Part 3: Are You Not Entertained?
There’s a particular kind of disability story that shows up all over social media.
A disabled person goes grocery shopping.
“SO INSPIRING!”
A wheelchair user goes on vacation.
“LOOK AT THEM NOT LETTING ANYTHING STOP THEM!”
A blind person crosses the street.
“I COULD NEVER DO THAT!”
A disabled person graduates from college.
“WHAT AN INCREDIBLE HUMAN BEING!”
A disabled person gets married.
“LOVE CONQUERS ALL!”
And somewhere in the background, I can almost hear Maximus yelling:
“ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!”
This is what disability activists have called inspiration porn.
The term can sound harsh, but the concept is actually pretty simple.
It describes the way disabled people are sometimes presented as inspirational simply because they are living their lives, accomplishing ordinary things, or doing things that nondisabled people assume they could never do.
In her 2012 TEDx talk the late disability rights activist Stella Young famously challenged this idea, pointing out that disabled people are often turned into inspirational objects for the benefit of nondisabled people.
And there’s an important distinction here.
Disabled people absolutely accomplish amazing things.
Celebrate those things.
Please.
But there’s a difference between:
“This person worked incredibly hard and accomplished something difficult.”
and:
“Look at this disabled person doing something ordinary! I feel so grateful for my own life now.”
One celebrates the person’s accomplishment.
The other uses the person as an emotional experience for somebody else.
That’s where things get uncomfortable.
Because we don’t necessarily want to be inspirational.
Sometimes we want to be a pain in the ass.
Sometimes we want to complain.
Sometimes we want to screw something up.
Sometimes we want to be lazy.
Sometimes we want to make a terrible decision.
Sometimes we want to be successful.
Sometimes we want to be spectacular.
Sometimes we want to be completely mediocre.
We want the full human experience.
And this is where I think we need to talk about something else: the expectation that disabled people should be good disabled people.
We love the inspirational disabled person.
The brave one.
The courageous one.
The person who “never gives up.”
The person who “doesn’t let their disability define them.”
The person who “overcomes everything.”
And eventually, that person becomes less and less human.
Take Stephen Hawking.
He was unquestionably brilliant. His contributions to physics were extraordinary, and his public image became one of the most recognizable examples of a person achieving remarkable things while living with a significant disability.
But he was also a complicated human being.
His personal life was complicated. His first marriage ended, and his relationship with his second wife was also marked by significant difficulties. He made choices that other people could—and did—criticize.
In other words:
He was a person.
And I think that’s important.
Because sometimes we seem to believe that disabled people have to earn our respect by being exceptional.
We aren’t allowed to simply exist.
We have to inspire you.
We have to overcome obstacles.
We have to demonstrate courage.
We have to make you feel better about your own life.
We have to prove that disability isn’t really a limitation.
And if we don’t?
What happens then?
Are we a disappointment?
What if someone with a disability doesn’t want to climb a mountain?
What if they don’t want to run a marathon?
What if they don’t want to be inspirational?
What if they’re angry?
What if they’re bitter?
What if they’re selfish?
What if they’re hilarious?
What if they’re an absolute jerk?
What if they’re brilliant?
What if they’re mediocre?
What if they’re just trying to get through Tuesday?
They’re still a person.
And that’s what gets lost when we turn disabled people into inspiration.
We stop seeing the person and start seeing the story.
The wheelchair becomes the story.
The blindness becomes the story.
The prosthetic becomes the story.
The diagnosis becomes the story.
The adversity becomes the story.
And suddenly the actual human being sitting in front of us is almost an afterthought.
We don’t need you to watch us do something ordinary and feel better about your own life.
We don’t need to be your motivational poster.
We don’t need to be your superhero.
We don’t even need to be particularly impressive.
We just need you to see us.
As a person.
A person who sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails.
A person who sometimes needs help and sometimes doesn’t.
A person who can do things you can’t and probably can’t do things you can.
A person with strengths and weaknesses, good days and bad days, talents and flaws, accomplishments and spectacularly questionable decisions.
Just like you.
That’s not inspirational.
That’s equality.
And honestly?
I’ll take that over being put on a pedestal any day.
Because pedestals are exhausting.
And they’re really hard to get down from.
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