[My identity is not based on my ears.
There is more to me than "my deafness"...Lets move beyond it./QUOTE] Sigh...Cain why do you always feel the need to quibble with stuff I say?
I identify strongly as Deaf b/c I consider myself a Visual "Seeing" person...I don't identfy as Deaf simply b/c I have some hearing loss (and actually my loss is so mild in my left ear,that I can talk on a (non-amplified) phone without my HA. My idenity is NOT hearing impaired or culturally HOH. (cultrally HOH means that you consider yourself culturally closer to hearing people then to Deaf people)
However being Deaf isn't my entire idenity. I am not hyperfocused on it.....I also identify as multihandicapped/ severely disabled, a woman, a lesbian, middle class and so on.
There's black pride, Scandanavian pride, Irish pride and so on...
It's the same theroy... There are people who are incredibly proud of being Irish or Greek and are really into it the way some deaf people strongly identfy as Deaf. Yet nobody is accusing them of letting that identity exclusively define who they are!