All The Young Dudes

MEDIA WATCH: Hearing People Still Don’t Get It! Or Do They?

In the UK, the campaign against Clause 14 (4) (9), in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, continues unabated. The Guardian, which I like and have found it to be one of the UK’s more progressive broadsheets, has published This Couple Want A Deaf Child. Should We Try To Stop Them?, and less reactionary than The Sunday Times article Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children.

The populace of DIGG, where I found the following response, This Couple Want A Deaf Child. Should We Try To Stop Them?, to The Guardian article, are true to form. It is hard not to crack the, “Back in 10, 000 BC, we were dragging our knuckles along the ground, now in 2008, our brains trail not far behind!” jokes. Some people just do not want to educate themselves, or be educated. That’s cool. They should just shut up instead, and cease polluting the air with their fetid breath and rancid opinions.

The big problem with the article, This Couple Want A Deaf Child. Should We Try To Stop Them?, is in its title. As is usual with with the mainstream press, attention grabbing headlines is de rigueur, which is a French word meaning de rigueur, and The Guardian is no exception. And as is the usual practice amongst the knuckle dragging and brain lagging crowd, they respond Pavlovian Dog style to the concept embedded in the words, “This Couple Want A Deaf Child….” without reading or having understood the text in article, or have no concept of being, other than the state of being they are accustomed to.

The deaf, and dare I say, Deaf communities have their fair share of knuckle draggers and brain laggers. Which makes it difficult to comment on what hearing people do, without referring to the deaf and Deaf cohorts who demurely defer to their hearing peers continuing developing intellectual prowess, that is continually and developmentally, stalling. It does make for double the fun, in dreaming up comedic material though. I know that not all hearing people are ignorant and uneducated, but if you read the DIGG response [so far the only one] to The Guardian article, you can be forgiven for thinking that it is indeed, still 10,000 BC.

The  comments in DIGG are not all that bad. There are a few intelligent retaliatory commentators who try to redress the balance. Whether it does any good, remains to be seen. But at least, saner voices do exist, and that their saner thoughts are being expressed. More pertinently, INFORMED thoughts!

Really, the article itself is not that bad. But, it doesn’t do enough to explain the Deaf point of view. It doesn’t expand on the concept of the Deaf Identity and Deaf Culture. It doesn’t do enough to disabuse the notion of deafness as a disability. It doesn’t link to the STOP EUGENICS site, which would have provided readers with more information. Our expectations are high, and it doesn’t do enough.

The article This Couple Want A Deaf Child. Should We Try To Stop Them? provides no links to other sources of information, or to the bill itself. And at the time of writing, there is no option to comment. I don’t know if the print version will publish links for more information, but publication on the internet without links is, for me, a serious failure of journalism. While it doesn’t guarantee that they will be followed through by the netizens, it does guarantee a measure of balance.

Sure, I understand that it cannot hope to do justice to a very important issue. It cannot hope to enlighten in 1500 words, the damage that decades of ignorance has wrought.Within several constraints of editorial space, depth of topic, and the sheer number of issues raised by Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, it does a better job of explaining the effects of the bill than Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children did.

To effectively fight ignorance, you need a unison of voices speaking out against it. You need a collective will dedicated to enlightenment and  not succumbing to an apathetic stupor.

Further Reading:

Hearing People Demand The Right To Self Designed Babies
Children Demand Right To Not Stupid Parents
Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children
Deaf Parents Demand Right To Deaf Children
Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children
Engineering Deaf Babies For Deaf Couples US and Britain Debate The Selection Of Deaf Embryos and Adopted Children
Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children
Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children
The Last Deafie Signing!
Media Watch: Hearing People Still Don’t Get It! Part Two
Media Watch: Hearing People Still Don’t Get It!
Not quite with the Times
Sunday Times article & my communication with the Sunday Times

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