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akoboldfrying 2 days ago

> But you can't ignore the cultural consideration.

We can and should, the same way we ignore the corresponding "cultural consideration" that mothers who have undergone female genital mutilation themselves will feel alienated from their daughters if they do not inflict the same treatment on them. In this case, most people have no problem recognising that the rights of the daughter to enjoy her own sensory experience far outweigh the (quite real) emotional isolation that would be experienced by the parent -- so why is deafness treated differently?

Denying another person sensory experience is abuse. If that person is a child, it's child abuse. For me the harm inherent in this has nothing to do with whether sign languages are perceived as "real" languages on par with spoken languages. It's obvious to me as a hearing person that sign languages are indeed "real, full" languages, the same way written languages are, and, more generally, the same way that languages I don't personally understand but other people do, are. Sign languages are real, full languages -- and preventing a person who would be able to hear from hearing is still abuse.

I think the reason this is not called out more frequently and stridently by hearing people is that many of us fear being labeled "prejudiced" or worse, and being associated with the political right, who have a long history of making absolute moral claims about outgroups. It's simply an unusual quirk of our times that this specific quality of being seen as culturally presumptuous is the thing that no Right-Thinking Person wants to be seen doing right now, resulting in many otherwise intelligent people bending over backwards to avoid the stigma, even to the point of denying obvious realities like "a life that includes access to more sensory experience is a richer life".

ETA: To anyone who maintains that deaf parents should be able to prevent their children from being able to hear: Should illiterate parents be able to prevent their children from going to school? Should parents who grew up poor be able to starve their children?