To be clear, when I say "being total idiots" I am attributing it to incompetence rather than malice. I do think it's pretty stupid behaviour, though - not malicious, but still stupid. IMO being taken aback by something unexpected is not an excuse to be *that* tactless, and an adult should be aware that making a joke about something they have no clue about is likely to land poorly. I wouldn't accept "but I'd never met someone like this before and had no idea how to react" as a valid reason for someone making an insensitive joke about e.g. a wheelchair user, a Deaf person, someone with facial disfigurement, etc. on first meeting, and I don't accept it for myself. And my stutter is very obvious on first meeting and the vast, vast majority of people I meet just kind of pause for a moment and then continue the conversation as though nothing happened, so clearly being absurdly tactless is not the norm. But, y'know, I'm willing to extend a helping hand here! If anyone says something like that to me, I am *more* than happy to make extremely clear how inappropriate it was and they will definitely know better than to ever do so again. :) ...Although come to think of it, it hasn't happened in a while, and the dude I mentioned was in the post-speech therapy most fluent phase I've ever had. It makes me wonder whether people with milder stutters actually get more of this shit, because a mild stutter is more likely to be read as a fluent-person-typical disfluency or ??? while an immediately apparent stutter is more likely to be slotted into "some sort of weird disability, treat with care". Ex: during that more fluent phase I used to have people tell me that they knew what it was like, they stuttered too! Now I only get that online, nobody who's spoken to me in person has said that to me in the last ten years.