This post is the result of seeing the capitalized word “Hearing” used to mean a hearing person who is pro-Deaf people. I have seen it before, I believe in deaf, it bothered me then and it’s time to think about why. It strikes me as wrong for two reasons.

First, it’s mis-capitalized. A Deaf person is proud to be deaf, right? So a Hearing person is proud to be hearing, it has nothing to do with if they support d/Deaf people or not. Or worse, if you want to get exclusionary or audist about it, a Deaf person might prefer to socialize only with other Deaf people, so a Hearing person would prefer to only socialize with other Deaf people - BOTH groups are audists because they’re discriminating on the basis of hearing status. I can appreciate wanting to be “with the tribe,” I’m not saying it’s bad to only be with people of your own kind…but it’s bad to turn “I want to be with people like me” into “I don’t want to be with people who aren’t like me.”

Second, we all know that the number of Deaf people in the U.S. is smaller than the number of deaf people. There are tons of elderly people who can’t hear at all but they are not Deaf. Therefore, Deaf people are in the minority within the greater deaf group. And if “Hearing” means someone who is pro-Deaf, then it’s perpetuating the idea that supporting Deaf people is a minority act. Everybody should be supporting Deaf people, or at least not caring about hearing status. Distinguishing pro-Deaf hearing people with a different name highlights the fact that there are fewer of them, and de-emphasizes the need to have everybody be pro-Deaf. (I’m using pro-Deaf as the antonym of anti-Deaf…that is, not afraid of, or disturbed by, Deaf people - I’m not saying every hearing person should work in the Deaf-World or have Deaf friends.)

I see “Hearing” as an offensive neologism and, speaking as a pro-Deaf hearing person, I don’t like to see that word used to describe me.