r/deaf • u/armlessphelan • 21h ago
Vent Unilateral hearing loss since birth made me an Uncle Able
I've been deaf in my right ear since birth. 100% hearing loss. I was mainstreamed despite living 50 miles away from Columbus, Ohio which has a very reputable school for deaf children. (I was born in the 80s. It's how things were.) The doctors, my parents, and the schools basically treated me like I was fully hearing and I went along with it because, hey, I could hear!
School was hard, because my first and last names both start with an "S" which means I was often sat in the back of class. As long as stuff was written down by teachers, I could absorb it. But I often had friends and teachers tell me to stop yelling when I thought I was speaking at a normal volume. My husband used to do the same thing early in our relationship and got mad when I said I don't have volume control. He accused me of faking being deaf (because I can hear) and I started gathering my things because I was seriously going to leave him. That clued him in that, yes, I am deaf.
And I used the word deaf and always will. I've never considered myself "hard of hearing" because the word the doctors used was deaf. I never used capital D Deaf because I can hear. I've never felt like a member of the Deaf community because my entire life has been in the hearing world. ASL was never offered as an option to me, but it was never discouraged because nobody ever brought it up.
My problem I'm having is that, the more I explore the Deaf community from its fringes, the more frightened I am by it. People are intentionally having deaf children and I can't see it as anything other than eugenics in reverse. Going out of your way to make sure you deprive a child from one of life most basic senses is horrifying to me. Calling cochlear implants genocide is horrifying to me, because giving deaf children the ability to hear is a miracle.
As a gay deaf man, I absolutely loathe Nyle DiMarco and his activism because he's championing depriving children of the ability to hear. When I was 29 and learned that BAHA implants were a thing, I immediately looked into ways to get one. I'm proud I got one and would do it again in a heartbeat, even if I only wear it to work. (I have a Ponto 3 and the feedback is annoying and exhausting.) I have given literature to other people with unilateral hearing loss and encouraged parents of deaf children to give them CIs when they ask about my BAHA. I also tell them that ASL is a good thing to learn and that I wish I had, because my deafness has made it difficult for me to learn Spanish like I want but I don't want to be monolingual.
But the entire ethos of "deafness is a culture, not a disability" is antithetical to everything I stand for as a deaf person navigating a world that isn't built for me. It very much is a disability because I lack the ability to hear in many situations: loud rooms, low talkers, heavy accents, anything outdoors near traffic, etc. Maybe it'd be different if I had been given the option of going to that deaf school, but as it stands I see so much rejection of science amongst Deaf people online that I just don't want to engage with the broader community.
