The Connections in Passing Twice (Spring 2001)
By CM
 
This was originally published in the December 2000 issue of CAPS News, published by the Canadian Association of People who Stutter.
 
I would like to introduce the Passing Twice group that has met at the CAPS conventions for the past two conferences. We had our inaugural Canadian meeting in Vancouver back in 1997 and followed up in Montreal last summer.
 
Passing Twice is an informal community, primarily composed of gay men and lesbians who stutter, but the membership is open to all who are interested regardless of their orientation or fluency. It was first started at the 1993 National Stuttering Project convention and has grown by leaps and bounds since then. The membership now comprises over 100 people from a number of different countries, though the bulk of the members are from the United States and Canada.
 
Why do we need a separate group for gays and lesbians? Isn't the fact that we stutter enough, why segment ourselves further? Part of the reasons why the stuttering conventions are so valuable are that they provide a "safe space" where we can feel free to stutter and be ourselves, knowing that all those around us know what we go through every time we open our mouths. Likewise, the Passing Twice workshops extend that safe space even deeper, where we can be open about who we are in all aspects of our lives including our sexuality. Our goal is not to isolate ourselves from the rest of the convention-just the opposite. We hope that our presence at the meetings will make people feel more welcome than they may otherwise feel, and encourage them to take part in all of the proceedings, whether connected directly with Passing Twice or not.
 
Why the name, and what is the connection between stuttering and sexuality? Passing Twice refers to the fact that we have to "pass as normal" twice over, pass for being fluent and for being straight. Likewise, we have to "come out" twice over and stop hiding those parts of ourselves that mark us as different. To go into personal history for a bit: I had a long road coming to terms with my own speech and eventually did accept it
and myself by borrowing the lessons of the Pride Movement. I had to "come out" about my speech. Not that it was any great state secret that I stutter, but for the longest time I would not willingly talk about it and if anybody did ever bring the topic up I would cringe. When I was forced to teach classes for my graduate work, I realized that I had to bring others into my world and open up about my speech and how it affected me. I "came out." I use this term deliberately, they are the words for it. I talked to people about my speech for the first time in my life, invited them into that corner of my world, and became more and more open (and indeed "proud") of it as the years went on. I now willingly use it as fodder for bad jokes, which says a lot about the distance I have come. No acceptance without self-acceptance. Come out!
 
In a different world perhaps, where sexuality and/or fluency carry the same emotional weight as eye or hair color, there might not be any need for such groups as Passing Twice or indeed CAPS. However, in this reality, growing up where you don't fit the mold does make life more interesting than we would sometimes wish it to be. I hope my article has encouraged you to think about connections between different groups of people that you might not have realized before.
 

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