And.

I mean, I know you were saying it was blatantly fake, but I didn't realise it was that bad. I mean. What the hell. Has she ever heard someone who actually stutters speak? (Aka: that’s not how you stutter a w.) Or seen, given the complete and utter lack of any secondary symptoms, not even closing her eyes or looking away which something like 90% of stutterers do?

I am still boggling.

I don’t understand the part about the actresses with Down syndrome, though – are they saying that a regular cast member is played by an actress with Down syndrome?

And by all means, call me Mom! I’m very glad that my understanding matches you both, K and Kaz. It is actually kind of fun to talk about it, since there is no one else around IRL who understands at all.

Also, word to the varying frequency of stuttering, which I probably should have mentioned – tbh, it does worry me when I see people say “well, you could tell she didn’t really stutter because she forgot to do it sometimes!” Maybe her stutter was sufficiently constant that it was glaringly obvious, but *still* stutters can vary a lot. I average more on the middling-severe end of the scale, I’d say, and I’ve been everywhere between almost totally fluent and stuttering so badly communicating via writing would have been quicker; this was over a prolonged period of time, but there can be rather extreme changes simply depending on situation. People don’t tend to get that; it frustrates me when I tell people my worries about whether I’ll be able to give lectures and have them tell me that my speech sounds absolutely fine they don’t know what I’m worried about! Yeah, it sounds fine when I’m speaking in a group of few trusted friends in a relaxed environment, but that has diddly-squat to do with how I speak when I’m up at the blackboard in front of an audience.

I’m also going to point out that I think the effect a stutter has on the psyche of a person doesn’t really need to be correlated with how severe it is (although how much ableism you experience from your surroundings probably is). In some ways, I feel quite happy to have had a stutter that was almost always severe enough that a) it was immediately apparent and b) I wasn’t able to play the word-substitution game to avoid stuttering at all. Because people do that – it’s called covert stuttering (and here’s another misconception people tend to have, that you have to go through the physical act of stuttering in order to be a PWS) – and I’ve heard horror stories about how mentally and emotionally taxing it can be to pass as fluent.

Also, re: disability – I like calling my stutter a disability because I don’t believe in the idea that something has to be a huge issue requiring care and whatnot to be a disability, and because I think the disability rights movement has a lot of ideas that a lot of the stuttering movement could *really* benefit from. I still sometimes boggle at how different things look when I look at stuttering through the social model – e.g., that it isn’t my stuttering that’s the problem, it’s how people react to the stuttering. (I mean, when you get down to it, all stuttering means is that I may need a bit longer to say things. All the rest of it was heaped on top by other people.) Or recently I had the eureka moment of – hey, maybe I *don’t* need to do everything just like a fluent speaker. Maybe it’s fine if I use textphones instead of calling people – I suspect most speech therapies would consider this blatant heresy, considering how wild they can get about desensitisation! Or maybe I should try and see how I can work my stutter into my presentation (e.g. develop back-ups in case I start stuttering too badly to be understood) instead of essentially just hoping it won’t be an issue. Or would learning sign language be an option in order to have an alternate means of communication? That kind of thing.

But it’s really up to everyone how they identify, and I totally respect it when PWS do not consider themselves disabled. I do, however, get a bit frustrated when it seems as if they have a completely wrongheaded view of what disability actually entails (cf. the “you’re only disabled if you think you are!” attitude, or the long discussion in which no one mentioned the social model) – but it’s still their choice.

@Anna: ILU. Video is really not my happy shiny place, but if you could find a clip or the time when Tina starts to speak in a longer video that would be amazing!

Re: Tina – YES EXACTLY! When I stutter, it almost looks like I’m sneezing most of the time. It’s hard to describe to a person who doesn’t stutter, but you sort of feel it coming on, and there are definitely physical attributes, like you’re forcing out the words or sounds, almost.

I actually agree with everything you’ve said. I’ve never seen a person who does not stutter understand so much about the subject! I do think it should be up to the person how they choose to identify, and I would never tell a person that they are or are not disabled, because it’s so not my place (or anyone else’s, really)..