There are plenty of situations in this world where hateful people know they’re being hateful. But sometimes, someone has no intention of offending anyone with what they’re saying.

Regardless, that person needs to be aware of how their words and actions are affecting others, so that they don’t continue their insensitive behavior in the future.

But when this deaf student called out a school instructor for making a mockery of sign language, the adults in her life told her she was being “disrespectful”!

Was she wrong to correct the teacher’s offensive remarks? Decide for yourself!

AITA for being rude to a presenter at my school?

I, f15, am deaf and autistic – i’ve had my fair share of ignorant people in my lifetime.

Today at school we had a presentation about car safety because I’m approaching the age where I can go for a driving test.

I don’t know in what context the presenter said the following because, ironically, I didn’t hear it.

But i saw her flapping her hands about in an incredibly exaggerated manner and she then said it was “sign language” – that’s very offensive.

And feeling justifiably offended, OP decided to confront the insensitive woman…

I was really annoyed to see some random lady take the mick out of my language like that.  I walked up to her after we got sent off to go do the workshop activities and i was quite snarky.

I said “Hey, next time you want to mock an entire community’s language maybe don’t do it when there’s a deaf kid in the class?”

This caught her off guard. She sputtered and said she was a drama teacher so she was over exaggerated as a person, and she asked what she should call her arm movements instead.

I told her it would’ve been perfectly adequate to just say nothing at all.

But after the confrontation, OP’s aide told her that SHE was in the wrong…

My aide, we’ll call her S, pulled me aside after and said i was being really disrespectful.

Yeah, sure, i was being a smartalec, but it’s exhausting hearing things like that day in and day out from people who are not deaf.

And honestly it kinda made me annoyed that a hearing person was telling me how I should be reacting to someone making a mockery of deaf culture 😛

I told my mum about this in the car and she agreed with S and said it was my job to educate ignorant people respectfully.. and now i feel like a big jerk.

So, reddit… AITA?

So this adult woman mocks OP’s disability right in front of her, and OP is the one who has to take the high road? Absolutely not!

Reddit said that OP had every right to handle the situation how she did.

And others said that OP was only being told she was “disrespectful” because she was a kid correcting an adult.

But some people said that there was a very real reason the instructor may have been making those hand motions.

And this user said that if she was being insensitive, a little politeness might help her realize the error in her ways faster.

It’s not rude to call out someone’s ignorance when you see it!

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.