To answer the title of this post, I've found one instance that stuttering actually helps. Sometimes I don't know what to talk about with a new person and there's that awkward silence, but stuttering in itself gives us something to talk about. The other person (in my experience) is usually fascinated by my stutter because she never talked with a stutterer before, so we just start talking about it, I explain a lot of details about it to her, how to react, etc. It's usually a good conversation starter if none of the pair have any of their own and the conversation stems out from there on out.