Offensive??

[deafskeptic]

Hahaha... I've been there. When I was a kid and my mom tried to tell me to do something I didn't want to do, I would look at her in the eyes... look down at my hearing aid (yeah, I had the chest kind)... turn it off... look back at her in the eye... smile... then walk away.

He he, you can't get away with that in a Deaf family.

 

[ms_redcat]

In our church bulletin at the bottom it says "We have listening devices for the partially hearing impaired"

When I read that I thought of some crazy old man running around flapping his arms and honking like a goose, but now with the bucket added, its an old man running around flapping his arms, honking like a goose with a bucket over his head.

Wow. *pictures crazy goose man* That's hilarious!

Now I'm wondering if you want to politely say something to the bulletin's writer. I'm not sure what "partially hearing impaired" even means! Might phrasing it like that discourage people from asking about and using the listening devices? (Here I'm actually being serious. It's pretty easy to imagine someone looking at that and thinking "oh, those devices aren't for someone with as much hearing loss as I have, so they won't help me.")

But I wouldn't ask them by saying "Are these devices only for people with buckets on their heads?"

 

[dogmom]

 

[Chie Seoung]

I don't like anyone saying that I am "impaired," because I don't feel that I am. I don't get upset, because where I live there are no other deaf or hard of hearing folks around, besides the elderly. I have only met two other deaf individuals in my life, myself, so I understand it is not the norm for people in my community to know how to address you. I usually just say deaf and leave it at that because when I say hard of hearing, I get asked all sorts of really personal questions for some very odd reason! LOL I really don't want to get into the whole "how it happened" story. I guess it is too painful to look back, for me personally. I just want to move forward now.

 

[Hear Again]

Partially hearing impaired? That reminds me of how some people call those who are legally blind "partials" or partially sighted. Call a spade a spade. Use the word blind. Same thing goes for hearing loss. Use the word deaf -- not hearing impaired. When I had some medical records sent to me, they indicated that I was "hearing impaired." I normally don't care what someone calls me, but for some reason, this irritated me greatly. I'm deaf and blind. Do not call me visually impaired, legally blind, sightless (God I hate that!) or visually handicapped. I don't mind hard of hearing, but I am not hearing impaired. I'm either hard of hearing or more accurately, deaf.

 

[Hear Again]

I think the differentiation between partially hearing impaired as opposed to fully hearing impaired is that the former can hear a little while the latter cannot. It seems a very strange way to describe hearing loss to me, but oh well. If I had seen that written in my church bulletin, I would have asked them why they couldn't say "hearing impaired" although I'm sure many parishioners would have preferred hard of hearing instead.

 

[Hear Again]

When I was a teenager and my mother yelled at me, I'd reach for my hearing aids to turn them off. She eventually caught on to what I was doing and would say "Don't you even THINK about it!" whenever I touched one of my ears.

 

[Hear Again]

hearing impaired make me feel I'm broken, like i am meant to be hearing.

I feel the same way when people call me visually impaired. Do me a favor and use the word blind. You're not going to catch my blindness if you call me that. :roll: As for what other people wish to be called, it's their choice and I respect whatever that may be.

I just remembered a time when someone called me "hard of seeing." That was pretty funny!