Are you blind, or in a wheelchair, or in another situation that causes people to assume that shouting at you will help the situation when really all that shouting does is make you want to cover your ears? This shirt might be exactly what you need!
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I am Deaf. And, NO, shouting doesn’t help me either. This T-shirt bugs me because it fails to challenge the mistaken idea that there is ANYone who benefits from shouting. So far, I have not met ANYone who likes for people to shout at them. Shouting makes it HARDER (not easier) for a deaf person to understand hearing people because hearing people move their mouths differently while shouting–and that makes it harder to lipread them. So I, as a deaf person, dislike shouting probably about as much as hearing wheelchair riders or hearing blind people.
I understand that it is annoying when people so profoundly misunderstand your actual disability that they do unhelpful things like this. It annoys me too when people fail to understand what it actually means to be deaf. But can’t you please find a way to educate people about your disability without reinforcing misconceptions that people already think they “know” (but actually don’t) about mine? In the way your T-shirt is currently written, it seems to send the implicit message that shouting is only bad if the person isn’t deaf … and as a deaf person, I can tell you that that’s not true.
Thank you for your consideration.
Andrea,
An excellent point, and well taken. I apologise sincerely for not having thought of it – I do actually know that shouting doesn’t help and I should have remembered that.
Can you help suggest a different way to phrase the same sort of idea so I can design a new shirt to replace this? Perhaps “Shouting won’t help me understand you” with a picture of a megaphone under the slashed circle?