Stuttering more is about reclaiming stuttering. It’s about bringing stuttering into my speech rather than pushing it out. It’s about ending the cycle of interjections and the mentality that to stutter was bad— worse than anything else, worse than the restrictions and the interjections and the avoidance.
I would like to join Emma in asking the very counter-intuitive question: why would I want to stutter more? It is true, as she writes, that intentionally stuttering desensitizes the moment of dysfluency and can make speaking easier. This is, however, the least important reason to stutter more. Emma continues: "stuttering more has helped me find a new way to talk: a way that was in me all this time, but that I had been struggling against for as long as I could remember."
What does reclaiming stuttering look like?
It means choosing what our stuttering voice means. It means denying others the power to define our voices as something shameful, embarrassing, broken, or deviant. It means, like Emma, finding new ways of talking that take our stutter as a central aspect of our voice.
I stutter more because I do not want to live in (nor help create) a world that normalizes bodies and discriminates against those who do not fit in. I take pride in my stutter as a way of resisting communicative expectations that are supposed to make me feel ashamed and are supposed to silence me. Stuttering more and stuttering proudly turns the tables on all those people who assume that, given a choice, I would rather talk just like them.
I wouldn't.
These are our voices.
Deal with it.
-Josh
What does reclaiming stuttering look like?
It means choosing what our stuttering voice means. It means denying others the power to define our voices as something shameful, embarrassing, broken, or deviant. It means, like Emma, finding new ways of talking that take our stutter as a central aspect of our voice.
I stutter more because I do not want to live in (nor help create) a world that normalizes bodies and discriminates against those who do not fit in. I take pride in my stutter as a way of resisting communicative expectations that are supposed to make me feel ashamed and are supposed to silence me. Stuttering more and stuttering proudly turns the tables on all those people who assume that, given a choice, I would rather talk just like them.
I wouldn't.
These are our voices.
Deal with it.
-Josh
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