Yay!

I am now done with my hugeomongous essay. This is happy. I have only one small funnish essay and one medium sized really fun halfway finished project to do this weekend in the way of schoowork, and then I get to relax. And I had sushi last night at the International Dinner, and I am probably having it again Saturday night when we go out to eat because it is so...darned...good. And I am going to get to watch another Miyazaki movie this evening, "The Castle of Cagliostro." And Irina and I stayed up until two in the morning talking because she's a good friend like that and knew I needed to destress more than I needed to worry about work for a couple of hours, and so we worked out all of the plot holes in the Saiuki fanfic! And I got a terrifiying idea for a short story. And I got a really good idea for an illustrated coffee table book. And my sister is relaxing and having fun. And I found a secret garden full of old tulips of all colors. And the flags are flying today from the towers, and someone put up a pirate flag from the corner of Thomas Great Hall. Which is really funny.
I have Pem East 218, which has a nice view and is about twice as big as my room this year. I got another fan for my room and so the temp. has dropped about twenty degrees to somewhere in the "tolerable" range.
And I have discovered a wonderful thing about all-nighters: they make me marvelously cheerful! :D Although I know that if I tried to pull one tomorrow I would be more tired than anyone I know, and probably walk around bumping into my own shadow.

Designer Babies, pt. 2

Last week, I wrote a post about two deaf lesbian women who basically did everything within their power to make sure that the son that they were going to have would be deaf.

I said that I found this disgusting.

In an effort to find out why I was so upset about this (I basically stewed about it all through the 11 o'clock class I had), I went out and did my research. Here are all of the articles I've been able to find on the past couple weeks on this topic.

The original Fox News story I came across

CyberCast News Article - slightly religious slant

BBC News Online Article
Related Articles from the BBC on the Deaf Designer Baby and on Designer Babies in general

An article from an Austrailian news website

A really interesting interview from the point of view of another deaf mother in the Guardian.

Another article from the Washington Post.

Why does this trouble me? They're well-educated, mature, and seemingly make a loving couple. They had the right to choose their sperm donor.

But. The thing I can't fathom, I don't think, is the fact that they chose something for their child that the child had no say in. And it's more intrinsic than hair color, or even, perhaps, sex - regular males and females can all see, hear.

Certainly, deaf culture is a wonderful thing - from what I've seen of sign language I think it's beatifully expressive, and I'd love to learn it myself. But they've made the choice to block out their child from knowing anything about the dominant culture, simply because they think the deaf culture is somehow "better" than the hearing culture, which neither of them have ever really known.

Sure, they both had massive doses of humiliating therapy in their childhood from well meaning teachers, parents, faculty. But anyone who's ever had to go through that kind of thing gets that. It's one decision to think, "okay, I don't like this culture. I hereby withdraw from it and am going to find another one." It's another thing to make that decision for someone else.

And, honestly, what's so bad about hearing? They're knocking something they've never tried for someone else.

This is not all of the reason why these articles, and the offhand way in which they're treating their child like a cultural experiment upsets me. I don't know if I can even articulate that to myself, all of it. I hope to be able to post more on this sometime...but it's going to be hard, and it's going to get personal. And I don't think I'm going to like writing about it.
But that's why I have to write about it: I haven't seen anyone else doing it.