Feature images via Bluestockings Mag and Shutterstock
Spend enough time on the disabled internet and you’re bound to come across the term “inspiration porn.” The late disability activist Stella Young introduced it to the world during her 2014 TED Talk, when she explained:
There are a lot of these images out there. You know, you might have seen the one, the little girl with no hands drawing a picture with a pencil held in her mouth. You might have seen a child running on carbon fiber prosthetic legs. And these images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call inspiration porn… [their purpose] is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, “Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse.”
Internet memes are the most common variety of inspiration porn, but their core sentiment — that disabled people exist to inspire able-bodied people and remind them of their good luck — has also fueled many a Very Special Episode (hi, Glee), film (cheers, Me Before You), and political stump speech. That last one is why I want to examine inspiration porn now, as we wait for the Donald Trump carnival ride to begin in earnest. Because mark my words: he will talk a great game about our “amazing bravery” as he gets to work stealing our healthcare. The man knows how to throw out a red herring, and we all need to be ready for this one. The first step is learning how to avoid perpetuating inspiration porn yourself. While it’s easiest to spot in media, it flourishes through day-to-day conversation — the kind you have with friends and family, and the kind our president elect will try to have with us.
So gather ’round, my fellow resisters, and let’s have a little chat.
How to Avoid Using Inspiration Porn
1. Acknowledge that ableism — not disability — is the real problem.
Part of the reason people buy into inspiration porn is that its basic premise is true: being disabled is, in fact, really hard. Our bodies are unpredictable, healthcare gets costly and complicated, everyone assumes you’ll never have fulfilling relationships, and let’s not even start on accessible buildings and transit. But inspiration porn only addresses those difficulties on the surface. Scapegoating our diagnoses is much easier than overhauling the way we discuss disability at a personal and policy level. Simpler to assume we must be miserable, say “there but for the grace of God go I,” and move on.
But what if you look at disability as a body type, identity, or way of being in the world? It becomes harder to justify parading disabled people around as inspirational objects. Inspiration porn lives and dies by the assumption that no one wants to be disabled, and doesn’t bother grappling with what actually makes disability so exhausting: the collective insistence on only accommodating one kind of body.
2. Watch your language.
So yes, disabled folks do have to “overcome” a lot to achieve equality, let alone any greater aspirations. We succeed and thrive “despite” the deck being stacked against us in a very real way. It’s not that you can’t use those words — please do! We need to rescue them from the ableism watch list — but make sure you’re deliberate. Know where you’re pointing them. Unravel their implications all the way back. Where do they place the blame? If it’s on disabled people or the way we’re built (even just a little bit) find a better way to make your point. Use “in spite of” to call out the institutions, attitudes, and yes, able-bodied people that cause us the most grief. Because they’re what’s in the way.
Undoing these patterns will feel like walking backwards with your eyes closed, and sorry, but you’re going to screw it up a lot. I (still!) catch myself going there sometimes. Because the trouble is no one else will stop you — that’s how pervasively we believe, as a country and a culture, that being disabled sucks. You get a lot more pushback for questioning that assumption than reinforcing it. So it is your responsibility to examine and reframe the way you, as an individual, discuss and think about disabled people. Do it constantly, do it imperfectly. Just make sure you do it.
3. Don’t pile on praise where none is due.
If you’re confused as to whether something you’re reading/watching/saying/doing is inspiration porn, here’s a trick: break it down to its component parts. Separate disability from whatever else is going on. Then ask yourself whether the achievement in question is honestly worth getting excited about. Because guess what: not everything is! Life’s kind of a slog, actually! So take a good hard look at that “compliment” you want to give. Would you praise an able-bodied person in the same situation? Would it be front-page news if they did it? If the answer’s yes, by all means, full speed ahead. That means you’ve got a legitimately accomplished disabled person in your midst — and damn right you should acknowledge it. But if not, it’s time to decide whether you really need to run that article or post that meme or say it like that.
If you wouldn’t congratulate an able person on their accomplishment, it’s not an accomplishment. It is just a Thing They Did. Measure disabled people by that same standard. Otherwise, you’re not applauding our victories; you’re patting us on the head for not giving up. And we don’t need that from you. We need you to save your praise for the moments when we achieve actual, tangibly great things. Because we do and we have and we will.
4. Center disabled experiences, not able-bodied feelings.
Here’s where we get to the real issue with inspiration porn: it’s not about disabled people. It’s about how we make able-bodied people feel. And that, I hope you realize by now, is not the point. More than ever in our post-election world, feeling inspired or realizing how good you have it means nothing if you don’t translate those feelings into action. Inspiration porn stalls that process halfway through, at best: giving you the warm fuzzies without asking you to consider why.
As disabled people figure out how to survive whatever’s on the other side of January 20, we need the conversations around us to shift our way. We need our voices, not other people’s reactions to them, amplified over and over and over until it becomes standard. That’s especially true for disabled folks of color and everyone else at multiple margins. So if you’re someone who tells stories, whether professionally or not, make sure the ones about disabled people are actually about us. Ask us what we want and how we feel. Let the disabled folks you know, even if we’re just on the internet, guide your engagement with disability. If you are a professional, make sure you get quotes from us. And no matter what, when you hear Trump or anyone else selling a different narrative — the kind about lifting able people up — recognize it as useless (because it is) and counter with something better.
So What Should I Do Instead?
Glad you asked! In case you couldn’t tell, I have some ideas.
1. Call us MacGyvers, not feel-good memes.
Disabled people do deserve your praise and, more importantly, your respect. We work damn hard to make our way in a world designed (both physically and ideologically) for other people. And in that work, we develop skills, talents, and ideas that we might not have otherwise. Young gave the example in her TED Talk of “using a pair of barbecue tongs to pick up things that you drop” from your wheelchair. Personally, I’ve found my enhanced pain tolerance extremely useful in (ahem) certain circumstances. So it’s not in spite of disability that we are clever, creative, resilient, and resourceful — it’s because of it.
If you’re going to compliment us, compliment our innovation. Reconsider the way you think about our bodies and ways of being. Every time someone implies that we’re deficient or tragic, remember that we were hacking our world long before the tech bros.
2. Don’t say we’re “just like you” — because we’re not.
The de facto “solution” to inspiration porn is emphasizing disabled people’s ordinariness and, more to the point, our similarity to able-bodied people. It certainly helps determine whether a particular “achievement” is worth applauding, but personally, I think it also lets people off the hook a little too soon.
Measure our accomplishments by the same standards as able people’s, absolutely. But watering us down to “just like them” is not the way to do it. Because the fact is we’re not; we bring unique perspectives and experiences to the table that able-bodied people never will. It is your job to acknowledge, respect, and investigate those differences — not erase them because it’s more convenient.
“More equal” is not “more like.” You have to work harder than that.
3. Educate yourself and speak up.
I got this message from a college acquaintance the other day:
Because I’ve grown up in and always lived in communities with a strong emphasis for equal rights across gender, race, and sexuality I was a bit lulled into complacency regarding my own awesome approach to and understanding of the world (heh). Then sometime in the last year, I randomly clicked on one of two of your articles as they floated through my feed and I was like “Say, what!? How am I and this whole world totally biased against disability in ALL of these ways I never ever even noticed!?”… It was humbling in such a good way, and a good mental ass-kicking to step up my game — what else was I missing? … Your reset of my brain/lens/whatever helped me to tackle the racial, misogynistic, discriminating shit of 2016, and made me more comfortable speaking up strongly in conversations where I may have been a passive contributor, or silent.
I share that not to brag, but to drive home a point: if a disabled person motivates or inspires you through our work, that’s how you should let us know. Recognize your obligation to get smarter about these issues — don’t expect us to do it for you — and then put that new knowledge to work. In conversation, in your own creative output, in your way of thinking, everywhere, remember that ableism is real and pervasive and deserves to be confronted. Smiling next to a disabled person for a photo op (which I’m sure Trump will get around to) or equating “feeling inspired” to “learning something” does us absolutely no good. Especially now, it’s time to start recognizing what ableism looks, sounds, and feels like.
Inspiration porn is feel-good prejudice and we cannot settle for that. So when you start to see it coming from the highest office in our land, call it by its name. Have the difficult talks with yourself and your people. Don’t opt out or downplay or hesitate. I won’t, and you shouldn’t either. We all know better by now.
