Adults Who Stutter — And Why The Media Doesn´t Like Us

Buying a coffee, answering the phone, introducing yourself…all things adults shouldn’t struggle with. And yet, for people with speech impediments (stutters, stammers, call it what you will) these things can cause no end of anxiety. Every day. For years. Yet why does no one talk about it?

Sometimes it feels like stutterers really lost out on the representation bingo. I can’t seem to recall a positive character in the media who stutters. Not one. And all I do is read and watch TV. Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter springs to mind, but that’s about it, and even then he was a villain, and a rather pathetic, snivelling one at that.

If having a speech impediment as a disability isn’t erased from the media completely, we are portrayed as shy and pathetic. Women are sexualised for it – trust me, I’ve been there – and fictional men with stutters are often attractively geeky if they’re lucky, and social rejects if they’re not.

So why is this the case?

I often think adults who stutter, like myself, present a bridge between the invisible and visible disability, between that which affects everyday life, and that which can be routinely swept under the carpet. Unlike other disabilities, this is simply not ¨marketable¨, as there is no clear-cut, easy representation. Sometimes it´s there, sometimes it isn´t, and people talk in a hundred different ways. The way I stutter may be completely unrecognisable to the way you do. This complexity has resulted in us being put in boxes as awkward, stumbling individuals and why, in this age of disability awareness, we have largely been forgotten about.

It isn´t even as if there are not people who stutter out there in the public eye. Joe Biden, Emily Blunt, and Ed Sheeran are but a few who have spoken about their stutters and achieved much.

But people who stutter still do not see themselves spoken about outside of a passing interview, or a press conference with meagre coverage.

Perhaps we are not represented because people simply are not aware that we exist, as we ourselves sometimes pretend that our stutters do not. I for one am always subconsciously hiding it, like some kind of undercover ´God-forbid-they-discover-what-I-am´ scenario. And is that not because I never see myself in the media, so as a young person I assume that the way I speak is wrong and should be hidden?

There it is, then — our vicious circle. We are not represented, so we hide. We are hidden, and so we are not represented. If the media reflects importance, then we have made ourselves unimportant.

Therefore I encourage us to be as loud, as painstakingly obvious as possible. Let no one be left in doubt as to what spaces we occupy, who, what, and where we are.

If we cannot embrace the way we speak, how can we expect the rest of the world to?