Author’s note: This piece was inspired by Explaining Rape Culture to Men (Hilariously). It is set up in Q and A format, with a non-disabled person as the questioner and a disabled person as the answerer/explainer.
I’m graduating! While disabled! You still don’t get to call me inspirational!
Q. So, what’s this “inspiration porn” everyone’s talking about? It sounds so…ew.
A. Ew what?
Q. It sounds so…porny.
A. What?! No!!! I mean. There is crip porn. That’s a thing. Some disabled people like porn just as much as not disabled people do. And….why am I even talking about this??? This is not what we’re talking about! We’re talking about….what were we talking about?
Q. Inspiration porn.
A. Right. So. You know those memes and stuff? Like the one of the girl with the prosthetic legs running alongside Oscar Pistorius that says “The only disability in life is a bad attitude.”?
Q. Who’s Oscar Pistorius?
A. He’s the Olympic athlete who…WHY AM I DOING THIS? STOP MAKING ME GO OFF TOPIC!!!
Q. ….sorry?
A. Forget it. It’s this meme*. You know this meme, yes?
Q. Oh, THAT meme! Sure do! I shared it on my Facebook last week!
A. What’s the first word that comes to mind when you see that little girl?
Q. Inspirational!
A. And why is that?
Q. Because she’s still smiling!
A. I’m sensing a “despite” in there.
Q. Despite…..well, she has no legs!
A. And that’s a reason she should be unhappy?
Q. Well, yeah. Obviously, having no legs is a bad thing. Right?
A. Not really. There are plenty of people who have no legs or no arms or are otherwise disabled –
Q. ERMAGAHD SAY PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES!!! YOU ARE NOT DEFINED BY YOUR DISABILITY!!!!!
A. And why, precisely, would I not want to be defined by my disability?
Q. Erm…because…
A. Exactly. Because disability is supposed to be a Bad Thing.
Q. It’s not?
A. It’s not. As I was saying, there are plenty of disabled people who are perfectly happy with the way they are and wouldn’t want to change themselves.
Q. But how can that be?
A. Are you happy with the way you are?
Q. More or less, I guess.
A. Would you want to change the way you are?
Q. Well, I’d like a bit more money…
A. Don’t we all? But I’m talking about the things that are fundamental to your identity. The things that make you you.
Q. Well, if they make me me, I wouldn’t be me anymore if they changed, would I?
A. Now you’re getting it. Most disabled people consider their disabilities a fundamental part of their identities and can’t imagine their lives without disability.
Q. So inspiration porn is bad because it automatically assumes that disabled people shouldn’t be happy with their lives?
A. No. Well. Yes. But there’s more to it than that.
Q. There’s more?!?!
A. Indeed. What’s the first thing you think when you see one of those memes of a disabled person — or, say, if you see a woman using a wheelchair at your gym?
Q. Well, if she can get up in the morning and do this without complaining, so can I!
A. How do you know she doesn’t complain?
Q. Erm….
A. Right. You don’t. You’re just making assumptions.
Q. Oops.
A. Yeah, big oops.
Q. So I shouldn’t be inspired by her?
A. Well, that depends. Has she done anything particularly inspiring?
Q. She –
A. Besides getting out of bed in the morning.
Q. …I dunno.
A. There we go with those assumptions again. What makes getting out of bed in the morning and going to the gym so inspiring? You do it.
Q. But she – I mean – she has so much more to deal with than me!
A. Well, let’s see. She probably gets out of bed in the morning, brushes her teeth, has a nice breakfast. Maybe reads the newspaper and gives her husband – or her wife, you know, crips can be gay too – the part they like most. Maybe she has kids that she needs to get to school. She probably grabs a coffee on her way to work. Maybe she’s a high-powered corporate attorney, or maybe she works at McDonalds, or maybe she works from home. Then, after work, she comes home, eats dinner, and binge watches “Star Trek” on Netflix, because she has good taste. And then on the weekends, she wakes up early and goes to the gym to get a workout. Does any of that sound substantially different or more difficult than what you do?
Q. I don’t like “Star Trek.”
A. Blasphemy. We’ll fix that later. Besides your questionable taste in television….any differences?
Q. ….Not really.
A. Do you consider yourself to be particularly inspiring?
Q. I dunno….not particularly…I’m just a regular person.
A. So is she. I bet she doesn’t consider herself inspiring any more than you consider yourself inspiring.
Q. But I don’t get it. Why is it so bad if she motivates me to become a better person?
A. Because a) she’s not doing anything particularly motivating and b) she doesn’t exist to motivate you. Reducing a human being – and a stranger, at that – to “inspiring” or “brave” or any of those labels is problematic, because you’re filling in qualities that may or may not be true in order to make yourself feel better. It’s using disabled people as tools for your own betterment.
Q. I see what you mean. I think I’d be upset if someone who didn’t know me was using me as a tool without bothering to get to know me, too.
A. So give me a quick summary of what we talked about.
Q. I – what?! Is this a test???
A. Yes. I was an education major in college. Summary, please.
Q. Ummm… Inspiration porn is when disabled people are called inspirational or brave for doing all the things that regular people do. It’s a problem because it assumes that anyone with a disability must have it so much worse than the rest of us. And because it uses disabled people to make us nondisabled people feel good about ourselves, or to make us do something, like exercise or whatever. And disabled people aren’t tools. They’re people.
A. Got it in one. I applaud you.
Q. So it has nothing to do with porn, then?
A. No. The reason it’s called inspiration porn is it objectifies disabled people just like regular porn objectifies woman.
Q. Porn objectifies women?
A. ….*sigh*.
*Image description of the meme: A young girl, maybe about 3 or 4 years old, runs alongside Oscar Pistorius in a gym setting. She has the same blade-type prosthetic legs that he has and her arm ends in a stump about where the hand would be. He is wearing a marathon-style nametag that says “Pistorius.” Superimposed over the picture is: “The only disability in life is a bad attitude. – Scott Hamilton.”
greetings,
i’d like to say that this article is kinda difficult for me to grasp. i’ll try and explain why, and i welcome comments from others in the hopes of broadening my understanding of this phenomenon, inspiration porn.
this question from the Q person in the dialogue resonates with me:
“Q. But I don’t get it. Why is it so bad if she motivates me to become a better person?”
i guess i don’t understand how being inspired by anyone is or can be negative. the answer that follows that question is also a bit difficult for me to grasp.
“A. Because a) she’s not doing anything particularly motivating and b) she doesn’t exist to motivate you. Reducing a human being – and a stranger, at that – to “inspiring” or “brave”
i don’t understand how or why another person can dictate what i should or shouldn’t find inspirational? if i see something or someone that inspires me, whose business is it to tell me that my inspiration is misguided? i might find how the light reflects on some trash in the street inspirational; i might find the way someone dresses as inspirational; i might find a one-legged person inspirational. in my experience, inspiration can come from many different sources.
in the case of disabled persons, what is normal for them is not normal for me, and vice versa. isn’t that one of the sources of inspiration? aren’t we inspired by what we see another person doing that we either are not doing or cannot do, especially when that person is working with less (in this case, physically)?
it’s also difficult for me to understand the following exchange.
“A. Do you consider yourself to be particularly inspiring?
Q. I dunno….not particularly…I’m just a regular person.
A. So is she. I bet she doesn’t consider herself inspiring any more than you consider yourself inspiring.”
i don’t understand the relationship between how someone else thinks about themselves and the inspiration i feel when i think about them. of course i think of myself as a regular person, but does that mean that another person cannot be inspired by me? if someone said to me, “i’m really inspired by the way you conduct your classes”, and i responded, “i always conduct my classes like that. it’s nothing special for me”…where would that leave us?
finally, i don’t understand how being inspired by a disabled person is reductionist. while i understand that disabled people do not want to be defined exclusively by their disabilities, is that the same as being inspired by their accomplishments? is it also reductionist to be inspired by someone’s abilities?
these are difficult areas for me to see/questions for me to understand, and i know that it’s quite possible that this is a blindspot (one among many) in my psychology. i hope to have open, enaged dialogue around my questions, and look forward to reading other members’ responses to my queries.
in kindness and with respect,
joseph
Fantastic article, Cara. I loved the format, the insight, and that you made it unequivocally clear that enthusiasm for Star Trek is the foundation of good taste.
Hi Joseph,
Thanks so much for writing and asking these honest and difficult questions and asking from a place of respect and kindness. What we tend to do here at TBINAA is ask folks to be in inquiry. It is often not the “what” that is problematic about a person’s actions or thoughts and more often the issue is the “why”. Of course, you have complete autonomy over what you find inspirational. We all do. The request I see in Cara’s piece is more about asking you to ask yourself “why” am I inspired by this? For example, you shared,
“in the case of disabled persons, what is normal for them is not normal for me, and vice versa. isn’t that one of the sources of inspiration? aren’t we inspired by what we see another person doing that we either are not doing or cannot do, especially when that person is working with less (in this case, physically)?”
The assumption that you cannot do it, is not necessarily accurate. What is true, is that you do not have to do it. That is a privilege of being able-bodied. Being inspired by what you do not have to do because of privilege, situates the person without privilege as a thing to be pitied. It makes it about their assumed lack. What Cara is asking people to see is that disability does not mean a person is lacking something or has “less” than someone. They have a body that works differently. That needs different things. To give a silly analogy, let’s say you are and have always been lactose intolerant and I am not. So I can eat ice cream and you cannot. If you, took a lactaid pill and ate some ice cream you would not become ‘inspiring’ because ate ice cream. No one calls lactose intolerant people who figure out ways to have dairy, inspirational. They are simply people navigating the difference of how their bodies work so that they can do what they want with their lives. The issue with using folks as inspiration is that it is often born out of assigning them magical qualities or pity to people because of the differences of their bodies. It requires us to make assumptions about what their lives must be like in that particular body. Which breeds stereotypes and makes them “others”. It assumes that there life is extraordinary either because of great suffering or great power. What Cara’s piece is asking is that we see people with disabilites as just humans living with the bodies they have. Just as you would likely learn to do if you had a different body. Learning to live life in the body you have is not extraordinary at all. Now if that person goes on to do great things that anyone might find challenging, that is extraordinary. To climb Mt. Everest is extraordinary. To do it with prosthetic legs is indeed extraordinary. But to go for a walk or get ones groceries or dance or have fun is not extraordinary, it is human. People with disabilities who are doing those things are not doing something exceptional, they are simply being human. And finding their acts of simple living as “inspirational” implies that they are not or should not be simply being human, which is to assume that their particular bodies should make them do something other than live. We hope that clears up some of that. Please continue the dialogue in forums. let’s keep talking. Thank you for being part of the Unapologetic Posse!
I kind of get what Joseph is saying, and respectfully want to add my two cents – which is that until I became (temporarily) disabled myself, I felt the same way. But now when people compliment or say I’m “brave” for living my pretty normal life with a brace up my arm and popping pain meds sometimes, I mostly just feel…annoyed. I think something that’s missing from all this is the fact that humans can and do adjust to new circumstances remarkably quickly. Not having the use of my right (dominant) hand for 4 months has sucked in a lot of ways. I’m on month 3, almost done, and can say that while it’s sucked it only took about a month to adjust – physically and mentally – to using my non-dominant hand, figuring out how to tie my shoes, put my hair in a pony tail, etc. And when I do get frustrated and angry, I gripe to my husband. End of story. Random co-workers saying how amazing it is that I still go running is well-intentioned but annoying. I can still run. I do. I’m basically the same person. There’s nothing brave or amazing about getting injured and adjusting to it and continuing to live your normal life. It sort of feels to me like someone saying “wow, I can’t believe you don’t just sit home and cry all day! Being seriously injured must be SO horrible that that’s all I can really imagine you doing, and your proving that mental image wrong by still doing a good job at work and exercising is hard to reconcile with my preconceived notions of people with disabilities. So I guess I’ll go on and on about how brave you are, and how much of an aberration it is that you’re doing ok despite this horrible disability.”
Sorry that that sounded ranty. This has all ben inside for a few months and it’s great to finally see an article that addresses how I feel about my disability. Thank you!
I have a question,
I understand how it can be kind of cringe-y when it’s aimed at no-disabled people, but what about if someone is autistic with a cognitive delay and graduates high school, and then there’s a 10 year old with autism, say she’s struggling to learn to even speak and read because she processes language differently. She wants to give up, but then she sees this and thinks “I can do it”. Or if someone is in an accident and loses their leg, they used to be passionate about bodybuilding and now they think “what’s the point” until they see a picture of a winning bodybuilder with only one leg and decides to give it another shot, goes back to the gym and restructures their workout but continues their passion.
Just wondering, as I do understand the point, but also there’s certainly room for this kind of things in order to inspire those with the same or similar disabilities to not give up on their goals if they seem out of reach for the moment. (I do have a sibling with autism, and I myself have a learning disability, FWIW).
I am not in any way detracting from what’s been said here, okay?
But I am disabled, and if somebody finds me inspiring, then I’m proud. Everybody has their own troubles, and if mine can help somebody else in a positive way, GOOD.
I’m not going to allow this post, or this idea, to make me feel like something I feel good about is dirty or wrong. Maybe you ought to think from my perspective. :/
This article hits home for me! As a 49 Year old male w/Cerebral Palsy, I confess that when i was a baby (3-6 yrs old), well, lets just say that Easter Seals was my ‘Hugh Hefner’. Sigh, this article really ‘turned the lights on’ for me. THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH FOR THIS PAINFUL, BUT OH, SO CLEANSING ARTICLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The images you describe are images disabled people ought to share and tell about themselves for themselves. They are not for abled people to put forth. Those communiities exist where disabled folks share and encourage newly disabled folks. Able-bodied people don’t need to create those spaces for them.