'We can consign deafness to history': Businesswoman of the Year

Miss-Delectable

Miss-Delectable

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'We can consign deafness to history': Businesswoman of the Year

Deafness is a scourge that can be eradicated and consigned to history, just like polio, according to Queensland's newly crowned Business Woman of the Year.

Dimity Dornan was awarded the title in a gala luncheon this afternoon at the Sofitel in Brisbane.

She earned the award for her work in founding Hear and Say, which helps deaf children hear through early diagnosis, advanced hearing technology and therapy.

Dr Dornan used her speech to talk about her hopes for the future – a world where deaf children are able to hear.

"I think deafness is at the same stage polio was..." she said.

"It is a scourge in our world but it can be almost completely eradicated. I believe we can truly make this happen ... thank you for your help."

Dr Dornan founded Hear and Say after she came across a crying boy who had lost his bus money in 1991.

Due to his deafness, Dr Dornan could not communicate properly with the boy about what was wrong and what she could do to help.

A year later, she founded Hear and Say to teach deaf children how to hear and speak and it is now one of the world's leading paediatric auditory-verbal and cochlear implant centres.

Dr Dornan was one of five winners announced across six categories at this afternoon's lunch.

All the winners will represent Queensland at the national Telstra Business Women's awards in Melbourne next month.


Not again! Can't believe that she's been nominated again! Deafness is not a scourge! Cancer is a scourge. :roll:
 
I can not believe she compared deafness to Polio!! :mad: Like we are diseased or something. Oh the ignorance of people!!
 
Ugh. I fail to see how deafness could be a fatal or serious disease. It is just an inability...
 
It's not her fault. That's what society has conditioned people to believe about disabilities. Until ALL disabilities, not just deafness, are simply seen as differences rather than afflictions, this sort of thinking will persist.
 
Earlier today through Twitter, I came across this response by Charlie Swinbourne (a deaf UK journalist) which is worth reading:
Deafness should not be spoken of as a “scourge” | Charlie Swinbourne

An article from Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald has blazed its way through Facebook and Twitter this morning, about Dimity Dornan, an Australian woman who, after winning an award for her business (which is said to help deaf children ‘hear’ through early diagnosis, advanced hearing technology and therapy), went on to compare deafness to polio in her speech.

Dornan said that deafness “is a scourge in our world but it can be almost completely eradicated.” Here’s the article: 'We can consign deafness to history': Businesswoman of the Year

Now, we’re living in a time when a cure for deafness might not be so far away , a subject that was even covered in Ted Evans’ award winning film The End earlier this year.

The problem is that when you talk about deafness using the rhetoric Dornan does, you move a long way away from a positive point of view about how many people live with deafness, the deaf culture that has evolved over the years and the unique language deaf people communicate with.

If you say you simply want to consign deafness to history, which is the title of the article, then to many deaf people that feels like you want to get rid of and wipe out the very thing that makes us who we are.

Whatever Dornan’s achievements, she should be far more careful about the way she speaks about deafness (which is, after all how the children she helps will go on to identify themselves in future: as being deaf) and acknowledge that many deafies don’t feel they’re living with a “scourge,” or that they’re living with something that needs to be “eradicated.” They’re simply getting on with trying to live positive lives, as deaf people.
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I am being sarcastic here. Can we see the inablity to learn sign language as scourge to the deaf people?????
 
God, she sounds like Autism Speaks. "We must destroy it because it's a burden, it breaks apart families and marriages, and it cuts the*afflicted* person off from experiencing true happiness. But if we try hard enough, we can get rid of it!"

:roll:
 
purplewowies said:
God, she sounds like Autism Speaks. "We must destroy it because it's a burden, it breaks apart families and marriages, and it cuts the*afflicted* person off from experiencing true happiness. But if we try hard enough, we can get rid of it!"

:roll:
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Yeah, I find it very odd because they really are a burden to us (job, education, etc) and most of them refused to learn sign language.
 
She didn't have to use such emotionally charged words. :crazy:
 
Deafguy25 said:
Prosecuted? Really?

I don't like what she said, but she is not doing anything that needs prosecuted. This is how people end up thinking the Deaf community is full of extremists (which is really only a tiny percentage).
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Maybe the laws over there are different from the USA.
 
This woman needs her award taken away and smashed into pieces!
 
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