[noneeeed]

I've always felt the defensiveness/unease from some in the deaf community is understandable, even if I think fitting kids with things like implants is a good idea. Being deaf, certainly up to the widespread use of the internet in the last couple of decades, meant that you were essentially cut off socially from mainstream society.

The vast majority of hearing people have no interest in learning sign-language unless they are related to a deaf person. You are, in a sense, a perenial foreigner in your own land, surrounded by people who you cannot communicate freely with and never will be able to (unlike a migrant who can learn the language). So you form communities with other deaf people with who you can communicate freely. Deaf culture has become something more distinct than simply a community of people with a shared experience within a wider culture, it's much more isolated.

Obviously hearing loss is on a spectrum, with varying levels of remediation available from aids and implants to lip-reading and speech training so the above is a generalisation. But especially for adults, things like implants are not a panacea, you don't suddenly hear perfectly. I have a friend who uses a combination of an implant and an aid, but talking with him still requires continuous extra thought and consideration to make sure he can follow me, and that I can understand his speech. A noisy pub or a free-flowing multi-person conversation with everyone butting in is still incredibly isolating for him.

The internet has changed a lot of this from what I've been told, with so much culture being online and in text, deaf people are able to interract with hearing people much more often and freely (and on equal terms) far more often, even if they have many of the same issues IRL that they have always had. But the seperation remains, and it's mostly a result of the hearing world's almost total lack of consideration or effort to accomodate (see the absense of a sign-language interpreter for UK government announcements as an example).