[Boris99]

It has been my experience that deaf people are very militant about their deafness.

[healy61]

Yes, they are militant. Some will not communicate with a deaf person who has undergone a cochlear implant. I don't understand it.

[Mad Dawg]

Certainly some deaf people have made a sort of "deaf pride" doctrine according to which deafness is not a handicap, it's just a difference. It is an ideological division. As someone with a very mild "difference" -- I'm red/green colorblind -- it just seems silly to me. I know I miss things because of a lack of the ability to make certain distinctions (drop a tool dipped in that red plastic stuff in green grass, and I'm not going to find it) and I'm sure that deaf people miss stuff that hearing people don't miss -- important stuff.

Sure seems like a handicap to me.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Rhetorical question. (More for the deaf than you.) I can still hear. Should I be proud? If not, can I just wear ear plugs instead of puncturing my ear drums?