Did I Stutter?

It's time to take back our speech.

[biolabs-soldier]

One of the worst feelings is when you are speaking in front of your class and people are snickering every time you stutter. It is obviously straining you physically and people just laugh to their neighbor or whisper things you can’t hear. Not just one time, but every time you speak.

You’re in college, dammit. Grow the hell up.

People are trash, sometimes.

[punny-koala-tea-deactivated2024]

A how to guide for accidentally Ordering things

One time I was at the original Rubio’s Taco Shop in California and I was with a few friends, and I was the last to order.

I had it all planned out, “street tacos, no guac, and some chips please.”

It was a mantra in my head, street tacos street tacos, No guac, I should say guacamole they might not know ‘guac,’ who am I kidding this is a Mexican place, I’m forgetting some-CHIPS.

My friends moved to grab a table. I was the last to order, all alone in line. Street tacos no guac hold the chips, no, I want chips, what does it mean to hold some thing like that…?

It was my turn and I stood before the counter, absolutely Dumbstruck.

Street tacos no guac and some chips please.

“I… I’ll hav-“ rapid eye movement, “I-I um…” cashier’s staring at me, there’s people behind me… “I, I’m sorry.” SCAN THE MENU AGAIN WHAT WERE YOU ORDERING I DONT REMEMBER WHERE THE HECK DID MY FRIENDS GO I SHOULDA HAD SOMEONE ELSE ORDER FOR ME LIKE I ALWAYS DO!

“I um… Uh…” he thinks you’re crazy… “K… que… quesa…” people are staring. “QUESADILLA!”

Five minutes later:

Me: *sits down quietly*

Friend: you get your tacos?

Me: no, man, I legit panicked and ordered a quesadilla.

Friend: you’re lactose intolerant…

Me: I know.

[sluttyquarantinetheory]

Maybe if people stopped writing all their stuttering characters as someone faking it so that people don’t suspect them of nefarious deeds, I’d stopped getting accused of lying.

[yesididstutter]

Everyday I Stutter

I have woken up everyday for 23 years. I have stuttered everyday for nearly as many years. I will, hopefully, go to sleep tonight, God willing, I’ll wake up tomorrow, and guaranteed, I will stutter then too. It won’t go away as long as I don’t either. As much as I may hate it, my stutter is apart of me. It’s apart of my story but it will not be the period at the end of my sentence. It’s just a comma, telling me to take a break. A semi colon saying, hey pause and start again. As long as I’m here, my stutter is too. But there are worse places I could be, worse things I could have. I wake up and so does my stutter but that does not mean my confidence gets to sleep.

[cigarettesandinkedpages-deactiv]

Please. Right a lot of people have asked me why I want to see a character in my favourite show have a stutter but I’m finally ready to tell everyone, why we need representation of diverse speech. We need it for people like me, who have been made fun of by cashiers for their difficulty in saying the word “nugget” and get told by older people to “stop stumbling over your words and spit your order out”. We need representation of diverse speech for my deaf friend who has to carry a notebook around because there is no one who speaks BSL at our McDonald’s. We need diverse speech representation because without people forget that people stammer and some of us can’t speak for varying reasons.

[biolabs-soldier]

It is sad when your whole class laughs at you because of your stumbling to pronounce your own name.

BASED ON A TRUE EXPERIENCE LAST WEEK

Imagine you are standing before your class, about to give a presentation. You have practiced time and time again, but you are still nervous. Not nervous because you don’t know the material. Not nervous because you have stage fright. Nervous because no matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you focus, you can’t help but stutter.

Even something as simple as your name comes out alien. Your gut ties up as the slurring of words brings the blood to your face. Your eyes dart back and forth, hoping to find a sincere face in the crowd.

You push on, knowing that you can get through this. Even though you keep stumbling over words– words that you have practiced alone without issue– you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. however, that light soon fades.

“What are they thinking?” Is the first thing you think of. Anxiety wraps around your brain. It’s a terrible cage you are locked in. Your mind refuses to let any positive thoughts come into your thoughts. “When you stutter, you are not good enough.”

You try, unconsciously, to decipher the look on one of the students’ faces who is meeting eye contact.

“Are they staring?”

“They think I’m an idiot.”

“They can’t even understand me.”

“They are laughing inside.”

As you struggle to press your name from your lungs, the class roars in laughter.

DO NOT LAUGH AT THOSE WHO STUTTER. Please.

Ask them questions, be supportive, literally do anything else. but please: Don’t laugh

[westar]

[didistutterproject]

Really not a fan of the sad background music, but a great clip.

[thinkingsteeply-blog]

Intersection of Queerness and Stuttering

“Over the years, we’ve come to understand the parallels between homosexuality/bisexuality and stuttering. Twice, we come out of the closet. Twice, we choose between community and isolation. Twice, we contend with well-meaning professionals who want to make us “normal.” Twice, we deal with families who don’t fully accept us. Twice, we create our own circles of understanding friends.”

Quotation from Passing Twice

http://www.passingtwice.org/wp/who-we-are/

[keplercryptids]

unlike race, class, sexuality etc, disability is viewed as strictly a medical / biological issue, not a social one. in other words, it’s viewed on an individual level instead of a societal level.

until we break down that misconception, ableism will continue to flourish I fear.

[itsoktostutter-blog]

I love stuttering because it made me look past the discomfort and look within myself and it was there I found there was nothing “wrong” with my speech but my feelings about it

[veighta-deactivated20210925]

Normalize disabled voices

Echolalia, monotone voices, stuttered speech, slurred speech, labored breathing between words and sentences, mechanical AAC voices,  AAC or sign users who consider those to be their voices, selectively mute voices, disorganized speech, speech with vocal tics, speech considered to be of “inappropriate volume”, speech with vocal stims, all disabled voices and the ways they present

Normalize disabled voices

[sluttyquarantinetheory]

Things that don’t magically go away when you gain confidence despite what Hollywood seems to think:

Asthma

Stuttering

[myautisticjournal]

That Feel When

You’re stuttering really badly, and the person you’re talking to is really patient and understanding. They try to help by supplying you with words, but they’re the wrong terms…but you already feel bad for taking so long so you act like that’s what you meant.

[keplercryptids]

I think the conversation that’s happening regarding ableism is very narrow. We talk about literal accessibility (access to buildings). What disabled people really need is opportunity to develop and grow. I’m not saying access to buildings is unimportant, but it’s not enough. Disabled people should have access to education, a social life and love. The biggest problem I face is that when I speak up about ableism in my day to day life, people do not seem to see this as a systemic form of oppression and just brush is off as an incident. This is very frustrating, not only because it mostly means that people don’t change their behaviour, but also because I’m mostly the only visibly disabled person in the room.

@mirathompsonn

[besmirchthis]

As organizers, we need to think of access with an understanding of disability justice, moving away from an equality-based model of sameness and “we are just like you” to a model of disability that embraces difference, confronts privilege and challenges what is considered “normal” on every front. We don’t want to simply join the ranks of the privileged; we want to dismantle those ranks and the systems that maintain them.

Mia Mingus, ‘Changing the Framework: Disability Justice’ (via besmirchthis)

[buttonpoetry]

“When I stutter, I am speaking my own language fluently.”

— Erin Schick, “Honest Speech”

[shay-iamiam]

If someone has a stutter please don’t feel the need to point it out/stare at them. Today at work a coworker of mine felt the need to stare at me than comment on my stutter right in front of the customer I was talking to. It’s already enough having the customer loo at me funny because of it but my coworker felt the need to co-sign along with her.

Yes I know I just stuttered, yes I’ve stuttered all my life. It’s enough when people mock you/make a joke about your speech impediment.

Why is it so hard you know. “Not to blatantly point out something someone is clearly already insecure about”.

I just had to get that off my chest because it happens way to often. This is my little PSA.