“Out Of The Stuttering Closet”

How borrowed language from the queer community upset me, then taught me

(Content warning - mentions of homophobia and ableism.)

I don’t remember the first time I heard somebody use the phrase “coming out of the stuttering closet”. But I know it bothered me. How dare anyone compare the two? Lives can be ruined when queer people come out. Lives can be in danger, literally.

I spent my high school and college years around church folks, never quite fitting in no matter how hard I tried. I didn’t know then that I was non-binary. But I had queer friends - some whose family was accepting, but others who lived scared because of it.

Even when I was tied into a lot of that, I didn’t really get why people made someone being gay such a bigger deal than anything else. My thought process then was “aren’t we all sinners? What makes gay people so uniquely targeted?” But I had no doubt they were.

Their lives and existence were always in question, always being discussed by non-queer people. Children are thrown out of their homes for this. They die by their own hand because of unsupportive families and communities. The hatred people face daily just for existing should is clear.

As you can see, I had very strong feelings as I left this background. As I struggled to understand myself post-college, I realized part of why it affected me so much was because I hadn’t even allowed myself to consider that I might be part of this group. It was too scary to let myself even think about it. “Coming out of the closet” sure, and straight into hell fire (no pun intended actually there LOL). (I recently saw a queer celebrity suggest that instead of ‘coming out’ , we can see it as ‘letting in’. - I think there’s benefits to both ideas, but I LOVE the idea of ‘letting in’ as being the larger narrative.)

The point here though is that it was very clear to me from the start that people had very, very good reasons for staying in the closet. Even if it was safe physically, perhaps they wanted to maintain the relationships with family or community they had. No one should be pressured to do it before they’re ready, or shamed if they chose not to. Coming out is a deeply personal choice.

Back to stuttering, now.

Hearing straight people say ‘coming out of the stuttering closet’ grated me. How dare they? They have no idea. I didn’t say anything, but it would make me angry.

Then I went to a Passing Twice workshop - a group of LGBTQ+ people who stutter. Someone asked show of hands - was it harder to ‘come out’ as a queer person or a stutterer?

I rolled my eyes. This wouldn’t even be close.

I was wrong. It was pretty evenly split. A few people I knew pretty well rose their hand for stutterer. To say I was flabbergasted is an understatement. My gut reaction after denial was, “wow must be nice if being queer is so easy”.

But as we went on, and people discussed, and my thoughts had time to accept this reality, I realized I had misjudged. I heard stories of fear, of wanting to die, of parents who either made the subject taboo or only ever had negative things to say.

I still think it’s different - we don’t often hear of hate crimes against stutterers - but I learned to relax with that phrase. For some people, I realized, the intensity of fear, of hiding this part of their identity, was far more than I had imagined.

I take for granted how supportive my mom and brother were with my stuttering. While I felt shame to stutter, I didn’t feel shame for being a stutterer. I wanted to hide my stutter, but I didn’t feel compelled to hide that I was a stutterer. My identity was never shamed. My identity was empowered, even if there were a lot of other less ideal factors at play.

I also never felt like I’d have been able to hide my stutter anyway. What was I going to do, change my name? Perhaps, as a crass comparison, I was the stutter version of a little boy who played with dolls, dressed up, and only had girl friends. It was as obvious as it could be. When he comes out and everyone says, “Ah…! Yes. Well. We knew but yay!” (Obviously I don’t think society SHOULD do this - little boys should be able to do all of that and end up being straight or whatever else. In fact, I have photographic evidence of my brother with all those things, and he is Very Straight ™. But you know what I mean. The trope.)

Basically, it taught me two things:

1 - I need to learn to believe people. Just because I stutter doesn’t mean I know every stutterer’s experience or situation. There are so many factors at play— while we may both face fairly similar stigma in society, have the same representation challenges, etc, I don’t have the same type of life experience as others. So believe people, and give them the benefit of the doubt.

2 - What a world of difference a supportive upbringing has. Some of these people DID have parents and community who accepted their queerness without question, and so that aspect wasn’t as hard for them as I might have seen in my life. And yes, I’m very envious of them.

And there are many who are envious of me, of my mom’s support with my speech. No one’s perfect, but she tried really damn hard and did her best. She valued my voice - stutter or not.

The higher rates of depression and death by depression found in queer people isn’t from being queer - it’s from unsupportive environments and family. The issue is solved by acceptance and love, not trying to force queer people to change.

Just as - many stutterers struggle with having felt silenced. Anxiety, especially social anxiety. Some have depression - but I don’t know if those numbers are higher than national averages. And yeah - that sounds scary. Especially to parents. But the solution isn’t to ‘fix’ your kid - that will only make it worse, actually. The solution is to support, and to value their voice. Ensure they know it’s worth something to you.

It makes the biggest difference.