Hello, everyone! I read something interesting + a bit of personal reflection.
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Hello, everyone! I read something interesting + a bit of personal reflection. So, I'm studying for my endsems right now and we have this one essay by Michel de Montaigne (I swear this is relevant) called "That the Senses are Inadequate" where Montaigne basically talks about how the five senses of human beings may perhaps not be the be all and end all of things as much as humans make it to be so. A lot of animals lack a few of these senses yet they get by just fine. There is this one example of a blind man where Montaigne says that the blind man expresses his wish to have sight NOT because it is a lack, but that the people around him make it sound like sightlessness is a lack. In my reading, Montaigne is really getting at the idea that physical "lack" is a social construct. To put it in the perspective of my stutter ~ and also how I have seen a lot of you guys here wish you didn't have a stutter which I so relate to and it's valid to feel that way ~ I believe the narrative around fluency is a construct as well. It's only a lack because society has constructed it to be so. Stuttering is just a way of speaking, and what influences its degree in my experience (which might not relate to yours and it's absolutely valid) is the cult of shame surrounding dysfluency. We are NOT lacking, y'all. It's never a lack. It's just society's insecurities being projected upon us. I find this thought really liberating in a sense. It's very postmodern in the fact that diversity is diversity. It exists. No one is an anomaly. You are valid. I am valid. The way we speak is BEAUTIFUL. I don't wanna care what the so'called fluent people think when I'm stuttering because my stutter is a part of me and I want to love it, nurse it, make it feel valid and heal from the trauma that society has inflicted on me for being dysfluent. I hope what I'm trying to get at here reaches you guys as well. I just want you all to know that your stutter is flawless. Even if people around you may not feel that way, I do. I care. Remember that! 💓 ~ Ru.