hearing people,' in
violation of the U.N. convention."
From THE MASK OF BENEVOLENCE, P. 142, by Harlan Lane
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:HjRvglG7v5IC:hometown.aol.com/SCarter11/gd1.htm%250D+%22deaf+culture%22+genocide+Britain&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
(this is a rather, er, vehement page, and its author seems to have a least
one foot on the wrong side of the line dividing reality from the conspiracy
theorists, so it's hard to say how representative it is but it's certainly
interesting).
--
"When you're right, you can never be too radical."
Martin Luther King
David Kaye
> Oh, David; you are *so* PC.
I have no problem with being politically correct. Political
correctness recognizes the dignity of all people, especially the
oppressed. As a gay or bi man, one would think that you would endorse
political correctness, since it's been the main reason there has been
any progress at all in GBLT civil rights.
> While a lack of hair or
> testosterone doesn't _ipso facto_ turn someone into a
> female, a lack of those things, along with (ObNicholson)
> reason and accountability, *is* undeniably characteristic
> of being female.
Does shaving your face make you a woman or more womanly? I don't
think so. And as for hairiness, my ex-womanfriend had hairier legs
than I did. She was undeniably a woman and I was undeniably a man.
Your premise that a lack of hair makes a person somehow feminine is an
insult to women.
>
> But they can't get a hard-on. Ergo, they're incomplete.
If you're so shallow that you define yourself by your ability to get a
hard-on, then I can't do much but feel sorry for you. There are lots
of reasons a guy can't get it up: stress, coming too much,
prescription and recreational drugs, or just tiredness. Does this
make a man any less a man? Does this make him somehow "incomplete"?
> That old saying about misery loving company
> exists for a reason.
And the company breeds more misery, which is my point. Thank you.
Sure, there's nothing wrong with getting together once in awhile with
people with similar disabilities to get support and figure out ways of
coping. But the original poster suggested hooking up with these
people as a basis of creating a community of friends. This is
entirely different.
> You mean like popping a boner? Wait, that's gay community
> in general, isn't it? Talk about "mainstreaming"...
If "popping a boner" is your idea of passion, then it's not even worth
carrying on a conversation with you. Now, if you're really serious
about this, I'd suggest that a person whose only passion in life is
sex is a very sorry kind of person who will be miserable later in life
as sexual opportunities become less and less. (And yes, as people get
older there are a fewer and fewer people who want to have sex with
them.)
Mike McKinley
> Does shaving your face make you a woman or more womanly? I don't
> think so. And as for hairiness, my ex-womanfriend had hairier legs
> than I did. She was undeniably a woman and I was undeniably a man.
> Your premise that a lack of hair makes a person somehow feminine is an
> insult to women.
I would live to see the two of you on the beach.
--
It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law
prohibiting the President from ordering assassination.
Henry Kissinger
Ellen Evans
Michael Pastor <michael_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
[me]
>> It's an inherently dangerous surgical intervention with decidedly mixed
>> results, justified purely on the basis of fixing something that is broken.
>> A fair number of deaf folks don't think of themselves as broken.
>I find the phrasing "justified purely on the basis of fixing something that
>is broken" somewhat inflammatory.
Good for you.
[]
>purely logical and factual - they are indeed physically malfunctioning based
>on an absolute standard (but then so are color blind people)
And who makes this supposedly "absolute standard"? Some people don't have
absolute pitch, some do. Are the ones who don't "physically
malfunctioning"?
>based on values - there is nothing wrong with them, as humans are capable of
>overcoming their limitations (we wear clothes to survive in winter),
Many deaf people don't think of the way they are as "limitations" that
need to be overcome.
[]
>those are the two theoretical extremes: reality is somewhere in between -
>there is nothing wrong with striving to give hearing to those that don't
>have it,
We're talking about a *significant* surgical intervention, with major
risks associated with it. And we're talking about a world in which there
is *overwhelming* pressure from the hearing world to conform, despite
those risks and despite the fact that the level of "hearing" produced
varies wildly. So I'd say your phrasing "striving to give hearing" is
somewhat inane.
>but there is also nothing wrong with reinforcing and supporting
>deaf culture. Yellow and blue make green.
>
>The gay community is stuck in the same bind - as we gain our equal civil
>rights - marriage, adoption/reproduction, anti-discrimination statutes,
>etc - we effectively erode the very things that forced us together as a
>community and subsequent creation of 'gay culture.'
Do you know gay people who don't want civil rights? Not having those
makes a *huge* negative impact on people every day. But there are a large
number of deaf folks who don't see being deaf negative at all.
Ellen Evans
Clay Colwell <er...@io.com> wrote:
>Ken Shan <k...@digitas.harvard.edu> wrote in message news:<ipfho-...@proper.ptq.dyndns.org>...
>> Or, for that matter, the militancy of some homosexual people, who
>> insist that efforts to cure homosexuality amount to a form of attempted
>> genocide.
>
>False comparison. It can be argued that the full deprivation of a
>sense is indeed a defect,
Actually, a fair number of people who are deaf don't think of themselves
as having a defect at all.
David Horne
> It's an inherently dangerous surgical intervention with decidedly mixed
> results, justified purely on the basis of fixing something that is broken.
> A fair number of deaf folks don't think of themselves as broken.
Fantastic, so they don't need to have the surgery. What, exactly, is the
problem?
Ken Shan
> False comparison. It can be argued that the full deprivation of a
> sense is indeed a defect, whereas such cannot be dont convincingly
> for homosexuality.
(I'm not sure why you put the word "full" above. Are you making a
distinction between "full" deafness and "partial" deafness?)
First of all, I assume that you don't think that it is a defect to not
be able to see ultraviolet or infrared. Perhaps it is because no human
does. Assuming such, you really mean "full deprivation of a sense that
some human has" is a defect.
Second, I assume that you don't think that it is a defect to only see
three primary colors (rather than four). Perhaps it is because few
humans see four primary colors. Assuming such, you really mean "full
deprivation of a sense that most humans have" is a defect.
Now, I'm not quite sure what you mean by a sense. For example, is
"sexual arousal by a specific gender" a sense? Or is "sexual arousal" a
sense, but "sexual arousal by a specific gender" only part of a sense?
If the former (and assuming for the moment the Kinsey scale or some such
thing), wouldn't all Kinsey-1 and Kinsey-6 people be fully deprived of a
sense, hence defective? If the latter, would you agree that monosexuals
are defective compared to bisexuals? Or maybe "sexual arousal" is not a
sense after all. What is a sense?
Some people have extremely sensitive hearing in certain frequency
ranges, sometimes allowing a dripping faucet in the distance to cause
major discomfort. Is that the opposite of a defect? As alluded to
elsewhere on this thread, is the lack of absolute pitch a defect? What
about an inability to speak Mandarin Chinese with native fluency,
perhaps a defect developed by many people at teen age?
I'm happy with anybody calling anything a defect, as long as they are
willing to make it clear what they mean and include everything that fits
that definition. (In particular, I am asking for a definition -- your
definition -- of what constitutes a defect, thus in turn what
constitutes a sense, expecting that you have in mind some way to include
deafness and some other things while excluding homosexuality and some
other things.)
Timothy McDaniel
Ken Shan <k...@digitas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>First of all, I assume that you don't think that it is a defect to
>not be able to see ultraviolet or infrared. Perhaps it is because no
>human does. Assuming such, you really mean "full deprivation of a
>sense that some human has" is a defect.
Your example may be better than you know. I recall reading once that
in World War II, some people who had had their corneas removed were
employed by the British government because they could now see
ultraviolet: agents on the coast of France could signal boats offshore
by means of UV lamps, without being seen by normal humans and without
running the detection hazard of a radio transmitter. I can't find
that now by using Google, and I might be wrong.
If it is true, should people have their corneas routinely removed by
surgery and replaced by plastic corneas transparent to UV?
--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com; tm...@us.ibm.com is my work address
Ellen Evans
David Horne <i_will_almost_...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>Ellen Evans <je...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> It's an inherently dangerous surgical intervention with decidedly mixed
>> results, justified purely on the basis of fixing something that is broken.
>> A fair number of deaf folks don't think of themselves as broken.
>
>Fantastic, so they don't need to have the surgery. What, exactly, is the
>problem?
People who believe that they nonetheless need to be "fixed".
And there's a fair number of them out there. Including many (hearing)
parents of the kids who are the most common patients for this kind of
surgery, parents whose decisions, even when perceived as being in the best
interests of the child, are often based on a less than complete grasp of
the deaf world.
David Kaye
>
> I would live to see the two of you on the beach.
Really, her legs were hairier. It's not that her legs were so hairy,
but that while I'm hairy in many places, I'm not so much on my legs.
So, by contrast she had hairier legs than I.
Ellen Evans
Jess Anderson <ande...@wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>>David Horne:
>>>Ellen Evans:
>
>>>>It's an inherently dangerous surgical intervention with
>>>>decidedly mixed results,
>
>surgeries, I wonder?
They're cutting into your head, fairly close to your brain. So more
dangerous than say, the fibroid surgery I had. And while some people -
again, this is mostly kids - can acquire something like "normal" hearing,
a substantial number end up having a very blunt instrument, without the
ability, for example, to discern and parse speech.
[]
>I've little doubt that a large majority of hearing people and
>probably a nontrivial fraction of deaf people regard being
>deaf as a problem they are/would be glad not to have, were it a
>matter of a hand-wave.
I'm sure that's true. The context had to do with why some deaf people
have such a problem with the sorts of "cures" that do, now, exist.
Cornelia Wyngaarden
ande...@wisc.edu wrote on 5/5/03 7:59 PM:
>
> But perhaps we've drifted rather far already from the original
> contention, which was that intervention ("cure" is not an
> appropriate term at all) is tantamount to genocide. I've seen
> very little so far that realistically supports such a claim.
As I understand it, the reference is to do away with a particular culture.
Deaf people and their languages are easily understood as one if you think
about who they mostly communicate with.
The implants have been described by older ex-non-hearing people as painful.
Sound equals pain to a brain that is not used to processing this stimulus.
It is altogether unpleasant for people who have found their way in world of
other senses. It is not that hard to imagine since most of what we
experience each day is noise of ambient dangers. In fact I think the biggest
concern we people have for the deaf among us is that of safety. What I've
been told is that these implants deliver is more anxiety.
corry
Tim Wilson
> The implants have been described by older ex-non-hearing people as painful.
> Sound equals pain to a brain that is not used to processing this stimulus.
> It is altogether unpleasant for people who have found their way in world of
> other senses. It is not that hard to imagine since most of what we
> experience each day is noise of ambient dangers. In fact I think the biggest
> concern we people have for the deaf among us is that of safety. What I've
> been told is that these implants deliver is more anxiety.
What I've been told is that there is incredible variability in the
response to the implants, and that no one-size-fits-all characterization
of the response is possible. That's not what I would consider an
indication of a reliably useful prothesis, but it was reason to continue
the research.
I don't know the degree of "success" on the research that it took to
make these things widely available. That would depend on the regulatory
agency of each country, so I suppose we could look it up.
--
Tim Wilson, Daytona Beach, Florida, USA
home: http://home.cfl.rr.com/mackandtim/
blog: http://timatollah.blogspot.com/
mail: meano...@netscape.net
Tim Wilson
> In article <b978eg$3di$1...@news.doit.wisc.edu>,
> Jess Anderson <ande...@wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>>>David Horne:
>>>
>>>>Ellen Evans:
>>
>>>>>It's an inherently dangerous surgical intervention with
>>>>>decidedly mixed results,
>>
>>How dangerous and how mixed as to results when compared other
>>surgeries, I wonder?
>
>
> They're cutting into your head, fairly close to your brain. So more
> dangerous than say, the fibroid surgery I had. And while some people -
> again, this is mostly kids - can acquire something like "normal" hearing,
> a substantial number end up having a very blunt instrument, without the
> ability, for example, to discern and parse speech.
The old party line on cochlear implants was that it was a highly
variable procedure. There were several individuals who responded
unexpectedly well in terms of hearing without using visual cues, even
one or two who had been stone deaf who could, after the implant, talk on
the phone. If I recall correctly, though, there was almost always
performance benefit when coupled with visual cues.
That was over ten years ago. I don't know what state of the art is
today -- it's an area of hearing I don't keep up with as well as I
should -- but I would imagine that many of the responses to the implant
idea are based on the earlier, not the current technology. (I'm still
skeptical about the signal processing employed, but that's another issue.)
That said, it is an incredibly invasive procedure. The chochlea is
inside the temporal bone, so getting at the little bugger is a tricky
surgery in just about every mammalian species. Still, they've done a
lot of these in the past decade or so, so it's also likely they've
developed a pretty good set of tricks for accomplishing the surgery with
minimal insult.
xym...@bean.rochester.rr.com
wrote:
>David Kaye <sfdavi...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> To be honest, both "communities" sound pretty sad. What
>> I mean is that I think it's unhealthy to socialize based
>> on a negative aspect of one's life. Most people I've
>> known with physical deformities have wanted to be a part
>> of mainstream life, not marginalized.
>
>Contrast this with the militancy of some deaf people, who
>insist that efforts to cure deafness amount to a form of
>attempted genocide. Which is silly, of course, but that's
>not the point.
Someone else asked if this is in fact a view out there in the deaf
community, and yes, it is.
The comment about the view being silly could be overlaid on some gay
people's similar concern about a cure for homosexuality.
>Don't you think it's natural for people with a shared dis-
>ability to want to associate with others of their kind
>(I can see you bristling at my turn of phrase, but I
>really don't feel it's at all inappropriate) for puposes
>of commisseration and coping and solution-sharing, if
>nothing else? That old saying about misery loving company
>exists for a reason.
And doesn't it apply to the human condition?
Katie, who thinks some things just *are,* no "cure" needed
xym...@bean.rochester.rr.com
wrote:
>Jess Anderson wrote:
>> Ken Shan:
>>>Geoff Miller:
>>
>>>>Contrast this with the militancy of some deaf people, who
>>>>insist that efforts to cure deafness amount to a form of
>>>>attempted genocide.
>>
>> Does that actually exist?
>
>Yes. One example is the how some people think that
>cochlear implants are wrong because they work towards the
>destruction of deaf culture as they perceive it. They also believe
>that all deaf children should learn signing rather than adaptive
>strategies like lipreading and talking, however poorly, in order to
>be true to deaf culture. There was an amazing documentary a couple
>of years ago called SOUND AND FURY, which was about this. It was
>so good, it should have won the Oscar that year.
Yes, that's a great film. There's a French one about a hearing
daughter of deaf parents who becomes a world-class musician and who
has to deal with the interesting confluence of cultures (hearing and
deaf), the name of which escapes me, but which is really good, too.
It was made in the mid-1990s, I think.
Anyway, this is off topic and not obmotss (except for me, myself, and
I), but I honestly don't see cochlear implants as being a serious
threat to deaf culture or deaf people. The bottom line is that a few
people will continue to be born deaf for hereditary reasons and many
others will be deafened through illness, accident, or overmedication,
instantly creating a way of experiencing life that is fundamentally
different from being hearing. Cochlear implants, which do not restore
hearing perfectly (and quite imperfectly in many, if not most, cases),
cannot possibly restore that state of "hearingness" most people take
for granted. So the need for understanding and simply living one's
own life experience remains essential to a full life, and a little
respect all around ought to go a long way. We cannot be what we are
not, only what we are. If that's deaf, fine. If that's gay, fine,
too.
Katie, finally back online after moving into her new house, what an
ordeal
xym...@bean.rochester.rr.com
>
>Do you know gay people who don't want civil rights? Not having those
>makes a *huge* negative impact on people every day. But there are a large
>number of deaf folks who don't see being deaf negative at all.
True, but with a caveat: I'd amend this statement to say that many
deaf people see being deaf only as negative when they have to deal
with inconsiderate hearing people and associated systems. Kind of
like some gay folks who see nothing wrong with being gay until they
run into the het hegemony over civil rights.
Katie
xym...@bean.rochester.rr.com
>In article <1fuif7l.roz5i1bubk8uN%i_will_almost_...@yahoo.co.uk>,
>David Horne <i_will_almost_...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>>Ellen Evans <je...@panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>> It's an inherently dangerous surgical intervention with decidedly mixed
>>> results, justified purely on the basis of fixing something that is broken.
>>> A fair number of deaf folks don't think of themselves as broken.
>>
>>Fantastic, so they don't need to have the surgery. What, exactly, is the
>>problem?
>
>People who believe that they nonetheless need to be "fixed".
>
>And there's a fair number of them out there. Including many (hearing)
>parents of the kids who are the most common patients for this kind of
>surgery, parents whose decisions, even when perceived as being in the best
>interests of the child, are often based on a less than complete grasp of
>the deaf world.
There are few moral dilemmas I hope NEVER to encounter in my life, and
this is one of them: if I were to have a deaf kid, I honestly don't
know what decision I would make wrt the kid's hearing status. The
cochlear implant surgery truly is terrible, but the fact also remains
that the earlier a child is exposed to auditory information, the
easier auditory language is for the child to acquire. And acquiring
competency in English is a real asset in U.S. society. I'd probably
not do the surgery on the kid, instead opting for digital hearing
aids.
Katie, who hated the digital hearing aids she tried and stuck with the
same old analog ones (and no, I'll never get a cochlear implant)
Ken Rudolph
> On Mon, 05 May 2003 07:17:23 -0700, Ken Rudolph <ke...@attbi.com>
> wrote:
>>...There was an amazing documentary a couple
>>of years ago called SOUND AND FURY, which was about this. It was
>>so good, it should have won the Oscar that year.
>
>
> Yes, that's a great film. There's a French one about a hearing
> daughter of deaf parents who becomes a world-class musician and who
> has to deal with the interesting confluence of cultures (hearing and
> deaf), the name of which escapes me, but which is really good, too.
> It was made in the mid-1990s, I think.
A German film actually, one I loved called "Jenseits der Stille"
(Beyond Silence), which was made by Caroline Link who just won the
foreign film Oscar for "Nowhere in Africa". Highly recommended.
--Ken Rudolph
Ellen Evans
<xym...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
[]
>There are few moral dilemmas I hope NEVER to encounter in my life, and
>this is one of them: if I were to have a deaf kid, I honestly don't
>know what decision I would make wrt the kid's hearing status.
A friend of mine, hearing, had a son who, a few days short of his first
birthday, came down with men·in·gi·. After a hellish couple of weeks
during which it was completely unclear that he would live, he pulled
through, but was left profoundly deaf. His dad, who is a perfectly kind
and thoughtful person, was adamant that his son would do whatever it took
to be in the world of the hearing - lip reading, cued speech - regardless
of the fact that none of these things would be "natural" to the boy, who
was too young to have acquired oral language. His mom, however, tried to
remain open to other ways of looking at things, ways that included
re-conceptualizing how it might be possible to live in the world. Like
her husband, she wanted what was best for her child, but she realized that
the question of what was best might not be as self-evident as it first
seemed.
So, after much agonizing discussion, the boy learned sign language
(hearing aids, which he also wore and hated, as the sensation was invasive
without providing much in the way of useful information were used for a
while), as did his brother and sister, for whom it was simply what they
did at home. His parents did as well, although, sadly, his dad has never
become really fluent. And, as a result of the connection to deaf culture
he acquired through sign, he feels a strong tie to a culture in which what
he is is not understood as imperfect, defective, or broken, but merely as
belonging to a different yet rich world of its own. That's been really
good for him in dealing with a hearing world - he has been mainstreamed at
school, and in most other things - that can be cruel and unwilling to make
basic accomodations.
Michael Thomas
> Anyway, this is off topic and not obmotss (except for me, myself, and
> I), but I honestly don't see cochlear implants as being a serious
> threat to deaf culture or deaf people. The bottom line is that a few
> people will continue to be born deaf for hereditary reasons and many
> others will be deafened through illness, accident, or overmedication,
> instantly creating a way of experiencing life that is fundamentally
> different from being hearing. Cochlear implants, which do not restore
> hearing perfectly (and quite imperfectly in many, if not most, cases),
> cannot possibly restore that state of "hearingness" most people take
> for granted. So the need for understanding and simply living one's
> own life experience remains essential to a full life, and a little
> respect all around ought to go a long way. We cannot be what we are
> not, only what we are. If that's deaf, fine. If that's gay, fine,
> too.
I wouldn't necessarily discount the march of
technology. And I suspect that's what a lot of the
alarmists have seized onto. While an imperfect analogy at
best, there's been a lot of whining about the imminent
destruction of the Gay Community too, what with all of
those nasty assimilated fags and dykes. I say, "who
cares"? Nothing lasts forever, and by and large the News
at 11 is that fags 'n dykes still have a tendency to
cluster together for a variety of reasons beyond huddling
in smart Victorian bunkers and telling war stories of the
Oppressor's Doc Martin's.
Ellen Evans
Michael Thomas <mi...@mtcc.com> wrote:
> Nothing lasts forever, and by and large the News
> at 11 is that fags 'n dykes still have a tendency to
> cluster together for a variety of reasons beyond huddling
> in smart Victorian bunkers and telling war stories of the
> Oppressor's Doc Martin's.
It's easier to get laid.
Michael Thomas
And this is where the analogy breaks down... I cannot for
the life of me think of *anything* about being glb that
hets think they need to "deal" with that isn't rooted in
irrationality and bigotry. The same just isn't true for
deafness -- there's an obvious language barrier. Do you
really want to say that all hearing people should learn to
sign to accommodate the deaf? Frankly, as a Greater Social
Good, learning Chinese or Spanish would probably a better
choice. If not -- other than just teaching people that
screaming louder isn't helpful -- what should be done?
Mike, who suspects that in the end
the net will prove to be one the largest
technological/cultural advances for deaf/hearing
relationships in, well, maybe even forever...
voice, video and simultaneous voice recognition
over IP would rock
Michael Thomas
> In article <v7of2g6...@fasolt.mtcc.com>,
> Michael Thomas <mi...@mtcc.com> wrote:
> > Nothing lasts forever, and by and large the News
> > at 11 is that fags 'n dykes still have a tendency to
> > cluster together for a variety of reasons beyond huddling
> > in smart Victorian bunkers and telling war stories of the
> > Oppressor's Doc Martin's.
>
> It's easier to get laid.
And be bitter about everybody else getting laid but
you. And don't forget the tina slamming rings. Can't
forget that.
Alex Elliott
Jack Hamilton <j...@acm.org> wrote:
>Ken Shan <k...@digitas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>>Second, I assume that you don't think that it is a defect to only see
>>three primary colors (rather than four). Perhaps it is because few
>>humans see four primary colors.
>
The typical human sees three primary colors because we have three types of
"cone" photoreceptors that are sensitive to colors in three different
regions of the spectrum. It's not difficult to imaine a hypothetical
fourth type of cone that has its sensitivity peak in a different place
from the other three, thus giving its bearer the ability to see in four
primary colors.
I don't know whether any humans ever do have more than three types of
cones, but a brief google search did turn up the factoid that parrots have
four types of cones (they have an extra one in the near-UV range), some
species of fish that live in the Great Barrier Reef may have up to six
different types of photoreceptors (i.e., six primary colors) ,and some of
the crustaceans that live there have twelve types of cone-like sensors:
http://www.vthrc.uq.edu.au:16080/ecovis/CurrentRes.html
So all those pretty, bright-colored fish you see in salt-water tanks
(thread-tie!) probably look pretty dull compared to how you'd see them if
you were one of these little shrimps that can see twelve primary colors!
Compared to those little buggers, we're all colorblind.
Alex.
Ann Burlingham
> Katie, finally back online after moving into her new house, what an
> ordeal
ooh? oh? where' you move?
C.L. Lassiter
I appreciate what Katie says. I moved 4/19 (with a ton o'help
from my friends and s.m's own Brian Vogel and his partner, Jim Hanger).
My bedroom's tolerable as is my exercise room and the kitchen. The
living room's a disaster as is the guest room which has to be up and
running by 5/17 when a friend comes for a 10 day visit.
Oh how I hate cardboard!
cl
DRS
news:V_Lta.2757$aK.1...@twister.tampabay.rr.com...
[...]
> The old party line on cochlear implants was that it was a highly
> variable procedure. There were several individuals who responded
> unexpectedly well in terms of hearing without using visual cues, even
> one or two who had been stone deaf who could, after the implant, talk on
> the phone. If I recall correctly, though, there was almost always
> performance benefit when coupled with visual cues.
>
> That was over ten years ago. I don't know what state of the art is
> today -- it's an area of hearing I don't keep up with as well as I
> should -- but I would imagine that many of the responses to the implant
> idea are based on the earlier, not the current technology. (I'm still
> skeptical about the signal processing employed, but that's another issue.)
There's probably no better place to start than with the people who invented
cochlear implants: http://www.medoto.unimelb.edu.au/cic/outcomes.htm
> That said, it is an incredibly invasive procedure. The chochlea is
> inside the temporal bone, so getting at the little bugger is a tricky
> surgery in just about every mammalian species. Still, they've done a
> lot of these in the past decade or so, so it's also likely they've
> developed a pretty good set of tricks for accomplishing the surgery with
> minimal insult.
The real issue medically is not that the surgery itself is particularly
dangerous - it is not - but that it destroys what's left of the inner ear.
For that reason some people argue that deaf children particularly should
only have one implant, thus leaving the other ear as intact as possible in
case future advances render the implant obsolete.
--
"When you're right, you can never be too radical."
Martin Luther King
Clay Colwell
> In article <f415da82.03050...@posting.google.com>,
> Clay Colwell <er...@io.com> wrote:
> >Ken Shan <k...@digitas.harvard.edu> wrote in message news:<ipfho-...@proper.ptq.dyndns.org>...
>
> >> Or, for that matter, the militancy of some homosexual people, who
> >> insist that efforts to cure homosexuality amount to a form of attempted
> >> genocide.
> >
> >False comparison. It can be argued that the full deprivation of a
> >sense is indeed a defect,
>
> Actually, a fair number of people who are deaf don't think of themselves
> as having a defect at all.
You do realize how closely we're scraping to a certain procedure
done to male genitalia, right?
I am aware that many deaf people (and I don't have any stats on the
number or %age) do not see deafness as a defect. I speak from the
assumption that human beings generally come equipped with 5 senses,
as determined by consensus: touch, sight, smell, hearing, and taste.
I presume that the full and total loss of one of these would be
considered a defect, in that the person lacking such a sense would
be significantly disadvantaged in being able to process the variety
of outside input/stimulus in comparison with those who do not lack
said sense.
Perhaps "disadvantaged" would be a better term, without the potential
coonotative charge of "defect"?
Robert S. Coren
>
> I appreciate what Katie says. I moved 4/19 (with a ton o'help
>from my friends and s.m's own Brian Vogel and his partner, Jim Hanger).
>My bedroom's tolerable as is my exercise room and the kitchen. The
>living room's a disaster as is the guest room which has to be up and
>running by 5/17 when a friend comes for a 10 day visit.
Nothing helps getting esswential things done like a deadline. When we
suddenly realized, after the 2001 renovation, that we had 3 weeks to
get the downstairs bedroom and bathroom ready for guests, we *really*
got cracking.
--
---Robert Coren (co...@panix.com)------------------------------------
"It seemed unimaginable to me that adults would conceive of an entire
contraption, at once huge and respectable, whose sole function was to
make noise." --Thad Carhart [describing childhood impression of a piano]
DRS
news:BADC9DD7.9AF0%cor...@telus.net...
[...]
> The implants have been described by older ex-non-hearing people as
painful.
> Sound equals pain to a brain that is not used to processing this stimulus.
> It is altogether unpleasant for people who have found their way in world
of
> other senses. It is not that hard to imagine since most of what we
> experience each day is noise of ambient dangers. In fact I think the
biggest
> concern we people have for the deaf among us is that of safety. What I've
> been told is that these implants deliver is more anxiety.
That's overstating the case generally. As the Bionic Ear Institute in
Melbourne (the inventors of the cochlear implant) note, "It should be noted
that clinical data indicates that the longer a person has been profoundly
deaf, the more difficult it is for them to gain meaningful information from
a cochlear implant. Generally speaking, if a person has not developed
listening skills that assist in their communication by the time they are a
teenager, they are unlikely to do so by receiving a cochlear implant."
IOW, adults with acquired hearing loss benefit the most.
http://www.medoto.unimelb.edu.au/cic/outcomes.htm
DRS
news:b98l7m$9q6$1...@panix2.panix.com...
[...]
> A friend of mine, hearing, had a son who, a few days short of his first
> birthday, came down with men·in·gi·.
I have dreams of men in gis.
Jason Parker-Burlingham
> True, but with a caveat: I'd amend this statement to say that many
> deaf people see being deaf only as negative when they have to deal
> with inconsiderate hearing people and associated systems.
Indeed. My experiences with deafness and blindness through friends
and partners is that able bods are the only consistently sucky parts
of being disabled. Most other stuff seemed to at least vary from the
inconvenient (remembering where stuff is all the time, dealing with
assistive technology) to the actually quite positive, such as having a
very real community to belong to.
--
``Oooh! A gingerbread house! Hansel and Gretel are set for life!''
DRS
news:f415da82.03050...@posting.google.com...
> je...@panix.com (Ellen Evans) wrote in message
news:<b96jtd$bhc$1...@panix1.panix.com>...
> > In article <f415da82.03050...@posting.google.com>,
> > Clay Colwell <er...@io.com> wrote:
> > >Ken Shan <k...@digitas.harvard.edu> wrote in message
news:<ipfho-...@proper.ptq.dyndns.org>...
> >
> > >> Or, for that matter, the militancy of some homosexual people, who
> > >> insist that efforts to cure homosexuality amount to a form of
attempted
> > >> genocide.
> > >
> > >False comparison. It can be argued that the full deprivation of a
> > >sense is indeed a defect,
> >
> > Actually, a fair number of people who are deaf don't think of themselves
> > as having a defect at all.
>
> You do realize how closely we're scraping to a certain procedure
> done to male genitalia, right?
Except that nobody is advocating routine neonatal hearing loss inducement.
Clay Colwell
> Clay Colwell <er...@io.com> wrote in article <f415da82.03050...@posting.google.com> in soc.motss:
> > False comparison. It can be argued that the full deprivation of a
> > for homosexuality.
>
> (I'm not sure why you put the word "full" above. Are you making a
> distinction between "full" deafness and "partial" deafness?)
Yes, I am making a distinction.
> First of all, I assume that you don't think that it is a defect to not
> be able to see ultraviolet or infrared. Perhaps it is because no human
> does. Assuming such, you really mean "full deprivation of a sense that
> some human has" is a defect.
Yes, I am presuming upon consensus among the human community.
> Second, I assume that you don't think that it is a defect to only see
> three primary colors (rather than four). Perhaps it is because few
> humans see four primary colors. Assuming such, you really mean "full
> deprivation of a sense that most humans have" is a defect.
>
> Now, I'm not quite sure what you mean by a sense. For example, is
> "sexual arousal by a specific gender" a sense? Or is "sexual arousal" a
> sense, but "sexual arousal by a specific gender" only part of a sense?
> If the former (and assuming for the moment the Kinsey scale or some such
> thing), wouldn't all Kinsey-1 and Kinsey-6 people be fully deprived of a
> sense, hence defective? If the latter, would you agree that monosexuals
> are defective compared to bisexuals? Or maybe "sexual arousal" is not a
> sense after all. What is a sense?
Is this where I say, "yes, yes, human experience is a rich tapestry"?
> Some people have extremely sensitive hearing in certain frequency
> ranges, sometimes allowing a dripping faucet in the distance to cause
> major discomfort. Is that the opposite of a defect? As alluded to
> elsewhere on this thread, is the lack of absolute pitch a defect? What
> about an inability to speak Mandarin Chinese with native fluency,
> perhaps a defect developed by many people at teen age?
I don't consider learned behavior, or the lack thereof, a "defect"
_per se_.
> I'm happy with anybody calling anything a defect, as long as they are
> willing to make it clear what they mean and include everything that fits
> that definition. (In particular, I am asking for a definition -- your
> definition -- of what constitutes a defect, thus in turn what
> constitutes a sense, expecting that you have in mind some way to include
> deafness and some other things while excluding homosexuality and some
> other things.)
Looking back, I note that I chose the word "defect" in response to
the usage of "curing" with respect to both deafness and homosexuality.
My gut tells me that it would be a Good Thing for a person who's been
deprived of a sense, who would like to have it, to be "cured" of that
deprivation, whereas homosexuality is nothing at all like the deprivation
of a sense, and thus has no need for "cure". Whatever choice of words
you believe fit into that framework, feel free to tell me.
(Does this response make anything clearer, or am I just muddying the
waters more?)
C.L. Lassiter
> In article <3eb7e...@news.unc.edu>, C.L. Lassiter <sea...@unc.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I appreciate what Katie says. I moved 4/19 (with a ton o'help
>>from my friends and s.m's own Brian Vogel and his partner, Jim Hanger).
>>My bedroom's tolerable as is my exercise room and the kitchen. The
>>living room's a disaster as is the guest room which has to be up and
>>running by 5/17 when a friend comes for a 10 day visit.
> Nothing helps getting esswential things done like a deadline. When we
> suddenly realized, after the 2001 renovation, that we had 3 weeks to
> get the downstairs bedroom and bathroom ready for guests, we *really*
> got cracking.
Yeah, I'm thinking this weekend will have to be the Really Big
Push. Who wants to work all day and then go home and unpack all night.
Unless a really big bottle of wine is involved, of course, and then it's
over by box 2.
cl, pass the burgundy please
Christian Hansen
There is an interesting essay in Oliver Sachs's latest book about a man who
went from being mostly blind from birth (cataracts) to being able to see
fairly well. (The cataracts weren't removed at an early age because he was
supposed to have retinal damage that would prevent him from seeing anyway;
this was shown to be inaccurate later and the cataracts were removed).
The story about how the man went from being delighted at his new sense, to
being overwhelmed, to being virtually bedridden and stricken down is
heart-rending.
Chris "thankful for 5 senses working OK but respectful of those who have not
full use of them." Hansen
--
Chris Hansen | chrishansenhome at btinternet dot com
http://www.hansenhome.demon.co.uk
"In this household at least 25% of the contents is vermouth." Michael Palmer
"25% of your household is vermouth? Wow, you must have cases...of the stuff!"
Mike Jankulak
Christian Hansen
>je...@panix.com (Ellen Evans) wrote in message news:<b96jtd$bhc$1...@panix1.panix.com>...
>> In article <f415da82.03050...@posting.google.com>,
>> Clay Colwell <er...@io.com> wrote:
>> >Ken Shan <k...@digitas.harvard.edu> wrote in message news:<ipfho-...@proper.ptq.dyndns.org>...
>>
>> >> Or, for that matter, the militancy of some homosexual people, who
>> >> insist that efforts to cure homosexuality amount to a form of attempted
>> >> genocide.
>> >
>> >False comparison. It can be argued that the full deprivation of a
>> >sense is indeed a defect,
>>
>> Actually, a fair number of people who are deaf don't think of themselves
>> as having a defect at all.
>
>You do realize how closely we're scraping to a certain procedure
>done to male genitalia, right?
Oddly enough, one of Ken Shan's posts struck me this way as well; replacing
"deaf" with "circumcised" and "hearing" with "foreskin" in that post gave me
an odd frisson of delicious danger and déja vu.
Chris "But I decided not to post first, hoping that someone else would do so;
thanks, Clay!" Hansen
Michael Pastor
"Michael Thomas" <mi...@mtcc.com> wrote in message
news:v7k7d46...@fasolt.mtcc.com...
> xym...@bean.rochester.rr.com writes:
> > On 5 May 2003 17:06:55 -0400, je...@panix.com (Ellen Evans) wrote:
> > >
> > >Do you know gay people who don't want civil rights? Not having those
> > >makes a *huge* negative impact on people every day. But there are a
large
> > >number of deaf folks who don't see being deaf negative at all.
> >
> The same just isn't true for
> deafness -- there's an obvious language barrier. Do you
> really want to say that all hearing people should learn to
> sign to accommodate the deaf? Frankly, as a Greater Social
> Good, learning Chinese or Spanish would probably a better
> choice. If not -- other than just teaching people that
> screaming louder isn't helpful -- what should be done?
I personally think everyone *should* learn ASL as a child.Actually, with all
the research of late, aren't they finding out that learning a physical form
of language (like one does with ASL) does some interesting things to the
wiring in the brain? It's like writing and reading, except the paper is the
air space before you, and the letters and words are the gestures. When you
learn to write and read, you change the way your brain thinks of language in
general. I think adding another way to think of your language would be
beneficial, regardless of the form. In communication, only 7% of what is
conveyed is via words, 38% is in tone, and 55% is body language. Therefore,
I think of spoken language as one-dimensional, reading and writing as
two-dimensional, and ASL as three dimensional. I just think it would add to
the richness of the language we already speak. I also think that we should
be learning differing languages from day one as well. Once you learn
another language, it changes your understanding of your native language.
michael pastor
(noticing that the thread of this conversation diverged from the initial
question quite quickly)
Michael Pastor
"Clay Colwell" <er...@io.com> wrote in message
news:f415da82.03050...@posting.google.com...
Not that I think this way, but you could argue that not being attracted to
the opposite sex is a lack of your hetersexual sense (not that I think het's
make much sense).
Of course, we could also argue that het's lack the homosexual sense, and
therefore we should try everything possible to cure them of that lack. So
everyone go seduce your closest cute straight boy or girl.
michael pastor
DRS
news:b98v23$s5ts$1...@ID-174457.news.dfncis.de...
[...]
> > Looking back, I note that I chose the word "defect" in response to
> > the usage of "curing" with respect to both deafness and homosexuality.
> > My gut tells me that it would be a Good Thing for a person who's been
> > deprived of a sense, who would like to have it, to be "cured" of that
> > deprivation, whereas homosexuality is nothing at all like the
deprivation
> > of a sense, and thus has no need for "cure". Whatever choice of words
> > you believe fit into that framework, feel free to tell me.
> >
> > (Does this response make anything clearer, or am I just muddying the
> > waters more?)
>
> Not that I think this way, but you could argue that not being attracted to
> the opposite sex is a lack of your hetersexual sense (not that I think
het's
> make much sense).
>
> Of course, we could also argue that het's lack the homosexual sense, and
> therefore we should try everything possible to cure them of that lack. So
> everyone go seduce your closest cute straight boy or girl.
The argument must not fall into the trap of teleology, that because one has
ears one should be able to hear, that because one has procreative genitalia
one should procreate, etc. Clay's argument seems more utilitarian.
Homosexuality, all other things being equal, even if it is the result of or
implies some lack (of "a heterosexual sense"), is no necessary cause of
diminishment of one's quality of life, which is where Ken's analogy breaks
down, for deafness can cause significant diminishment, for example not being
able to hear warning sirens can be life threatening.
Ann Burlingham
> I appreciate what Katie says. I moved 4/19 (with a ton o'help
> from my friends and s.m's own Brian Vogel and his partner, Jim Hanger).
> My bedroom's tolerable as is my exercise room and the kitchen. The
> living room's a disaster as is the guest room which has to be up and
> running by 5/17 when a friend comes for a 10 day visit.
>
> Oh how I hate cardboard!
you could build a whole addition with it!
speaking of moving, we ("we" meaning jason) are researching movers to
get the rest of my mother's stuff moved from here to portland. any
warnings or recommendations, anyone?
Ann Burlingham
> Of course, we could also argue that het's lack the homosexual sense, and
> therefore we should try everything possible to cure them of that lack. So
> everyone go seduce your closest cute straight boy or girl.
it's been argued, and not well.
Michael Thomas
> "Michael Thomas" <mi...@mtcc.com> wrote in message
> > deafness -- there's an obvious language barrier. Do you
> > really want to say that all hearing people should learn to
> > sign to accommodate the deaf? Frankly, as a Greater Social
> > Good, learning Chinese or Spanish would probably a better
> > choice. If not -- other than just teaching people that
> > screaming louder isn't helpful -- what should be done?
>
>
> I personally think everyone *should* learn ASL as a child.Actually, with all
> the research of late, aren't they finding out that learning a physical form
> of language (like one does with ASL) does some interesting things to the
> wiring in the brain?
Well, that or Italian.
Ann Burlingham
> The argument must not fall into the trap of teleology, that because one has
> ears one should be able to hear, that because one has procreative genitalia
> one should procreate, etc. Clay's argument seems more utilitarian.
> Homosexuality, all other things being equal, even if it is the result of or
> implies some lack (of "a heterosexual sense"), is no necessary cause of
> diminishment of one's quality of life, which is where Ken's analogy breaks
> down, for deafness can cause significant diminishment, for example not being
> able to hear warning sirens can be life threatening.
gosh, what are those flashing lights?
Controversial Trousers
wrote this:
It's a gobshite detector.
--
Bess.
Present listening: Swell, '41'
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> >>Contrast this with the militancy of some deaf people, who
> >>insist that efforts to cure deafness amount to a form of
> >>attempted genocide.
> Does that actually exist?
Yep. Check out Deaf Culture -- deaf with a capital D.
Gwendolyn
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> Oh, I dunno. We have to go to pretty heroic lengths to
> participate in the Pink Mystery, and I'm sure lots of hets
> think that's pretty darn defective.
Gritting one's teeth and thinking of England is hardly *heroic*.
David Kaye
> Homosexuality, all other things being equal, even if it is the result of or
> implies some lack (of "a heterosexual sense"), is no necessary cause of
> diminishment of one's quality of life, which is where Ken's analogy breaks
> down, for deafness can cause significant diminishment, for example not being
> able to hear warning sirens can be life threatening.
Just as the inability to hear a warning siren may diminish one's
quality of life, it can be argued that the inability to create
children in the conventional way may also diminish one's quality of
life. Make no mistake that parenthood is an extremely satisfying
human endeavor. While adoption and artificial insemination may bring
most of the rewards of parenthood to GBLT people, there is an
extremely strong satisfaction in creating a child via fucking that is
even more satisfying.
So, where does one draw the quality of life line?
DRS
news:6b49c602.03050...@posting.google.com...
> "DRS" <d...@removethis.ihug.com.au> wrote:
>
> > Homosexuality, all other things being equal, even if it is the result of
or
> > implies some lack (of "a heterosexual sense"), is no necessary cause of
> > diminishment of one's quality of life, which is where Ken's analogy
breaks
> > down, for deafness can cause significant diminishment, for example not
being
> > able to hear warning sirens can be life threatening.
>
> Just as the inability to hear a warning siren may diminish one's
> quality of life, it can be argued that the inability to create
> children in the conventional way may also diminish one's quality of
> life. Make no mistake that parenthood is an extremely satisfying
> human endeavor.
Not everybody wants to be a parent and of those who do but cannot the
majority are heterosexual, so the diminishment cannot be attributed to
homosexuality per se.
> While adoption and artificial insemination may bring
> most of the rewards of parenthood to GBLT people, there is an
> extremely strong satisfaction in creating a child via fucking that is
> even more satisfying.
Says who?
> So, where does one draw the quality of life line?
The distinction here is between what necessarily causes diminishment and
what does not. If you get hit by a bus because you could not hear it
coming then that is a necessary diminishment whereas there is no such
necessity with homosexuality, homosexuals being no more or less capable of
leading satisfactory lives than anyone else..
DRS
wrote in message news:ec5gbv0uk4rb1al8m...@4ax.com...
Er, no.
Steve Carter
<snip>
> I personally think everyone *should* learn ASL as a child.Actually, with all
> the research of late, aren't they finding out that learning a physical form
> of language (like one does with ASL) does some interesting things to the
> wiring in the brain? It's like writing and reading, except the paper is the
> air space before you, and the letters and words are the gestures. When you
> learn to write and read, you change the way your brain thinks of language in
> general. I think adding another way to think of your language would be
> beneficial, regardless of the form. In communication, only 7% of what is
> conveyed is via words, 38% is in tone, and 55% is body language. Therefore,
> I think of spoken language as one-dimensional, reading and writing as
> two-dimensional, and ASL as three dimensional. I just think it would add to
> the richness of the language we already speak. I also think that we should
> be learning differing languages from day one as well. Once you learn
> another language, it changes your understanding of your native language.
Please note that ASL != (signed) English.
ASL is its own language, with its own (different) grammar and syntax.
Steve
Nick Fitch
You should try living in England right now and thinking of it as a
preferential alternative to thinking about what you're doing. It's
heroic, trust me.
--
** To email, replace CRAPFREE with dircon **
Michael Sarris
>
> I personally think everyone *should* learn ASL as a child.Actually, with all
> the research of late, aren't they finding out that learning a physical form
> of language (like one does with ASL) does some interesting things to the
> wiring in the brain?
We taught Kyle some sign language. The prevailing wisdom
we encountered (i.e. it's what we heard from multiple sources,
but don't have the facts or studies to back it up) is that
children who learn sign language early develop better overall
language skills, including spoken language skills. Kids who
are pre-verbal can use sign language to communicate.
We can corroborate the last part, at least. Kyle had no
trouble using some sign language, and before he became
very talkative, it was a more reliable indicator of
what he wanted to get across.
It was easier for Kyle to pick it up than it was for us,
which is one of the reasons we didn't continue with it.
That, and he learned spoken words faster than we could
keep up with the sign equivalents.
One amusing consequence is that when Kyle wants to
add some emphasis to what he's saying, he'll sometimes
begin signing 'more' while he's speaking.
Michael, more, more, more, how do you like it?
--
Michael Sarris -- mund...@hotmail.com
"Build me up and strike me down please
Sign my name, sign my name."
-- Skunk Anansie, "It Takes Blood And Guts To Be This Cool
But I'm Still Just A Cliche"
David W. Fenton
<b98qhh$9dc$1...@panix5.panix.com>:
>esswential things
Would that be necessities for swishes?
--
David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc
Ellen Evans
Michael Thomas <mi...@mtcc.com> wrote:
[]
> And this is where the analogy breaks down... I cannot for
> the life of me think of *anything* about being glb that
> hets think they need to "deal" with that isn't rooted in
> irrationality and bigotry. The same just isn't true for
> deafness -- there's an obvious language barrier.
As there is with any group that speaks a different language. But that is
hardly the extent of the same sorts of irrationality and bigotry that deaf
run into every day.
--
Ellen Evans 17 Across: The "her" of "Leave Her to Heaven"
je...@panix.com New York Times, 7/14/96
Michael Pastor
"Steve Carter" <hgy...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:4208914.03050...@posting.google.com...
Hmmm.... I'll concede that totally, but isn't the correlation so strong as
to *almost* be the same, maybe along the lines of Cajun to French (I'm
reaching)? In ASL, you can spell things out with the alphabet (the only part
I learned, in cub scouts, and still know) literally in English, so the words
themselves are exactly the same. Are you effectively translating if you
are doing this? I suspect from your comment that word order and how adverbs
and adjectives work is different, and maybe how you identify things like the
objects of sentences and prepositions? Where is the divergent point? It is
originally based on English isn't it?
michael pastor
Ellen Evans
[]
>I am aware that many deaf people (and I don't have any stats on the
>number or %age) do not see deafness as a defect. I speak from the
>assumption that human beings generally come equipped with 5 senses,
>as determined by consensus: touch, sight, smell, hearing, and taste.
>I presume that the full and total loss of one of these would be
>considered a defect, in that the person lacking such a sense would
>be significantly disadvantaged in being able to process the variety
>of outside input/stimulus in comparison with those who do not lack
>said sense.
It depends. First of all, sensory processing isn't just a matter of input
devices - there's a lot of processing stuff that goes with it. For people
who were born without one of the common "senses" that processing stuff
often doesn't get developed. Or it gets developed differently - according
to Oliver Sachs, folks who learn language via sign tend to do language
processing on a different side of their brain than people whose
introduction to language is aural. So a substantial portion of who they
are is just built differently. Do they lose some information? Surely.
But people who don't have perfect pitch lose some information vis-a-vis
those who do. Can that be a problem? Of course. But a surprisingly
manageable one, for the most part.
David Horne
> I personally think everyone *should* learn ASL as a child.
You mean, after French, German, Spanish and Italian?
I think all children should learn the piano too.
David
--
David Horne- www.davidhorne.co.uk
davidhorne (at) davidhorne (dot) co (dot) uk
David Horne
> It depends. First of all, sensory processing isn't just a matter of input
> devices - there's a lot of processing stuff that goes with it. For people
> who were born without one of the common "senses" that processing stuff
> often doesn't get developed. Or it gets developed differently - according
> to Oliver Sachs, folks who learn language via sign tend to do language
> processing on a different side of their brain than people whose
> introduction to language is aural. So a substantial portion of who they
> are is just built differently. Do they lose some information? Surely.
> But people who don't have perfect pitch lose some information vis-a-vis
> those who do. Can that be a problem? Of course. But a surprisingly
> manageable one, for the most part.
Comparing not having perfect pitch with being deaf (which you've done at
least twice) is silly IMO.
Michael Thomas
> In article <v7k7d46...@fasolt.mtcc.com>,
> Michael Thomas <mi...@mtcc.com> wrote:
>
> []
>
> > And this is where the analogy breaks down... I cannot for
> > the life of me think of *anything* about being glb that
> > hets think they need to "deal" with that isn't rooted in
> > irrationality and bigotry. The same just isn't true for
> > deafness -- there's an obvious language barrier.
>
> As there is with any group that speaks a different language. But that is
> hardly the extent of the same sorts of irrationality and bigotry that deaf
> run into every day.
Well, it's usually pointless to go on a more-oppresseder-than-thou
expedition, but in the global scheme of things, I think that, oh
say, Arabic speakers would be a lot higher on the I&B meter.
David Kaye
> Not everybody wants to be a parent and of those who do but cannot the
> majority are heterosexual, so the diminishment cannot be attributed to
> homosexuality per se.
Not everybody who is deaf wants to hear or wants their children to
hear.
>
> Says who?
A search of Craigslist and various websites and newsgroups shows that
there are plenty of guys out there who want to get women pregnant.
Likewise, there are women who have written about "feeling" themselves
get pregnant via their boyfriend/husband's spunk and citing this as a
rewarding experience.
The first time I encountered this attitude was over 10 years ago on a
BBS where a guy talked about how he liked to fuck a woman just before
a rock show (he was a guitar player) and think about his cum inside of
her as she's looking at him onstage. "But what if you got her
pregnant?" "All the better!"
> The distinction here is between what necessarily causes diminishment and
> what does not.
But the fact is that deaf people think of their lives as complete and
not diminished in any way.
Let me be clear that I don't believe that deaf people have any right
to purposely bear a deaf (as a lesbian couple did) child or to refrain
from using techniques that might allow a deaf child to hear.
However, the whole intellectual argument is another matter.
> If you get hit by a bus because you could not hear it
> coming then that is a necessary diminishment whereas there is no such
> necessity with homosexuality, homosexuals being no more or less capable of
> leading satisfactory lives than anyone else..
Many gay men wish they had been born straight because they feel it is
a major pain to live as gay. Why do you think so many GLT people tend
to drown themselves in drugs and liquor? They do *not* see their
lives as satisfactory and blame their gayness for it, either wrongly
or rightly so.
Kevin Michael Vail
"Michael Pastor" <michael...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Steve Carter" <hgy...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
> news:4208914.03050...@posting.google.com...
> > Please note that ASL != (signed) English.
> >
> > ASL is its own language, with its own (different) grammar and syntax.
>
> Hmmm.... I'll concede that totally, but isn't the correlation so strong as
> to *almost* be the same, maybe along the lines of Cajun to French (I'm
> reaching)? In ASL, you can spell things out with the alphabet (the only part
> I learned, in cub scouts, and still know) literally in English, so the words
> themselves are exactly the same. Are you effectively translating if you
> are doing this? I suspect from your comment that word order and how adverbs
> and adjectives work is different, and maybe how you identify things like the
> objects of sentences and prepositions? Where is the divergent point? It is
> originally based on English isn't it?
No, not really. Read _Seeing Voices_, by Oliver Sachs, for more about
this, and about deafness and deaf culture in general.
The spelling-things-out isn't really part of ASL anymore than it would
be part of a spoken language. ASL fully uses the three-dimensionality
it exists to express things that spoken languages have to work around
with inflectional endings and the like...the distinction between doing
something once, doing it continually, or doing it repeatedly, for
example.
Disclaimer: I don't know ASL (I wish I did). I just know some things
about it.
--
Kevin Michael Vail | Dogbert: That's circular reasoning.
ke...@vaildc.net | Dilbert: I prefer to think of it as no loose ends.
http://www.vaildc.net/kevin/
Ann Burlingham
> "Steve Carter" <hgy...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
> news:4208914.03050...@posting.google.com...
> > Please note that ASL != (signed) English.
> >
> > ASL is its own language, with its own (different) grammar and syntax.
> Hmmm.... I'll concede that totally, but isn't the correlation so strong as
> to *almost* be the same, maybe along the lines of Cajun to French (I'm
> reaching)? In ASL, you can spell things out with the alphabet (the only part
> I learned, in cub scouts, and still know) literally in English, so the words
> themselves are exactly the same.
that's finger spelling, not ASL, as far as i understand. ASL takes
concepts and gives them symbols, and develops new ones; it's a
language, not a translation of either written or spoken english.
Ann Burlingham
> Michael Pastor <michael...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I personally think everyone *should* learn ASL as a child.
>
> You mean, after French, German, Spanish and Italian?
a friend couldn't get his university to recognise ASL as a language
for his language requirement. i wonder if things have changed there
since the early 80s. (aside to katie: the u of r.)
Robert Feiertag
news:wkel3b6...@concentric.net...
Those of us in Tornado Alley know that flashing lights two miles away at 4
AM aren't going to be too useful.
Bob
Ken Shan
one or more of "touch, sight, smell, hearing, and taste", then it is a
pretty trivial fact that deafness is a defect. (I don't care whether
one calls it a disadvantage or a defect or a wug.) But then, it is not
clear why whether X is a defect bears on the militancy of X people who
insist that efforts to cure X amount to a form of attempted genocide.
What's so special about touch, sight, smell, hearing, or taste? That's
the main question in my mind.
Multiple people have stated that the disadvantages of homosexuality are
somehow less fundamental than the disadvantages of deafness: either not
a "necessary cause of diminishment of one's quality of life" (DRS), or
"rooted in irrationality and bigotry" (Michael Thomas). Two examples
were offered: spoken communication and sirens.
Spoken communication, or more generally, the ability to speak fluently
the language(s) spoken by the majority of people around you, is
indeed an advantage. This disadvantage of deafness is analogous
to the disadvantage of not speaking English natively, say. In
particular, the linguistic advantage exists only because the majority
of surrounding people speaks a different language. That situation is
hardly "necessary", and the resulting disadvantages are "rooted in
irrationality and bigotry" except what is caused simply by depriving
any person of the ability to learn any language with native fluency --
deprivation of a sort that takes place in huge numbers every day, and
taken for granted. Nobody claims that everyone should learn Spanish to
communicate with native Spanish speakers; similarly, nobody claims that
everyone should learn ASL to communicate with native ASL speakers.
(By the way, for many deaf children, even if purely for the purpose of
learning English, it is more effective to first learn say ASL natively,
then learn English, in part using ASL for instruction and scaffolding.)
Sirens in my personal experience are both aural and visual. Keeping in
mind that reduced hearing often brings about increase vision in terms
of information perceived, there is no justification for the claim that
deafness is a disadvantage when it comes to perceiving these sirens.
Alternatively, if we imagine a world (or a local community) in which
sirens are purely aural, we may ask why. The answer is that purely
aural sirens are designed for hearing people, and their successful
operation relies on the majority of people being hearing.
In the end, deafness is a disadvantage because it is in the minority.
Sign language interpreters cost money, as do blinking sirens compared to
purely aural ones; however, spousal benefits and disaster relief also
cost money. Same-sex couples adopting children help society, as do deaf
workers at printing presses.
Clay Colwell <er...@io.com> wrote in article <f415da82.03050...@posting.google.com> in soc.motss:
> Looking back, I note that I chose the word "defect" in response to
> the usage of "curing" with respect to both deafness and homosexuality.
> My gut tells me that it would be a Good Thing for a person who's been
> deprived of a sense, who would like to have it, to be "cured" of that
> deprivation, whereas homosexuality is nothing at all like the deprivation
> of a sense, and thus has no need for "cure". Whatever choice of words
> you believe fit into that framework, feel free to tell me.
I completely agree that it would be a Good Thing for a person who's been
deprived of a sense, who would like to have it, to be "cured" of that
deprivation. But my agreement has nothing to do with whether anything
is a defect. It is just as much a Good Thing for a homosexual person
who would like to be heterosexual, or a heterosexual person who would
like to be homosexual, to be granted that wish. The need for the "cure"
is simply justified by personal desire. Some deaf people would like
to be hearing, and some would not. (Which is not to say that there is
currently any way to make a deaf person hearing.) I don't care what
words you use.
Finally, a note on films: in case there was any confusion, Sound and
Fury is a documentary, whereas Jenseits der Stille is not. Both are, in
my relatively uninformed opinion, good movies.
--
Edit this signature at http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/ken/sig
I am not human; I am a meat popsicle.
Ken Shan
> a friend couldn't get his university to recognise ASL as a language
> for his language requirement. i wonder if things have changed there
> since the early 80s. (aside to katie: the u of r.)
Harvard College, the last time I checked (~1997), does not recognize ASL
for its foreign language requirement, because the requirement "has a
written component, and the written form of ASL is English".
Tim Wilson
> In the end, deafness is a disadvantage because it is in the minority.
> Sign language interpreters cost money, as do blinking sirens compared to
> purely aural ones; however, spousal benefits and disaster relief also
> cost money. Same-sex couples adopting children help society, as do deaf
> workers at printing presses.
There remains a non-social context to not hearing that has nothing to do
with any comparisons to sexuality. Our human social context is there
and incredibly important, but there is still the context of life and the
world outside that human social context.
I think one has to acknowledge that hearing has informational, even
survival, value in the world absent the human social context. Water
still gurgles. Wind still rustles leaves. Rattlesnakes still rattle
regardless of whether some people do the all too regular hurtfull things
like not valuing people who don't hear. And human created situations
and activities generate a host of accompanying sounds that allow the
situations and activities to be detected, identified, classified,
discriminated among, etc. (We went to get ice cream, and a bunch of
kids were playing air hockey at the ice cream place.)
There's more to hearing than hearing speech. Maybe, to my tastes, the
best parts. I am baselessly and unabashedly partial to my ears as a
source of sensual pleasure. Mockingbirds are a pure joy to me.
And that's not even taking into account the processes we call music, but
that's also in the human social cultural frame.
The cochlear implant in children problem has so many facets. There may
be time-critical wiring of hearing circuits that don't have to do with
language usage that may happen given the implanted device. There are
sound-language time-critical development issues. (I would think it
likely there are comparable wirings that would happen if everyone
learned ASL when they were learning language.) It's an invasive
procedure that, as has been pointed out, wipes out the cochlea.
A very young child has no say in whether or not the procedure is done:
it's one of those awful parental responsibility situations. If we're to
continue with parents having responsibilities for those choices, then we
ought to respect the decision by deaf parents if they decide not to have
the procedure done on their child; similarly, we have to respect the
decision of hearing parents if they have the procedure done.
Some have pointed out that it doesn't always work as consistently well
as would be liked. That, too, should be taken into account. If hearing
aids worked as well as eyeglasses, people wouldn't worry about whether
or not they were visible. (Actually, some of them do work pretty good
these days, but they're still not smart enough to really sort signals
out and give the user something that truly operates in the way attention
does.) If cochlear implants really worked consistently, there probably
wouldn't be as much hoo-ha about them, but there would still likely be
some, for reasons already enumerated here. But if we really knew how
human hearing worked, we'd have speech recognition with near 100%
accuracy, automatic transcription of music, near-perfect identification
of natural sounds, etc.
--
Tim Wilson, Daytona Beach, Florida, USA
home: http://home.cfl.rr.com/mackandtim/
blog: http://timatollah.blogspot.com/
mail: meano...@netscape.net
Ellen Evans
Michael Pastor <michael_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>"Steve Carter" <hgy...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
>news:4208914.03050...@posting.google.com...
[]
>> Please note that ASL != (signed) English.
>>
>> ASL is its own language, with its own (different) grammar and syntax.
[]
>Hmmm.... I'll concede that totally, but isn't the correlation so strong as
>to *almost* be the same,
Absolutely not.
<
maybe along the lines of Cajun to French (I'm
>reaching)? In ASL, you can spell things out with the alphabet (the only part
>I learned, in cub scouts, and still know) literally in English, so the words
>themselves are exactly the same.
Finger spelling is the least of it.
Ellen Evans
Michael Thomas <mi...@mtcc.com> wrote:
[]
> Well, it's usually pointless to go on a more-oppresseder-than-thou
> expedition,
I couldn't agree more, so let's don't.
Ellen Evans
Everyone is entitled to their opinions.
It's a form of sensory information that some people have and some people
don't. Which is exactly what I've said about twice.
Ellen Evans
[]
>Looking back, I note that I chose the word "defect" in response to
>the usage of "curing" with respect to both deafness and homosexuality.
>My gut tells me that it would be a Good Thing for a person who's been
>deprived of a sense, who would like to have it, to be "cured" of that
>deprivation, whereas homosexuality is nothing at all like the deprivation
>of a sense, and thus has no need for "cure".
And yet there are people out there who would, if they could, choose to be
"cured" of it.
The analogy is limited, but it is not utterly invalid.
Ellen Evans
Tim Wilson <meano...@netscape.net> wrote:
[]
>There remains a non-social context to not hearing that has nothing to do
>with any comparisons to sexuality. Our human social context is there
>and incredibly important, but there is still the context of life and the
>world outside that human social context.
>
>I think one has to acknowledge that hearing has informational, even
>survival, value in the world absent the human social context.
I don't think anyone is saying that hearing is, inherently and in every
case, bad. Context again. The question is whether or not *not* hearing
is, inherently and in every case, bad. Based on the testimony of a fair
number of people who experience such a life, the answer is, no, not
inherently and not in every case. There are communities where a large
percentage of the population is deaf - the most famous one a town on
Martha's Vineyard. Everyone signs - it's just part of the way people live
their lives. It's not considered remarkable, and more than enough
information can be gathered to function perfectly adequately in what is
still a fairly rural area. Human beings are social animals. Survival is
a social event on the whole.
[]
>There's more to hearing than hearing speech. Maybe, to my tastes, the
>best parts. I am baselessly and unabashedly partial to my ears as a
>source of sensual pleasure. Mockingbirds are a pure joy to me.
This is a wonderful thing, but there are people who are perfectly capable
of hearing for whom this isn't the case. Just as there are many sensate
pleasures available to those who are deaf.
Robert S. Coren
David W. Fenton <dXXXf...@bway.net> wrote:
>co...@panix.com (Robert S. Coren) wrote in
><b98qhh$9dc$1...@panix5.panix.com>:
>
>>esswential things
>
>Would that be necessities for swishes?
Hey! He's *your* fuckin' typist.
--
---Robert Coren (co...@panix.com)------------------------------------
"A hundred years ago, the idea of full human rights, political,
social, and economic, was a profound threat to the established order
of most countries on earth. It still is today." --Adam Hochschild
Moira de Swardt
Geoff Miller <geo...@u1.netgate.net> wrote in message
> Oh, David; you are *so* PC. While a lack of hair or
> testosterone doesn't _ipso facto_ turn someone into a
> female, a lack of those things, along with (ObNicholson)
> reason and accountability, *is* undeniably characteristic
> of being female.
And no one would ever accuse you of being PC. :-)
Moira, the Faerie Godmother
Christian Hansen
(David Horne) wrote:
>Michael Pastor <michael...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> I personally think everyone *should* learn ASL as a child.
>You mean, after French, German, Spanish and Italian?
>I think all children should learn the piano too.
In my case, my family was unable to afford the requisite instrument (nor could
we have gotten one up the stairs) so I learned clarinet. Learning music is a
good skill and seems to be somewhat neglected here in the UK. I was amazed to
learn that most people here can't read music, even to the extent of following
a hymn tune in a hymnbook. The Episcopal Church Hymnal 1982 in the US comes
standard with words and music and nearly everyone can read music well enough
to at least follow a tune. All the hymnbooks for general consumption here have
words only.
I think everyone must be a polymath.
Chris "And it has nothing to do with Lola." Hansen
--
Chris Hansen | chrishansenhome at btinternet dot com
http://www.hansenhome.demon.co.uk
"In this household at least 25% of the contents is vermouth." Michael Palmer
"25% of your household is vermouth? Wow, you must have cases...of the stuff!"
Mike Jankulak
David Horne
> In my case, my family was unable to afford the requisite instrument (nor could
> we have gotten one up the stairs) so I learned clarinet. Learning music is a
> good skill and seems to be somewhat neglected here in the UK.
I visit a large number of UK schools (all publicly funded) to give
workshops etc. A few of those schools have policies whereby all the
children learn to play an instrument, including the ability to read
music. While it's obviously impossible for me to make any direct link,
it seems to me that the general standard of the schools where everyone
plays an instrument is very high compared to others.
> I was amazed to
> learn that most people here can't read music, even to the extent of following
> a hymn tune in a hymnbook.
That's interesting. Not that I disagree with you- just that I didn't
know the situation was very different in the US. Given the structure of
the UK education curriculum, it is scandalous that all children _don't_
have a basic knowledge of music notation. Scandalous, because all
children (in England & Wales, but I think it's the same in Scotland as
well) have to spend 2 years at the beginning of high school doing music,
yet I know from experience that, depending on the school, the kids may
come out of those two years with no knowledge of notation. Indeed,
precisely because the curriculum has been relaxed wrt notation, it's
possible for a student to scrape a GCSE with _no_ knowledge of notation.
This is just stupid IMO, but reflects a general trend in the music
curriculum across all boards to move away from notation as a core
requirement. At A level, notation is an absolute requirement, so it
would make sense to start with the earlier exam (GCSE). I don't get it-
notation isn't hard to learn- I've visited primary schools where entire
classes can read fluently- and a lot of people seem to agree that it's a
very useful skill to learn, as it affects other areas of learning.
David Horne
> Everyone is entitled to their opinions.
>
> It's a form of sensory information that some people have and some people
> don't.
The reason I think it's silly is that perfect pitch is, relatively, such
a minor area of sensory information, compared to the overall sense of
hearing. The comparison strikes me as useless.
Michael Pastor
"David Horne" <i_will_almost_...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1fukeky.6vo7th1uuycpdN%i_will_almost_...@yahoo.co.uk...
Yes, no, yes and no
I think every one should learn:
their native language in hearing
their native language in sign
thier native language in spoken form
their native language in words/text
the same process in a foreign language, at one's will
and as much as they can, any musical instrument, any artistic talent, any
athletic sport
children should basically just learn every way possible to express
themselves, as fluently as possible
they make much more tolerable adults
michael pastor
Tim Wilson
> In article <MF_ta.726$ut.5...@twister.tampabay.rr.com>,
> Tim Wilson <meano...@netscape.net> wrote:
>
> []
>
>
>>There remains a non-social context to not hearing that has nothing to do
>>with any comparisons to sexuality. Our human social context is there
>>and incredibly important, but there is still the context of life and the
>>world outside that human social context.
>>
>>I think one has to acknowledge that hearing has informational, even
>>survival, value in the world absent the human social context.
>
>
> I don't think anyone is saying that hearing is, inherently and in every
> case, bad. Context again. The question is whether or not *not* hearing
> is, inherently and in every case, bad. Based on the testimony of a fair
> number of people who experience such a life, the answer is, no, not
> inherently and not in every case. There are communities where a large
> percentage of the population is deaf - the most famous one a town on
> Martha's Vineyard. Everyone signs - it's just part of the way people live
> their lives. It's not considered remarkable, and more than enough
> information can be gathered to function perfectly adequately in what is
> still a fairly rural area. Human beings are social animals. Survival is
> a social event on the whole.
I wouldn't/don't dispute any of this. Just wanted to add a little more
around the edges.
>
>
> []
>
>
>>There's more to hearing than hearing speech. Maybe, to my tastes, the
>>best parts. I am baselessly and unabashedly partial to my ears as a
>>source of sensual pleasure. Mockingbirds are a pure joy to me.
>
>
> This is a wonderful thing, but there are people who are perfectly capable
> of hearing for whom this isn't the case. Just as there are many sensate
> pleasures available to those who are deaf.
>
And that, too.
xym...@bean.rochester.rr.com
<cor...@telus.net> wrote:
>
>As I understand it, the reference is to do away with a particular culture.
>Deaf people and their languages are easily understood as one if you think
>about who they mostly communicate with.
>
>The implants have been described by older ex-non-hearing people as painful.
>Sound equals pain to a brain that is not used to processing this stimulus.
>It is altogether unpleasant for people who have found their way in world of
>other senses. It is not that hard to imagine since most of what we
>experience each day is noise of ambient dangers. In fact I think the biggest
>concern we people have for the deaf among us is that of safety. What I've
>been told is that these implants deliver is more anxiety.
What she said, but Jess' points (cut) also well taken.
Katie
xym...@bean.rochester.rr.com
> And this is where the analogy breaks down... I cannot for
> the life of me think of *anything* about being glb that
> hets think they need to "deal" with that isn't rooted in
> irrationality and bigotry. The same just isn't true for
> deafness -- there's an obvious language barrier. Do you
> really want to say that all hearing people should learn to
> sign to accommodate the deaf? Frankly, as a Greater Social
> Good, learning Chinese or Spanish would probably a better
> choice. If not -- other than just teaching people that
> screaming louder isn't helpful -- what should be done?
>
> Mike, who suspects that in the end
> the net will prove to be one the largest
> technological/cultural advances for deaf/hearing
> relationships in, well, maybe even forever...
> voice, video and simultaneous voice recognition
> over IP would rock
Your points are well taken, but I have to tell you that even as the
'Net has been a great equalizer, even that is shifting now that more
and more auditory stuff is being sent over it, which is useless to
deaf people, kinda like the radio and TV back then. Voice recognition
is iffy, too, but better than nothing in a lot of cases. And don't
get me started on all the game and music companies that won't caption
their media.
No, I don't think everyone should learn sign language. Not all deaf
people use it, Jess' sister coming to mind, even though she's not deaf
anymore. My point really was that many people can do simple things to
improve communication like LOOK directly at the other person, be
willing and ready to write stuff down if necessary, and have a
flexible attitude about the whole process. This works for lots of
folks, not just deaf people.
Katie
xym...@bean.rochester.rr.com
> And, as a result of the connection to deaf culture
>he acquired through sign, he feels a strong tie to a culture in which what
>he is is not understood as imperfect, defective, or broken, but merely as
>belonging to a different yet rich world of its own. That's been really
>good for him in dealing with a hearing world - he has been mainstreamed at
>school, and in most other things - that can be cruel and unwilling to make
>basic accomodations.
Yes, but I hope he still feels connected to his family. This is what
kills me, how many deaf people feel little or no connection to their
hearing families. Kinda like some gay folks with their families.
Katie, who's quite attached to hers
xym...@bean.rochester.rr.com
>"Michael Pastor" <michael...@hotmail.com> writes:
>> I personally think everyone *should* learn ASL as a child.Actually, with all
>> the research of late, aren't they finding out that learning a physical form
>> of language (like one does with ASL) does some interesting things to the
>> wiring in the brain?
>
> Well, that or Italian.
Italian is a physical form of language? Actually, some studies show
that little kids are able to produce language with their hands/arms
earlier than with their mouths because the fine motor skills required
for speech develop later than those for hands, so being able to use
sign language in some way allows small children to express themselves
earlier than if they relied totally on speech. My sister used home
signs with her kids, which really sped up their two-way communication
and reduced frustration all around, until they started talking
clearly.
Katie