So this question came up from a Deaf creator that I follow on TikTok.  She wondered why (hearing) people might judge others based on the noises they make.  The specific context here is noise made during communication (ASL production), but can be expanded to any noise that deaf people may be making unbeknownst to them.

As a hearing person that went though the experience in question (long before I starting learning ASL and learning about the Deaf World) and the things listed below, I believe I am qualified to provide an answer to this.

As hearing people, we are exposed to sounds and noise all the time, even while in the womb(!).  What some deaf people may not  initially realize is that just about everything that moves makes noise!  And I am talking about an understanding that goes far beyond that moment where you first learned that farts made a noise! 😛 Other humans, household appliances, vehicles, footsteps, your keyboard and mouse, food cooking, tools, shuffling papers, the ceiling fan, wind… for other people: when someone is putting on clothes, brushing their teeth, sneezing, snoring, etc.   Some things make loud noises that can be detected further away, some make quieter noises that you have to be close to in order to hear.  If we close our eyes and cover our ears, we can sometimes even hear our own heartbeat, pulse, and the sounds of fluids moving through our bodies.

Because of this constant bombardment of sound, we become conditioned to mentally ignore sounds that are not important in our current environment, but remain alert to those that are.  That is, we learn to recognize the “normal” and “abnormal” sounds of our environment.

Another thing we do is get attuned to the absence of sound where there should be some.   For example, your child is playing alone upstairs.  You hear the thud of them falling down and hear some light crying.  You start walking upstairs to check on them because it does not sound serious.  Or, after the thud, you hear screaming and you run upstairs because it sounds like they are really hurt.  But what is worse than that?  Hearing no sound after the thud, because  then they are likely unconscious or unable to get enough breath to scream.

For a lighter example, we can be in the kitchen and may not really pay attention to the sound of the dishwasher or the washing machine but will become suddenly aware of when it does not sound right which might indicate a problem, like a spray arm hitting something or a drainage problem in the dish washer, an unbalanced washing machine, or if either one is pouring water onto the floor.

This constant filtering of sounds happens unconsciously, all the time, 24×7, even when we sleep, which is why a hearing parent that could normally sleep soundly through a fire alarm (like yours truly) might wake up the instant their newborn child makes an odd breath sound in their bassinet (also like yours truly) .  Or when in a crowded environment, we will mentally ignore other ambient noises in order to have a conversation with someone, but something abnormal (for the environment) like the sound of breaking glass, someone screaming, a fight breaking out, or a gunshot will snap us out of the focused conversation and raise our situational awareness.

This attunement to what sounds normal (right) and what sounds abnormal (wrong) affects our behavior, and we make judgments and  can form biases on that, too.  If I am going to buy a used car, but during the test drive it sounds like it is misfiring on acceleration, its brakes sound like metal on metal, and the power steering system squeals loud as hell when I turn the steering wheel, I would say that car sounds like shit, and conclude that it is a piece of shit, and not buy it.  And I likely would be right.

Unfortunately, the same thing happens when we first encounter deaf people.   Note that this is a very different situation than when we first encounter someone that is blind or in a wheelchair.   While there are differences, they (for the most part) look, move, and more importantly, sound like a “normal” human.  But with deaf people, they are presented with another person that looks like other humans we are used to, moves like other humans we are used to, but just does not sound like other humans we are used to.  If the deaf person is verbal (for lack of a better word) and speaks English, they may have the characteristic “deaf voice” that the hearing person also might not be used to.  (I will not get into the facial expressions used with ASL, as this entry is about sounds.)

Even if they do not speak, they may unknowingly emit noises that are unfamiliar and/or alarming to the hearing person like grunts, moans, vocalizations for things like CHA, PAH, and BRBR, produce almost-words if they articulate their mouth as if they are speaking, produce grunts, sighs, and other breathy sounds, etc.  A deaf person I once met during an evaluation (he was evaluating me) kept making these slow “Uhhmp-ummmmm” sounds that were like quieter, drawn-out “ahem” sounds.  While they did not alarm me in any way, I found them to be somewhat annoying over time, and I could image how a first time meeting with an inexperienced hearing person might go.

Since these noises were never previously associated with a “normal” human, we may automatically think of them as abnormal.  This can sometime result in at least one of two things happening:

• The hearing person gets uncomfortable with the noises because they do not know if or how to react to them, and may try to avoid the situation all together
• The hearing person notices that nothing looks wrong with the deaf person and concludes that something else must responsible for the abhorrent behavior – “he can’t talk right, and he is making all those weird sounds with his arms flapping around, therefore he must be mentally challenged“
• The hearing person, finding themselves in an unexpected or uncomfortable situation, might not know how to facilitate communication and just it might not occur to them to simply expose their phone for the deaf person to type on (*note below*), or hand them a notepad

*Note: the deaf community is very open with themselves and might openly discuss topics or issues that hearing people might think are more private or even intimate. This sense of privacy/intimacy extends to our phones, and is one of the reasons many hearing people are not comfortable handing their phones over to their friends or family members, let alone a random (Deaf) stranger they just met.

Of course, none of this is the fault of the deaf person.  It is the hearing person reacting to an unfamiliar thing in an otherwise familiar environment that challenges the existing models in their head.  However, it is strictly the hearing person that needs to be able to grow their existing ideas of what sounds right and wrong in order to accept the different sounds that deaf people may present to us.  And over time, we become accustomed to that as well – I know I have.  Mostly.

This is one of the reasons I suggest that any D/deaf creators out there always leave sounds on when they record content.  The more deaf noises are normalized, the better things will be for everyone.