commentr/StutterMarch 31, 2024

Content

Agreed. While I by no means want anyone else to go through what I have, as a stutterer, currently-fluent people need to realize that they could end up as bad as me, or worse, due to things like aphasia stroke. Do I want anyone to have aphasia or a stroke? Absolutely not. But that is the reality: no one is promised fluency tomorrow. I might be misusing the term, but I see it as a rotten extension of the “just world hypothesis”: A non-stutterer can comfort themselves that they aren’t like me: my stutter was “caused” (in their dumb thinking) by bad luck or bad choices. It could never happen to them, they think; they can “reason” away someone else’s real suffering. Likewise, a disability, in their dumb thinking, is something that happens to other, lesser people like me with my stutter. Then they don’t have to deal with the cognitive dissonance of something bad happening to them, since “they’re a good person”. Stupid, but that’s how many think.

Themes

Identity & Disability

Subthemes

Medicalization / NeurodiversityStigma & Bullying