Reddit reviews TRAIN GO SORRY: Inside a Deaf World

> It stated that hearing people were close minded and self involved.

This is true, but your teacher made the statement out of context.

With regard to deafness and Deaf issues, I would actually agree that the majority of hearing people are closed minded and self involved.

As an example: I'm starting a new job soon in the video relay industry. I recently sent a farewell letter to co-workers and in it I mentioned my new position. Later, I was approached by one of them who had been thinking about it and asked "Can't they just use SMS? That already works fine. " Even after explaining about English skills, native language, SMS being slow and error prone, etc he still didn't quite get why a deaf person would rather use sign language to communicate with someone instead of sending a text.

Obviously, hearing people aren't any more closed minded and self involved than any one else. However, people experience the world through our senses and our understanding of it is shaped by those experiences. Hearing people understand deafness (cannot hear) but cannot easily understand Deafness (experiencing the world without sound) and encounters such as I described above are the norm. This lack of understanding influences their behaviors and opinions towards deaf people.

Likewise, deaf people, whose own understanding of the world is also shaped by their experiences understand what sound and hearing is (vibrations of air turned into electrical impulses and interpreted by the brain) but lack understanding of what it's like to experience the world with sound. And just like hearing people, this lack of understanding influences their behaviors and opinions towards hearing people.

So far so good right? This is mostly just what you'd expect to find with any two cultures with a language barrier - except that's not JUST a cultural and language barrier. Deaf people learn to read and write spoken languages and hearing people learn sign languages but still tensions exist.

In the case of hearing people, the historical approach towards the deaf has been "make them Hearing, like us!" because that's what they understand. Give them hearing aids and implants and make them speak like we do. "Fix them", etc.

This Deaf oppression, oralism and audism has left it's mark on Deaf culture. Like in many cultures, there is a strong cultural memory in the Deaf community. For some people they are drawn to the Deaf Power subculture and in even more extreme cases develop reverse audism and persecution complexes but that's a very small minority. I find it hard to believe that 50% of the Deaf people you've encountered believe born Deaf are superior people (which is the very definition of reverse audism.) Superior signers maybe, but not superior people.

More subtle issues derive from just plain, run of the mill assumptions, misunderstandings, and miscommunications. What might be considered perfectly normal behavior to one person is taken to be intentionally motivated by malice on the other person's part, and it goes both ways.

I started this response hours ago and since then have had lunch and left and come back, so I might have veered off track at some point. For sure I lost my original train of thought and I don't think I can catch it again. Train Go Sorry.

So I'll just stop here. I hope this response helped.