There are also members of the deaf community that oppose chochlear implants which would deny the deaf identity, and 'correct' something that is a difference and not a disability.
There are also members of the deaf community that oppose chochlear implants which would deny the deaf identity, and 'correct' something that is a difference and not a disability.
March 30, 1998 SILENCE IS GOLDEN FOR DEAF WHO FEAR LOSS OF IDENTITY
BYLINE: Eric Zorn.
What happens when a magic snake slithers out of folklore and into reality?
The snake, a powerful talking serpent, appears in a fable that introduces "Sweet Nothing in My Ear," a play now in previews at the Victory Gardens Theater. It offers the gift of flight to one among a family of flightless birds; in ex-change, though, the bird must give up the very condition--flightlessness--that in many ways has defined its life.
"You must choose carefully," says the snake. "Where do you belong?"
The bird's dilemma is not resolved in the play, but the story raises questions about identity that for most of us and through most of history have been hypothetical. Would we magically change ourselves if we could? And if we did, who would we be?
For the deaf, that hypothetical question has become real in the '90s with the introduction of electronic devices that can be implanted in the ear to transmit auditory signals to the cochlea. In some deaf patients, particularly the young, these implants create a functional semblance of hearing.
But the deaf, unlike most others among the differently abled, have taken such pride in their distinct culture, language and sense of community that many of them now argue deafness is a blessing, not a disability. They insist they are not defective, and they hope--even pray--their own children are born deaf.
I admit that when I used to hear such talk I considered it rationalization, an admirable attempt to be content with the gifts the deaf have and not to dwell on that which nature has denied them. After all, it's easiest and perhaps best to persuade yourself you don't want something you can't have when the alternative is fruitless longing.
But it seems I was wrong. The deaf weren't bluffing. The advent of cochlear implants touched off what Deaf Life magazine called an "explosive controversy" within that community as technology appeared to offer the promise of fixing that which they strongly maintained was never broken.
"Sweet Nothing in my Ear," which premiered last year in Los Angeles and formally opens a seven-week run here Saturday, is the first mainstream entertainment to bring this issue to a general audience. The idea is not to advance one point of view, said playwright Stephen Sachs, who is hearing, but to prompt "audience members to argue about it in the car on the way home."
The metaphorical bird in the story is an 8-year-old boy who has recently gone deaf. His father, who is hearing, becomes intrigued and then obsessed with the idea of restoring at least some of the boy's hearing through a surgical implant. But his mother, who is deaf, is opposed to the idea.
"Everything is as it should be," she says.
The play is performed in American Sign Language with oral interpretations. We learn early in the first act that ASL for cochlear implant is almost identical to the gesture for vampire--"something evil that draws the life out of you," as a character says--a conceit followed up in later clashes in which deaf characters (played by deaf actors) equate im-plants with self-hatred and cultural genocide.
"The majority always thinks that each minority wants to be like them," sneers one.
But the hearing father is no straw man, and his counter-arguments that some form of hearing is better than no hear-ing for the boy--if not his deaf mother and her deaf family--are hard to dismiss.
Deafness may not concern you, but "Sweet Nothing . . ." is really about more than that. It's about the magic snakes that are slithering into reality all over, in advanced plastic surgical techniques and genetic engineering, for example. The same sorts of once purely speculative questions that are now actual matters of choice among the deaf will face many of us someday, and it's never too early to start thinking about the answers.
Good column. I have no issue with adults choosing to live as they please. But when does the government, or society, have the right to intervene? Is denying a child a medical procedure that would correct a serious disability child abuse? If deafness is not a serious disability, then what is? Would it be ethical to allow the adult to use genetic engineering to induce the preferred disability in utero? How are we supposed to differentiate disability from difference? When science learns how to adjust gender alignment and sexual preference will that be ethical, and at what developmental age? When we are able to correct congenital diseases will that be optional or required? These issues are more acute when everything is normal. Or God's plan. Or fate.
Science has already learned how to adjust the sex of the body, but it is the current considered judgment of the medical and scientific community that gender identity and sexual orientation are essential to who a person is and cannot be changed.
There are also members of the deaf community that oppose chochlear implants which would deny the deaf identity, and 'correct' something that is a difference and not a disability.
March 30, 1998 SILENCE IS GOLDEN FOR DEAF WHO FEAR LOSS OF IDENTITY
BYLINE: Eric Zorn.
What happens when a magic snake slithers out of folklore and into reality?
The snake, a powerful talking serpent, appears in a fable that introduces "Sweet Nothing in My Ear," a play now in previews at the Victory Gardens Theater. It offers the gift of flight to one among a family of flightless birds; in ex-change, though, the bird must give up the very condition--flightlessness--that in many ways has defined its life.
"You must choose carefully," says the snake. "Where do you belong?"
The bird's dilemma is not resolved in the play, but the story raises questions about identity that for most of us and through most of history have been hypothetical. Would we magically change ourselves if we could? And if we did, who would we be?
For the deaf, that hypothetical question has become real in the '90s with the introduction of electronic devices that can be implanted in the ear to transmit auditory signals to the cochlea. In some deaf patients, particularly the young, these implants create a functional semblance of hearing.
But the deaf, unlike most others among the differently abled, have taken such pride in their distinct culture, language and sense of community that many of them now argue deafness is a blessing, not a disability. They insist they are not defective, and they hope--even pray--their own children are born deaf.
I admit that when I used to hear such talk I considered it rationalization, an admirable attempt to be content with the gifts the deaf have and not to dwell on that which nature has denied them. After all, it's easiest and perhaps best to persuade yourself you don't want something you can't have when the alternative is fruitless longing.
But it seems I was wrong. The deaf weren't bluffing. The advent of cochlear implants touched off what Deaf Life magazine called an "explosive controversy" within that community as technology appeared to offer the promise of fixing that which they strongly maintained was never broken.
"Sweet Nothing in my Ear," which premiered last year in Los Angeles and formally opens a seven-week run here Saturday, is the first mainstream entertainment to bring this issue to a general audience. The idea is not to advance one point of view, said playwright Stephen Sachs, who is hearing, but to prompt "audience members to argue about it in the car on the way home."
The metaphorical bird in the story is an 8-year-old boy who has recently gone deaf. His father, who is hearing, becomes intrigued and then obsessed with the idea of restoring at least some of the boy's hearing through a surgical implant. But his mother, who is deaf, is opposed to the idea.
"Everything is as it should be," she says.
The play is performed in American Sign Language with oral interpretations. We learn early in the first act that ASL for cochlear implant is almost identical to the gesture for vampire--"something evil that draws the life out of you," as a character says--a conceit followed up in later clashes in which deaf characters (played by deaf actors) equate im-plants with self-hatred and cultural genocide.
"The majority always thinks that each minority wants to be like them," sneers one.
But the hearing father is no straw man, and his counter-arguments that some form of hearing is better than no hear-ing for the boy--if not his deaf mother and her deaf family--are hard to dismiss.
Deafness may not concern you, but "Sweet Nothing . . ." is really about more than that. It's about the magic snakes that are slithering into reality all over, in advanced plastic surgical techniques and genetic engineering, for example. The same sorts of once purely speculative questions that are now actual matters of choice among the deaf will face many of us someday, and it's never too early to start thinking about the answers.
----------
Good column. I have no issue with adults choosing to live as they please. But when does the government, or society, have the right to intervene? Is denying a child a medical procedure that would correct a serious disability child abuse? If deafness is not a serious disability, then what is? Would it be ethical to allow the adult to use genetic engineering to induce the preferred disability in utero? How are we supposed to differentiate disability from difference? When science learns how to adjust gender alignment and sexual preference will that be ethical, and at what developmental age? When we are able to correct congenital diseases will that be optional or required? These issues are more acute when everything is normal. Or God's plan. Or fate.
Science has already learned how to adjust the sex of the body, but it is the current considered judgment of the medical and scientific community that gender identity and sexual orientation are essential to who a person is and cannot be changed.