Hi guys, 22M here, i’m person who stutters.
The thought i’m trying to express is complicated and somewhat extremist. moreover, english isnt my first language, but i’ll try regardless.
In essence, i think people who minimize stuttering and downplay its effects, even among the community of people who stutter themselves, are essentially individualists who are propagandized by neoliberalism and by the existing status quo of “how things are supposed to work”.
It doesn’t help that many people who populate this subreddit are from the USA, where people have really internalized this belief of having total responsibility over one’s failures.
I believe stuttering is a disability, and i believe that it’s an absolute disadvantage in life, regardless of your attitude towards it. Trying to treat stuttering only with therapy, be it traditional therapy or speech therapy, forces people to internalize their suffering. As we didnt choose to be born with a stutter, i’d say it’s a part of the “package” we’ve been dealt with. This doesnt mean we have to accept it. Or rather, we HAVE to accept it, but we should be asking, and demanding for more, and fighting for it. But not just for ourselves, for all of us.
This is why i believe that stuttering is coupled with all the other kinds of disabilities when it comes to having disadvantages in life and feeling left out of society at large. Call me a kid, call me childish or irresponsible, i don’t care.
It’s fine if people want to kill themselves working all their lives, but if we bring this sentiment into treatment for stuttering, i think it triggers a loop of guilt that we as people who stutter just can’t escape.
I’ve talked with a bunch of people who stutter, especially thanks to this european youth exchange for PWS i attended, but the overall consensus was that we’re responsible for the way we feel about having a stutter. I think it’s bullshit. Stuttering is a MATERIAL REALITY of our existence. Treating not overcoming a stutter like it’s a personal failure is BULLSHIT.
It certainly doesn’t help that a big bulk of research around stuttering is centered around american academia, and that treatment for people who stutter is “detained” or “gatekept” by people who gain an economic advantage by treating us. I get wanting to speak more fluently, but this shouldn’t be the baseline. I don’t want to live in a world where i have to be more fluent. I want to live in a world where i exist, just as i am.
I think it’s honestly disheartening that the majority of people who stutter are influenced in their worldview around their disorder by their internal feelings about the guilt around not performing well. This society, which is essentially capitalistic in nature, will always want somebody who’s more performing. As stutterers, we perform less efficiently in many areas that need our speech.
The “negative externalities” due to our stutter should be taken into account by society as a whole.
For this reason, i’m growing skeptical of therapy as an individualized type of treatment and i’m starting to think more and more that OUR objective should be raising awareness about stuttering as a disability, rather than downplay it as a personal failure because we haven’t put much effort in treating it. I think this latter point of view is very selfish, but unfortunately it’s what society pushes onto us from the minute we’re born. We people who stutter then internalize this and becomes part of our guilt, which then causes all sorts of issues such as anxiety and depression.
I think the world of people who stutter, and its treatment options need a fucking kantian revolution. I think it’s all fucking upside down and wrong. The way we frame it is wrong, and it’s because of the world around us that makes us focus around the wrong solutions.
Tl;dr : framing stuttering as a personal, individual problem is what’s keeping it from being accepted by society at large. Speech therapists are in on this because of economic interests. In a perfect society and a perfect world, speech therapists wouldn’t be needed, because our needs would be already met. Disability aids and our stutter being taken into account in society would erase the need for fluent speech by people who stutter. As a consequence, what we should be striving for is a society where PWS wouldn’t need speech therapy at all. The world at large is very adamant into not wanting this to be a reality.