Sophie Meekings: Profoundly hecking deaf

Recently I was at a conference chatting to a dude I’d just met, and it transpired that his research was all about auditory processing technology for hearing aids. “Oooh,” I said with great professionalism, “That’s super cool! I’m profoundly deaf and I use hearing aids, so your work is personally relevant to me!”

He looked at me. “You use hearing aids?”

“Yes,” I said smugly, waiting for him to get excited about meeting someone who was an end user of his research, and/or tell me that he would never have guessed I had a hearing loss (people do this a lot; they seem to think it’s a compliment).

“Not a cochlear implant.”

“Ye-es,” I said a bit more uncertainly.

“So you’re hard of hearing. Not deaf.”

UM, DUDE, I wanted to say, I AM SUPER DEAF. Actually, that might’ve been what I did say. To be honest I was so taken aback I’m not sure exactly what I did say. It might be the only time in my life that I’ve lived what ‘flabbergasted’ means. I was gasted all over my flabber.

If you’re not a hearing expert– ‘profoundly deaf’ is a very specific technical term. It means that your average hearing threshold (the quietest sound you can hear), is at least 95 decibels.

Pretty sure no-one who actually has a hearing loss has ever accidentally called themselves profoundly deaf when they meant ‘hard of hearing’ (which is not a technical term, but is usually used to describe people who have mild to moderate hearing loss).

Incredibly, however, this is not even the first time in my life I have had someone straight up tell me to my face that I must be WRONG about how deaf I am. I cannot possibly be profoundly deaf, apparently, because I:

– don’t have a cochlear implant
– use my voice
– am not very good at BSL (British Sign Language), apart from the swear words
– went to a mainstream school rather than a school for the deaf

Mateys, you do not get to tell my story. I contain multitudes. I can be profoundly deaf and go to a school with hearing people and play an instrument and be terrible at sign language and use hearing aids and sing cheerfully to my cats when I’m alone in the house. It doesn’t make me less deaf.

The frustrating thing about these weird preconceptions about deaf people is that I have to spend a good deal of time unexpectedly justifying myself to other people. Yes, I really am deaf. No, I know I don’t sound like it. Lipreading, mostly, but my hearing aids help too. I don’t think a cochlear implant is right for me at the moment. Sorry, I’m just really wiped out from lipreading all day. Sorry, just to remind you that you need to face me when you talk. Sorry, you’re covering your mouth again.

It’s exhausting.

P.S. Sometimes when I’m chatting to my friends and I unexpectedly hear something I wouldn’t normally (e.g. someone’s back is turned when they ask if I want some tea and I go YES PLEASE because I am always highly attuned to the tea-offering wavelengths of speech), they often squint at me and say ARE YOU REALLY DEAF and I throw my head back and with great drama say NO, I HAVE FOOLED YOU, I AM A FAKE DEAFY, but this is OK because we are among friends and it is all part of the many delights of being friends with me. If you do this and you are a stranger, you’re just being a dick.

Sophie Meekings is a speech scientist based in Newcastle. She says: “I research how the voice works in people who’ve got a stammer and people with Tourette’s Syndrome. In my spare time I volunteer as an outdoor educator for a national children’s charity, teaching children how to set fire to things! You can find out more about my research at sophiemeekings.com and I tweet at @sophiemeekings.”