'Stammering is No Joke' petition

sadie9

You can sign the 'Stammering is No Joke' campaign to stop videos showing people stammering being classifed as Comedy on YouTube. The link is on this page from the British Stammering Association. Send it to your friends and family if you dare (who me? Why would I do that, I don't stammer ) Incidentally you can subscribe to the quarterly magazine 'Speaking Out' from the BSA for about £10 sterling a year, it usually has some interesting articles about people's own experiences as well as research into stammering.

Oriel

Who cares what a website classifies them as? Really?
If you're really that worried about what people think then how do you manage in everyday life?

sadie9

Hi Oriel, just wondering do you stammer? I wouldn't consider YouTube to be just 'a website'. What this is about is trying to change people's attitudes to stammering, that for people who do stammer, it certainly isn't funny. Now that's not the same as having a sense of humour and an ability to laugh at oneself. Would it be okay if YouTube had videos of disabled people, or someone's elderly mother suffering from Alzheimers appearing in the Comedy section of YouTube. As a stammerer I'll admit to being very worried about how my speech appears to other people, and like many stammerers I do have difficulty managing in everyday life.

Stephen P

Oriel - if you have a stammer or some disability would you like it if people made a video taking the pi$$ out of you?? I'm sure you wouldn't and neither do us stammerer's.
Life is difficult enough for us without been made fun of.

Oriel

I do have a stammer - just because I don't agree with you on this topic doesn't mean that I have fluent speech.
If people take the piss, then I stop listening to them. Simple as that. Thankfully, I have rarely been in such a position in real life. I just don't think a petition is going to do anything positive.

funky_monkey

Oriel wrote: »

I do have a stammer - just because I don't agree with you on this topic doesn't mean that I have fluent speech.
If people take the piss, then I stop listening to them. Simple as that. Thankfully, I have rarely been in such a position in real life. I just don't think a petition is going to do anything positive.

I agree with you Oriel. I don't know why people are getting upset. Ignorant people are completely different ways of dealing with stammering. I really wouldn't take offence about it. I'm sure all of us have dealt with people making fun out of us sometime in our lives. I feel sorry for the people that don't understand it.

Start up a petition if it makes you feel better but i doubt it will get anyway. You just have to get over these things unfortunately.

sadie9

The petition is to get YouTube to remove videos where people stammering is presented as something to be laughed at. That's something I do take offence at because it encourages and supports the idea that stammerers are ridiculous and figures of fun and to be taken the p**s out of. I don't think I should just get over it. It's belittling to stammerers and disempowers them. When people who don't know much about stammering view these 'comedy' videos it make them more respectful or patient or understanding when the meet a stammerer? I don't think so. What this petition or any similar kind of action would aim to do is make people aware that stammerers don't want to be laughed at.

Stephen P

Stammering is seen by a lot of stammerer's as a disability. Laughing at a disability is no joke. As you stammer you'll understand there's a lot of emotional feelings hidden from people (i.e the stuttering iceberg). If someone really hates their stammer and has a lot built up anger they would find those YouTube video's offensive. I'm fine with my stammer but still find those video's extremely offensive, who do they think they are for slagging us off?? If a YouTube user posted a video of someone pretending to be handicapped there would be outrage so what's the difference with a stammer?

beeno67

funky_monkey wrote: »

I agree with you Oriel. I don't know why people are getting upset. Ignorant people are completely different ways of dealing with stammering. I really wouldn't take offence about it. I'm sure all of us have dealt with people making fun out of us sometime in our lives. I feel sorry for the people that don't understand it.

Start up a petition if it makes you feel better but i doubt it will get anyway. You just have to get over these things unfortunately.

I disagree completely. I have a stammer for as long as I remember. I found it very hard as a child when people laughed in my face as I tried to speak to them, which happened regularly. Incidently this was adults laughing at me not other children. Now I have a child of my own who stammers. I do not want people laughing in his face as he grows up. It is fine to say that you should not worry about such ignorant people. I am in my forties now and could not care less. I now actually enjoy public speaking, stutter and all and I do not care what people thing of me but I do care about my son. Is he going to face the same humiliation I felt as a child? Stuttering is not funny. The more we allow people to think it is then the greater the chance that my son will face the trauma of someone laughing in his face or smirking, as they try to hold the laugh in.

ParkRunner

I have to say that in my opinion laughter is the best tonic. As a fellow stammerer I know what it is like to feel major tension entering into a speaking situation and seeing people on tv or in a film make fun of people who stammer can be a bit squirmish. However, in all the therapy I have received I have found listening to other peoples experiences and sharing the funny side to what has happened to people in situations involving their stammer made me desensitise to the whole issue and made it easier for me to talk openly about it.
Thats my tuppence worth anyway, I dont mean to offend anyone by this

sadie9

I'd agree with you EF wholeheartedly. What you say is not offensive. However, stammerers laughing together at themselves in the context of therapy and sharing experiences is different to the general public watching 'comedy' videos of people stammerering as a form of entertainment.

Mr. CooL ICE

Christ, this petition is going wayyy too far IMO. Would you also like to see all South Park episodes featuring Jimmy banned too???

I was bullied for stammering when I was in school, and it sucked, but I got over it, and you should all do the same. Laughing at other peoples misfortunes can be horrible, and it can also be funny if you have a dark sense of humour. I laugh at racist jokes, yet I am not racist. I also laugh at the occasional disabled joke, yet I went to Lourdes to help the disabled (I'm an atheist - didn't go for religious reasons). I laugh at gay jokes, yet I have a number of close friends and relatives who are gay.

If you can't see the funny side of stuff like youtube videos, then its you that has the problem.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

can't yhou all just not watch the offending videos?

this reeks of pakistani government to me

beeno67

LordChessington wrote: »

Christ, this petition is going wayyy too far IMO. Would you also like to see all South Park episodes featuring Jimmy banned too???

I was bullied for stammering when I was in school, and it sucked, but I got over it, and you should all do the same. Laughing at other peoples misfortunes can be horrible, and it can also be funny if you have a dark sense of humour. I laugh at racist jokes, yet I am not racist. I also laugh at the occasional disabled joke, yet I went to Lourdes to help the disabled (I'm an atheist - didn't go for religious reasons). I laugh at gay jokes, yet I have a number of close friends and relatives who are gay.

If you can't see the funny side of stuff like youtube videos, then its you that has the problem.

You say you laugh at racist jokes and you laugh at disabled jokes. The difference is you would not laugh at a black person simply because they are black or a disabled person simply because they are disabled.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

can we laugh at stupid people because they're stupid?

honestly I can see why you'd get upset, but there's no way in hell you should be allowed shut these people up because you don't like what they're saying. They're not hurting anybody and if they are hurting you, you have every right to ignore them.

beeno67

Mordeth wrote: »

can we laugh at stupid people because they're stupid?
.

But we don't. We laugh whenm people do stupid things

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

a lot of us just like laughing at stupid people, they don't really have to do anything.

Mr. CooL ICE

beeno67 wrote: »

You say you laugh at racist jokes and you laugh at disabled jokes. The difference is you would not laugh at a black person simply because they are black or a disabled person simply because they are disabled.

Are the people in these mentioned youtube videos laughing at you directly?

sadie9

I forgot to include the link in my original post http://www.stammering.org/nojokepetition.html
To the people who are in favour of holding up the misfortune of others to ridicule I suggest you start your own petition campaigning for that. As I said before there is a big difference between laughing 'with' and laughing 'at'. Laughing 'at' is bullying and belittling.
Also for people who are deeply ashamed of their stammering, it is better to pretend not to care by laughing at others who stammer. Someone like that might find a stammering petition like this threatening, as it draws attention to the very thing they are trying to hide.

Stephen P

There's been a couple of threads on this forum of users slagging us off. Should we respond with a similie face or "ROFL" or "LOL", no we don't because its disrepectful and it comes with a ban. It's one thing a group of stammerer's laughing at themselves but when someone else does it, they're only doing it to take the pi$$. I know we don't have to watch it, its our choice what we watch. A lot of people don't know much about stammering and when there's a video on YouTube and its classed as Comedy thats going to give people the impression thats its something to be laughed at. We're not circus performers we're humans who deserve respect like everyone else.

Lemming

I used to have a stammer. I went through years of speech therapy to sort it out. It is a horrible, horrible thing to suffer with and you become incredibly self-conscious whilst speaking to anyone to the point where you try not to speak at all, or limit the amount of what you say to very short sentences to avoid the likelihood of hitting sounds that you have difficulty pronouncing without stammering.

How would people react to seeing someone laughing at a blind person being blind? or a deaf person being deaf? Or someone in a wheel chair?

Mr. CooL ICE

If a video exists whereby someone with an actual stutter in the video is being laughed at, its not fair. Likewise, if someone approached an invalid and pointed and laughed, its not fair. But a video that indirectly makes a joke about a disability is just a joke. It shouldn't be taken to heart.

Take my aforementioned example about Jimmy from South Park. Do you feel offended when he stutters (S6E17 as an example)? Even look at There's Something About Mary with Lee Evans playing a invalid fraudster, or even Dr. Albert S. Meinheimer in Naked Gun 2... There are examples of fun being poked at disabilities everywhere! Do you want to remove them all? Or just youtube clips? I really cannot see the mentality behind a petition such as this. If anything, it will go towards branding people with stammers as people who can't take a joke.

PC gone mad if ever I've seen it.

Oriel

sadie9 wrote: »

stammerers laughing together at themselves in the context of therapy and sharing experiences is different to the general public watching 'comedy' videos of people stammerering as a form of entertainment.

That sounds the strangely similar to only black people being allowed to use the word "n*gg*r" and only gay people using the word "queer".
It's just what people use to label different people. Get over it. You have a stutter, I have a stutter, we are different and people are going to label us so. Get used to it and worry about something else.

BigPhil

I think that laughing at people with any sort of disability is wrong. If people condone this sort of behaviour then it will eventually become expectable in society and that is bound to have negative knock-on effects IMO.

@ Oriel & LordChessington: You guys are entitled to your opinions, that is the beauty of having a discussion like this on a public forum, but please look at this from a different perspective then your own. You both come across like you have learnt to deal & (to a certain extent) accept your stammers, but please think for a moment the thousands of young stutters who are only getting to grips with their impediments and will possibly face years of ridicule and rejection because of it. Do you think they should suffer more because some insensitive idiots have nothing better to do but to make them targets for further ridicule on a very public forum like YouTube? Do you think that accepting stuttering as nothing but a joke will help them to succeed in a future where they are automatically labelled as a comedy act?

While I respect your opinions I suggest that stop using your own circumstances as examples and take a look at the bigger picture.

pirelli

Its wrong to laugh at someone with a stutter. It wouldnt be tolerated in most places. People dont find that form of abuse amusing , I would much rather hear the person try and finish the conversation. I have never seen a you tube depicting a stammer or stutter as comedy.

Mr. CooL ICE

BigPhil wrote: »

@ Oriel & LordChessington: You guys are entitled to your opinions, that is the beauty of having a discussion like this on a public forum, but please look at this from a different perspective then your own. You both come across like you have learnt to deal & (to a certain extent) accept your stammers, but please think for a moment the thousands of young stutters who are only getting to grips with their impediments and will possibly face years of ridicule and rejection because of it. Do you think they should suffer more because some insensitive idiots have nothing better to do but to make them targets for further ridicule on a very public forum like YouTube? Do you think that accepting stuttering as nothing but a joke will help them to succeed in a future where they are automatically labelled as a comedy act?

While the fact that my stammer is better than what it is was has slightly biased my views on joking at stammering, it is not the whole reason why I formed my opinion. I'm not looking at this from a strictly stammerers point of view, I am looking at this more from a liberal, anti-censorship point of view. Please look at my examples of disability jokes in TV/movies in my previous posts and tell me what your opinions are.

In the majority of circumstances where a joke is made, somebody is going to be the butt of it. Thats just life.

Also, are these youtube videos there to promote jokemaking aimed at stammerers, or are they simply jokes about stammerers? If its the former, then by all means report them to youtube, but I highly doubt it. If its the latter, then they are just there for whoever wants to watch them; if you don't want to watch them, then don't. If you go looking for something to be offended by, you will eventually find something.

Dragan

As someone who spent 7 years in speech therapy to get over his speech impediment and had a very hard time of it as a kid because of that all i can say is.....what the ****?

You can either laugh at everything or laugh at nothing, come on guys!

BigPhil

Dragan wrote: »

As someone who spent 7 years in speech therapy to get over his speech impediment and had a very hard time of it as a kid because of that all i can say is.....what the ****?

Did you have a stutter or was it some other type of speech impediment? I'm only curious because you said that you 'got over' it and I'd like to know alittle more about how you achieved this.

Dragan

BigPhil wrote: »

Did you have a stutter or was it some other type of speech impediment? I'm only curious because you said that you 'got over' it and I'd like to know alittle more about how you achieved this.

I basically had to spend 7 years learning how to speak correctly, i have ( or had depending on how you want to look at it ) a problem where i simply was not able to learn to speak like normal kids. People always get a laugh out of this but my tongue is basically far bigger than normal, i had to learn completely new ways to control it to allow myself to pronounce any words properly.

I didn't have stammer, from what i can see a stammer will increase of decrease depending on mood. I basically sounded like i was mentally challenged in some way.

Now then, imagine the bull**** i got over that!

At the end of the day guys, these things are a serious aspect of your life because you allowed people to make it that way. I was the same until i was about 18, people i knew from school would still make fun of me about it until i simply decided not to let it get to me.

I'm not exactly saying i have acheived Zen or anything but i think i fly as close as humanly possible to genuinely not caring what other people think.

Thankfully i can now speak absolutely fine, but it will creep back in when tired when my subconcious control begins to dwindle.

I don't notice anything now but at the time learning a whole new way to talk just so i sounded like other people wasn't exactly easy.

I know you can say i'm not comparing like with like and that would be a far point but i doubt a lot of you have stood up in front of a class in school to give a verbal report and had the majority of them shout the word "RETARD" at you!