i wish people talked more about how (especially non stuttering) speech impediments are infantilized
like not even just in how people treat you the woobification of speech impediments (the way people use uwu speak as like a teehee funny thing its so adorable when people cant say "l"s and "r"s) people saying your voice sounds "cute" or assuming your speech problems imply developmental/intellectual disabilities
god forbid you do also have developmental or intellectual disabilities because then youre much more likely to have difficulties finding ways to express yourself around legitimate articulation difficulties
and if your speech impediment isnt the result of a developmental or intellectual disability the way people will instantly assume your actual mouth is lazy and slow
but even from the perspective of being in speech therapy in your teens and adults every single resource app flashcard or speech activities given to us all the way until 12th grade were geared towards actual children
i was talking to fucking talking tom less than a week away from graduation and reading from bright colorful flashcards with cartoon pictures in them
and the best representation non stutterers have in media are literal cartoon animals like looney toons or mickey mouse and friends
best case scenario is that randos on the street assume its an accent i definitely think aside from the autism part of why i overexplain everything and am very hyperverbal is also to compensate for my speech issues
the way that so much of participation in society hinges on peoples ability to clearly articulate themselves
the way your arguments are so often discounted and thrown aside if you cant perfectly articulate it
people genuinely take you less seriously if you have difficulty speaking
the implication that the way you speak naturally fundamentally needs to be trained out of you because its wrong and broken
and a lot of speech impediments are literally due to congenital mouth shape/nasal differences deafness or being hoh and are literally uncontrollable but will still be forced into taking years of speech therapy anyway or are the result of difficulties with esl and speech impediments are frequently given pretty insulting names
aside from the obvious ones like tongue tie or lazy tongue theyre often words that are specifically difficult for the person with the speech impediment to pronounce
even "stutter" is often difficult for people with stutters bc of the st sound the multiple t sounds close together followed closely by the er
rhotacism is the inability to say /r/ sounds and it LITERALLY starts with a hard /r/ sound
lisps often describe difficulties with /l/s and /s/s
slurred speech is difficulties with /s/s /l/s and /r/s and the r sound in slur is LITERALLY and /er/ sound one of the more difficult ones for people with speech impediments to pronounce
lambdacism is difficulty saying /l/ and it LITERALLY starts with an /l/
the way speech therapy is designed feels structurally cruel to the people it seeks to help and yet every speech pathologist ive ever met acts like theyre doing these poor dumb disabled kids a huge service and doing the lords work
the way in which i immediately dont trust anyone who says they want to go into speech pathology to not be condescending and ableist af
the way in which i legitimately do not think people with abled speech patterns and behavior actually care about what people with speech differences are going through unless they know someone who personally has to go through it
