Dear every body, Welcome to the first edition of Body Babble! Today we’re talking about stammering. Stammering, or stuttering, as it’s known more commonly in the U.S, is a speech “disorder” which creates a difference in the way people speak. According to STAMMA, the UK’s largest stammer charity, people who stammer repeat sounds or words (“My name is J-J-J-John”), stretch or prolong sounds (“Can you tell me a ssssstory?”), or have a silent block where a word gets stuck (“----Can I have…”). I don’t have a stammer myself and until recently, I can’t say I’d spent any time thinking about stammering (at least not since I watched The King’s Speech back in 2010). But in late July, I found myself at a poetry night in a bookshop in South-East London. I arrived slightly early, and the poets were still sound-testing the mics, so to pass the time I browsed the books, bought myself a beer, and sat down next to a friendly young guy with red hair who introduced himself as Patrick. We got chatting and quickly found common ground. We talked about our favourite poets, about Frank O’Hara. We talked about how—and what a coincidence—we were both involved in the small world of disability arts. Patrick mentioned in passing that he’d written a book—about stammering. “Stammering?” I said, bouncing on the word. Did Patrick have a stammer? If so, I hadn’t noticed. And then the poets performed; the audience whooped, clapped and whistled. Afterwards, at dusk, the air still warm, we lingered on the street outside, talking. At some point Patrick’s stammer revealed itself. But it was getting late, and before long we exchanged Instagrams and goodbyes. The next morning, I woke to a DM from Patrick with a link to a Frank O’Hara poem. “And,” he added, “another thought”: did I want to join him on Saturday at Stammering Pride? Thanks for reading Body Babble! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. In this edition of Body Babble, we’ll cover: * Stammering Pride * Songs that stammer (feat. Poker Face, Changes, Lola, My Generation)! * What it means to have a “covert” stammer * The medical model vs. social model approaches to stammering * How stammering can be a source of creativity * How we can better support people who stammer * What stammering can teach us about connection and relationships It’s a Saturday in August and the sun is shining in Victoria Park, East London. Couples clutch their coffees and cockapoos, cyclists dart past, and twenty of us are marching down the broadwalk, waving stripey blue flags and chanting: Stammering Priide, Stammering Priiiide, Stammering Priiiiiide! We’re getting louder, gaining confidence as we march, emboldened by our strength in numbers and brazen to the confusion on strangers’ faces. At some point Patrick suggests we add a stammer to our chant. We find a rhythm. Sta-sta-stammering P-P-Pride! Sta-Sta-Stammering P-P-PRIDE! STA-STA-STAMMERING P-P-PRIDE! Passers-by are looking at us. They’re looking, I suppose, at the size of our group, or at our signs and placards, or at the blue flags we’re waving (What country is that? Has the LGBTQ+ Pride flag been updated again?), or maybe, and this is the most likely explanation, because Patrick is blasting music out of a sound-system. We're shuffling through a playlist of “stammering songs”. There’s Lola by the Kinks. Changes by David Bowie. Lady Gaga’s Poker Face. But it’s My Generation by The Who that takes the crown as Patrick’s favourite. “It’s a really harsh stammer!” he shouts to me over the chorus (People try to p-put us d-down), “It’s the most realistic. It’s very powerful.” We sit down at a group of picnic benches, in a clearing between the trees. Our tables are heaving with children’s party food —doughnuts, crisps, fizzy drinks and chocolate— as if pride would be impossible on an empty stomach. Some people have come with placards, which they’ve propped against a nearby tree: EMBRACE THE STAMMER, one reads, with hand-drawn hearts. Most of us are wearing shades of blue: teal and ultramarine are the colours of the Stammering Pride flag. We chit-chat, talk about how far we’ve travelled, why we’re here. I confess, somewhat sheepishly, that I don’t have a stammer; that I’m just here to learn and support. Between bites of one explosive jam doughnut, I wipe the sugar from my lips and muster the courage to ask questions. Mudassir is from Pakistan, but moved to the UK two years to complete a post-doc. Gina, from Bristol, is a writer; her biography of stammering musician Scatman John will be published in 2026 by Bloomsbury. Josh is a medical doctor, specialising in end-of-life care. But everyone has come to Stammering Pride for similar reasons. “I don't realise how much tension I'm under until I come here,” says Gina. Mudassir is nodding. “It’s like, ‘Oh,’” he says with a deep breath, “You are relaxed.” Facts about stammering For Josh, Gina and Mudassir, moving towards pride in their stammer —or at least acceptance— has not been linear, but a lifelong journey. Stammering usually starts in early childhood, and as many as 8% of children stammer. But although stammering affects equal numbers of boys and girls, girls are more likely to stop stammering. In adulthood, 75% of people who stammer are men. A common misconception is that stammering is caused by nerves or anxiety. In reality, while anxiety can exacerbate someone’s stammer, research has shown that stammering has a genetic component (60% of people who stammer have a family member who also stammers) and that there’s a slight difference in how the brain is wired in people who stammer. While Mudassir agrees that “If you have more fear, you’ll stammer more”, he insists that anxiety alone isn’t the cause of stammering. For example, at five years old: “I have no fear but I stammer.” Stammering at school In childhood, Mudassir, Josh and Gina experienced a pervasive shame. Mudassir remembers school as a place where “you feel bullying, too much bullying, I can't speak in the class because of the bullying.” Being asked to read out loud in class would make him sweat and shake with anxiety. “It was so hard,” he says, “So hard.” “I was supposed to go to Oxford to read English,” says Gina, “But then I skipped every single class that had anything to do with reading out loud or doing any presentation. It was like ssself-sabotage.” Josh is nodding. “I had a covert s-stammer at school,” he says. “I got good grades, I got four A-stars, I was in the sports teams, I did music. I was a successful boy, right? I didn't want to break that.” What does it mean to have a covert stammer? “It's c-c-characterised by avoidance,” says Josh. “Avoidance of words, of situations, of sounds or anything that is going to trip you up.” It sounds a bit like masking, I say. Like when autistic people try to pass as neurotypical? “Yeah, that’s probably the way of describing it that's easiest for other people to understand,” says Gina. Josh agrees: “You’re trying to pass as fluent.” During our conversation, Mudassir, Josh and Gina frequently refer to “fluency”, or being “fluent”—words I’d previously only heard applied to learning foreign languages. I soon learn that these are used as shorthand for speaking without stammering, or for people who don’t stammer. Hiding who you are Substituting words and going to great lengths to avoid stammering can have profound consequences on a person’s relationships, professional life and sense of identity. Josh explains: “At the beginning it might just be a few little words, but then the more there’s a fear of the word, the more there’s a fear of making the mistake. […] And so you end up in a position where you go to order a sandwich from a café and you're worried about saying the word “ham”. And so rather than order the ham sandwich, you order the cheese sandwich. And that bubbles into every relationship, because now you're not being authentic. You're not saying what you want to say. You're saying what you can say and what you can get away with saying.” Gina agrees: “I used to think I'm a shy person, but I don't know if that's true anymore. It's like, did that come first or is it just a result of all the hiding?” Unfortunately, some words simply can’t be substituted, and these are often the words that stammerers struggle the most with. “You can't substitute your own name,” says Josh. “You can try! But you look like a complete maniac. Or you look like you actually f-f-forgot your name. It's like, “Oh, you didn't know your name.” And it's like, “No, I have a stammer, man.” Before Pride Though speech and language therapy can help people manage their stammer, there is no known cure for stammering. Despite this, most people seem at some point to have fallen down a medical pathway. While some people find speech or language therapy to be helpful, others find the way it often focuses on self-improvement to be harmful. Meanwhile, online, Gina says “there's a lot of people on YouTube saying they have a cure.” Mudassir has seen those videos. “I think there are some techniques,” he says. “Like ‘prolongation’ and to take a deep breath and then make relax. But it is a long journey.” Laura, originally from Romania, is a user experience researcher. She spent years in stammering support groups, but found even those “quite medical” and “oppressive” in their approach: “They were focused on fixing your stammer and changing yourself. But when the pandemic came and it was something you don’t have control over, I realised that, okay, those stammering groups were t-t-t-taking a lot of time for me because I had to put a lot of work into controlling my stutter. And they were very much a losing game because I was still s-stuttering at the
