Joe Biden’s Stutter
Thoughts on the candidate's perception of stuttering
With the recent news of Bernie Sanders dropping out of the 2020 Presidential Race, Joe Biden will become the primary democratic candidate to face Donald Trump. Politics aside, I’d like to take some time to talk about Joe Biden’s stutter.
Yes, he is a person who stutters. If you are learning this for the first time, you are not alone. In fact, according to this interview from the Atlantic, Biden believes that 80–95% of people don’t know that he is a person who stutters. Biden is what you would call a covert stutterer. He conceals his stutter from other people, the public; tries to hide it. He denies that he has it and refers to his stutter in the past tense. From personal experience, this is an unhealthy approach to stuttering.
I was in denial of my stuttering for a very long time. I told myself I didn’t suffer from it; that everything would work out if I pretended I wouldn’t have to work to manage it. Stuttering isn’t just a physical struggle, it’s heavily mental as well. I’d almost argue it’s more mental than physical. Stuttering thrives off of fear and anxiety. And denying your stuttering creates more of that fear and anxiety. Fear that if someone heard you stutter, it would be a bad thing. Anxiety that you might stutter.
But honestly, I don’t blame Joe Biden for denying his stutter. It was only until recently that the idea of acceptance and “owning your stutter” became known as a better treatment option. In the ’70s, speech therapy pioneers like Vivian and Joseph Sheehan paved this route. They called it “Avoidance Reduction Therapy.” But Biden was raised in a different time. He is 77, born in 1948. By the time he was in his 30’s, only the seed was being planted for this new form of therapy. And stuttering was less accepted back then. Not many people knew about it. Biden’s father would tell him to “never complain, never explain.” Citing the Atlantic interview, like me, Biden used to get mocked in elementary school. But I have no doubt his bullying was more severe than mine. In my generation, acceptance and inclusion began to be more prevalent in the youth.
You may have seen media outlets talking about Joe Biden’s “verbal misfires”. This is one of my favorite examples from the Ben Shapiro Show:
This example is 100% because of Joe Biden’s stuttering. Biden knows the word “Obama” is a feared word and proceeds to use word substitution as an avoidance technique. This just one example of the media chalking up his stutter to his age and mental state. They say he’s “slow” and “forgetful”. From personal experience, this sucks. A lot. Biden’s not an idiot and he likely knows what to say a lot of the time. Sometimes he just has trouble getting it out. So why does he want to continue receiving media backlash when it could be solved with one simple fix?
Own it. Not in the way he’s doing now, like dropping little nibbles of hints throughout the media that he is a person who stutters. He needs to come out and announce it during a speech or a rally. With clarity and confidence. It would exclude him from fewer media scrutiny from the left and right. He could help millions of people who stutter around the world by letting them know that he has gone through they are going through. And that through all of it, he became the next President of the United States. And of course, Biden will have the release of knowing that it’s OK to be a person who stutters. And trust me, that is a good feeling.
If you’d like to read more about this, the fantastic The Atlantic interview with Biden that I’ve been citing throughout this piece can be found here:
