Do you think your experience as woman who stutters differs to our male counter parts? / (For both men & women) how do you think things such as pretty privilege has effected your experience as a person who stutters
Content
Do you think your experience as woman who stutters differs to our male counter parts? / (For both men & women) how do you think things such as pretty privilege has effected your experience as a person who stutters Has anyone experienced or notice any examples or preconceptions of how women who stutter are treated different to men? I’ve only ever met one other person who stutters irl and he was a guy my age, I’m 21(F), we struck up a conversation (as you can imagine it dragged out on both ends 😅) and one of the things he said that gave me pause was “oh but you’ll have it easier than me to be fair, you’re pretty and guys won’t care that you stutter”(we weren’t even talking about our love lives when). Essentially what I took from that was he perceived me as having the better end of the stick because men find me attractive and value what I look like above anything else, I feel like his belief and preconceptions of my experiences as a woman who stutters just disregarded all the other day to day struggles I would experience because of my stutter, by his logic as long as men found me attractive it can’t be that bad… Admittedly as far as forming relationships with men go I’ve never had any issues but I would like to think thats because they actually like me for me and the narrative of them pursuing me despite the stutter because they think I’m good looking is not one I’m particularly fond of, one because it deduces me to just my looks and nothing else and second it paints the stutter out as some kind of horrendous flaw someone has to be strong enough or have a good reason to look past. All this being said I will acknowledge that my appearance would have affected certain elements of my experiences as a woman who stutters, unfortunately the world we live in does have strong biases on people’s appearance, if you fit certain beauty standards or exhibit conventional attractive traits you will reap the benefits of that through pretty privilege which can be reflected in many areas of life. Although I don’t consider myself anything special I am aware I possess some conventionally attractive traits that would’ve most likely made my experience growing up and with a stutter especially, a lot more smooth sailing specifically in school since I would’ve been seen as appealing to some boys and I fit the bill at least physically to have been roped into a popular group of girls, all and all I feel to a certain extent that had shielded me from some bullying I could’ve faced around the stutter. Side note - sorry that was so long winded I kinda got sidetracked and started to talk about the effects of pretty private too 😅