NEWS: What If I Want My Kid To Be A One Armed, Blind Midget?

POLITICS: What If I Want My Kid To Be A One Armed, Blind Midget?

It turns out deaf parents are the creepiest parents on the planet. I know, it seems like a weird thing to write, but I’ve got some proof to back me up. The chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People in the UK thinks that deaf parents should be able to screen their unborn children so they can pick a deaf child over one that can hear.

Isn’t that nice? Wouldn’t want to fuck up the family lifestyle with a hearing asshole running around the house, saying stuff like….well, just saying stuff. And apparently Ballard is not alone in his creepy views.

Currently a bill is making its way through the House of Lords that would make it illegal for parents undergoing embryo screening to pick an abnormal embryo if there is also a healthy embryo. But apparently people want to be able to choose abnormal embryos. Seems we’ve already done it here in America.

Ah, how good of you. I would just like to create a law that any parent who makes this choice must tell the child about their decision when it is 14-years-old. Those are usually the glory years for kids with disabilities.

Some crazy bastards called “doctors” are opposed to creating babies with disabilities.

Fuck off, hearer! I want babies who can’t hear, see, speak, smell, taste, shit, urinate, breathe and wink. It’s called freedom, motherfucker!

Damn right. They’ve got sort of a club going and if there are no more deaf kids, then who will run the club?

I've heard about this weird extreme deaf community before. The whole idea reaks of a level of control that I'm really not comfortable with. They'd probably make terrible parents of a deaf OR hearing child.

That being said, I want to engineer my child (God forbid) to have two different colour eyes. Because that's just badass.

This thread is destined to go down in flames.

No doubt.

I don't know about any immigration connection, but I do know that this is very passionate issue in the deaf community and with a lot a people who work with the deaf. I've gotten in some pretty epic real-life arguments about this kind of thing for that reason.

I saw an episode of law and order about it, so I totally know where you are coming from.

I have a friend who is deaf and stopped hanging out some of his deaf friends because they refused to be around the hearing.

This is probably the most absurd argument involving children I have ever heard.

*awaits incoming fire*

i know nothing about, for the lack of a better term, "benefits" received by people who are deaf from the government. But it would be my assumption, and it may be a poor one at that, that deaf people are receiving said benefits from the government for being deaf.

Wouldn't creating deaf children, create more payment in benefits to these children?

Please keep the flaming minimal, i am trying to learn, not trying to flame.

Would the child be able to sue his parents and have them imprisoned for lawful maiming?

I mean really this is about as disturbing a thing as I have ever heard.

That's not the issue, and the question comes across as pretty disingenuous.

What is the issue is identity, and the question of whether deafness is a disability or not. Many deaf people don't consider themselves disabled at all, and as mydogfarted's experiences, show, the deaf community has a very strongly insular culture built around their identity as nonhearing. Deaf parents who don't feel that they're disabled, and want their to bring their own children up within their culture, would prefer a deaf child to a hearing one.

That's the primary motive. Now, that's not to say it's a great motive or even necessarily a valid one (personally, I disagree with it). But, you know, it's human. Hell, why does anybody want kids in their own image (another thing I personally disagree with, actually)?

All the people who are complaining about this know nothing about deafness. I am a sign language student and have had direct experience with Deaf individuals and people in the Deaf community. Some, indeed many, Deaf people do see a cultural itentity in being born Deaf. They do not see their deafness as a handicap but as a human difference much like a persons sexual orientation or whether a person has hanging or attached earlobes. They are trying to promote that concept in the general public. I am disappointed, I would have thought the SG community was more enlightened.

I have two different coloured eyes, and I tell you, it's not all it's cracked up to be. Mostly because no one really notices and you feel let down.

I've also heard of blind people who refuse to associate with the "sighted".

I understand that point, as I'm sure many people here do. However, I don't think anyone really should be able to pick their kid's sexual orientation at birth either.

The problem with this is that the kids don't have a choice in the matter. Modifying someone without their permission is pretty uncool in my books. It's not really an issue of enlightenment in my books.

Yeah, because being born blind, or being born without a hand, or being born without a leg, that's part of an IDENTITY man! It's not a disability. Sure, if I'm blind, I have to have all you damned normals put bumps on shit so I know what it is and if anyone ever went around with a nail file I'd be fucked, but it's not a disability!

And if I'm born with only one foot and have to have medical institutions invent shit to put on the end of my stump so I can hobble at a speed comparable to you normals, but that's my IDENTITY.

Whatever.

And it's proceeding at the expected rate. I think I'm going to go out for a movie and come back to six more pages.

I want a kid with 12 ears, three eyes and 8 arms 1 leg and no spleen....who do i see about that?

Now (apart from any arguments about women's rights, etc.), what if parents wanted to terminate embryos that would turn into deaf persons? I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing I'd be able to hear the screams of, "Eugenics!" from thousands of miles away.

While being born deaf can be part of a cultural identity, it is also a disability. Please do not create a false dichotomy here. Furthermore, none of your examples parallel the situation because they are not disabilities. I agree that being hearing impaired should not have negative stigma attached to it, but we have to be realistic about the fact that it does create difficulties to those affected. The radical minority of the deaf community which we are discussing here should probably be focusing more attention on ways to minimize the negative impact of being hearing impaired and less attention on trying to bulk up the ranks of their membership.

The reason why the SG community is (judging from the posts so far) resistant to this idea is because most of us are pretty big on choice. While choice of the parents is important, we are talking about a person who will be born and have to deal with the effects of a decision that was not their own. Parents should be mature and responsible enough to make the best decisions for their child and adapt to the conditions that their children create - not the other way around.

I understand that people who are hearing impaired want to promote the idea that they are not dysfunctional or something, but children are not our means of social experimentation. They are people. They ought not to be used as tools. I don't want to sound like Kant here, but we shouldn't be using people as means to an end.

Also, you probably shouldn't assume that anyone with an opposing viewpoint as you knows nothing of the matter. That's pretty arrogant and just simply not true. Allow your logic and facts to carry your arguments, not your assumptions.

Also, if the majority opinion expressed here so far is unenlightened and based on ignorance, why is it also the opinion of the majority of the deaf community? While the popularity of beliefs is definitely not an indication of their correctness, it's completely unfair to the suggest that the majority of members of the deaf community are ignorant and unenlightened about the conditions of being in a hearing-impaired family just because you disagree with them.

Well, your part of the SG community and based upon your last post I would have to wonder why you think that genetically engineeing people to be handicapped is "Enlightened" This is no different and no less abhorent a paractice as say breeding blond haired blue eyed children, controlling the sex of your child, their sexual orientation, or hell say breeding your slaves to be bigger stronger and less intelligent. Deafness is not the normal state of a human being it's a disability mind you it's one that can be overcome but that does not mean that people should be forced into it simply because their parents want a designer baby.

Yes I godwined my own post by mentioning Nazi breeding programs to produce the master race, IMO ths is one of those instances where it's actually fitting, also I was thinking of the greek helots who were the slaves of the spartans for hundreds of years and subject to having war literally being declared on them every year so that they could kill any of them that were too attractive, big, strong, smart etc etc.

If someone would have told me this on the street, I would have thought them insane and at the very least having missread one of thier "facts". This is truly one of the most frightening things I have heard in a while. If thats a true grassroots movement then the world is getting uglier even faster than I had feared.

Yeahhh...

But that IS actually complete bollocks now, isn't it now?

Let's wake up please!

Would you be so 'right-on' if a mother deliberately took thalidomide because she wants a child with cute little deformed limbs just like hers?

When I was 8 years old, my family moved next door to a married deaf couple with two hearing children about my age. Me and my mother went to the local community college to learn sign language, because we thought it would be a neighborly thing to do and help us to communicate with them. They responded by putting up a 7 foot tall stockade fence, and making it clear that they wanted to have nothing to do with us.

30 years later, my parents still live there, and so do the neighbors. They have been very unfriendly, even hostile, over the years. They want nothing to do with hearing people. The had their own group of deaf friends, and those were the only people they would allow into their lives.

I knew many other people with disabilities of various kinds and was never treated that way by any of them. One of me and my brothers best friends growing up was severely handicapped, having lived his first 5 years in a hospital. Neither he nor his family ever made us feel unwelcome.

Obviously, my encounter was only with one family, so to assume that all deaf people are of a similar mind would be foolish. That being said, I have heard of this (parents wanting to choose to make their child deaf) before, and I find the entire concept reprehensible and without a single redeeming quality. Anyone who deludes themselves into thinking that intentionally genetically maiming a child to satisfy some sense of "community", does not deserve to be, nor in my opinion, is fit to be a parent. Sorry if you find that offensive, tell it to the deaf kid. Oh wait.......