Argumentative Essay On Deaf Culture

This controversy escalated in 2002 when a lesbian couple in the US attempted to conceive a deaf baby. Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough were determined to birth a deaf child, and went to great lengths to find their own sperm donor to assure birth of a deaf baby. Both women experienced “numbing isolation” throughout their life, attending school with hearing counterparts and having an interpreter present, but one notes: “No teenage conversation can survive the intrusion of third-party interpretation” (qtd. in Spriggs 283). Additionally, they argue that since the people that identify with the Deaf culture experience “socially imposed harms,” the Deaf culture identifies as a minority group. Being a minority group, they believe they should be able to engage in the same practices other minority groups’ experience. For example, they argue …show more content…
The mother believes this will strengthen her and her daughter’s relationship, as the daughter will have certain experiences and capabilities that a male would not have. Can the same argument be applicable to deafness? For instance, a Deaf parent taking steps to conceive a deaf child is doing so because he or she believes that the child will be easier to parent and will have a strong relationship with their deaf parents because they share the same trait of deafness. In addition, Anstey points out that when excluding judgments based on societal norms that cause deafness to be viewed as a disability, deafness, like being a certain sex, may lead to the deaf child experiencing occurrences and abilities that are specific to those that are deaf. An example of this, as Anstey states, is the dependence that the deaf have on sign language – something deaf people exclusively experience, and something a hearing child would not understand the significance of because to them it is an alternative mode of