Whether or not you stutter, it takes a lot of courage to approach another person and connect with him or her in an open and honest way. If you do stutter, the difficulty is compounded. We're often afraid that "normal" people will laugh at us, be condescending, rude and dismissive. But we forget that nobody is really "normal." We all have problems, insecurities, flaws. Look hard enough and you'll find something "abnormal" in everyone. The only difference is that some kinds of "abnormal" are easier to hide than others.
Having a stutter isn't easy to hide. Neither is being blind. It's all out there for everyone to see. And many "normal" people who come face to face with it--who have to listen to someone struggle his way through a sentence, or watch a blind person find his or her way--often handle it badly. They freak out. They're reminded of their own insecurities, and, to cover up their discomfort, they laugh, condescend and dismiss. Do you want to know what the young women's biggest challenge was as blind persons? People think that because they're blind, they're stupid.
That's a lot of people's knee-jerk reaction: equate whatever seems "abnormal" with stupidity. Now how stupid is that? Remember this next time someone is rude to you because you stutter. Remember that you aren't alone--there aren't only hundreds of other stutterers who are fighting the good fight to stand up for themselves, but many other hundreds of people who are blind or deaf, challenged in their bodies and minds in many other ways, who are also fighting that fight.
The best way to diffuse a situation in which someone is reacting stupidly when they watch you struggle is to educate them. Tell them what it's really like. Connect with them in as open and honest a way as a you can. That's enormously hard to do when you're feeling attacked by a mean or angry comment. But behind that anger and meanness often hides someone who is afraid, who is simply ignorant, who has forgotten that deep down we're all the same, flawed and yearning to be accepted just as we are.
I tried to post a comment about 2 weeks ago, but it didn't "take". I'm trying again. I talked a little about this topic in the 6/11 meeting also. I think the methods in the last paragraph would work mostly for females. For males, especially males in their childhood, teen age or early adult years, it's a different story. When some moron makes fun of a male's stuttering, he may feel hurt & embarrassed, but I think a much stronger feeling would be anger. He wouldn't so much want to educate the guy as knock his teeth out. (This would pretty much put an end to the problem, at least with this one guy.) Of course, bullys always pick on someone who is weaker than them, so in most cases, the stutterer being made fun of will not react this way, as much as he'd like to. All of this also depends on a person's background - a guy from a blue collar background may react differently than a guy from a middle or upper class one. Of course, if a female makes fun of a guy's stuttering (every male stutterer's ultimate fear) the guy would probably react more in embarrassment & hurt than in anger. A bedrock western civilization principle of conduct for males (as it should be) is: you don't hit girls!
ReplyDeleteWell, there's tons more that could be said on the subject of what to do & not do when someone makes fun of your stuttering. It made for an interesting topic at the 6/11 meting.
The 5/30 meeting was a good one even though there were only 3 people present. The table topics were interesting - I didn't know how strongly I felt about people talking on cell phones while driving. Although, I no longer think they should be executed on the spot -they could be executed later......just kidding! Table topics almost always work well.