Coming from somebody in the half-deaf community, please, medical science, find a cure for the problem that I have that needs to be fixed.

I understand their perspective but it’s still silly.

I’m a competent, highly functional person. I also have idiopathic hypersomnia and IBS-D. I’d love a fix for either; I want to live the best life possible.

The whole deaf community opposition to treatment reads as just a defensive mechanism. Being deaf means that one of your limited amount of senses doesn’t work. By definition, they’re disabled. That’d be like people whole are really near or farsighted not using glasses because they’ve decided not being able to see is their culture or personality. It’s ridiculous, and that viewpoint should be more than ridiculed when deaf parents don’t pursue treatment for their children.

Then they can just not get the treatment...?

What is particularly striking to me is bundling of two factors here:

  - Loss of hearing
  - Identity built around loss of hearing

To me these two are distinct. I don't value people based on their disabilities or lack there of. So for me the ability to fix a body's physical deficiency is always a good thing. It makes life better for the person inside the body. These arguments, that I called stupid, conflate both points and assume that seeing lack/loss of hearing as an impediment automatically passes judgement on people who suffer from it.

I'd also point out that creating an identity around a feature of one's body is a poor man's substitute for loving yourself. No wonder that people who do that get so defensive. Everything becomes a personal attack to them. While it's understandable, it doesn't make it any smarter, wiser, or functional.

I wonder what the actual prevalence of this sentiment among deaf people is. I would expect it to be exceedingly low.

I'm not deaf, but I'm legally blind and autistic. Interestingly, I've never once heard of someone take this position with regards to visual impairment. Why is that seemingly so universally agreed upon to be a "real" disability, and things like autism and deafness aren't?