The topic of disabilities is raised not infrequently in the abortion debate. As in: Should preborn child X with disability X be aborted? Would it be the kinder/more compassionate thing to do? The conversation circles around whether it’s kinder to immediately take the life of the child than to let the child live with its disabilities.
Anyway, when I saw this article posted on Facebook regarding community celebration of people with disabilities, simply because they have disabilities, written by someone with a disability, I thought it was well worth sharing. The effect of “inspiration porn” is not something I’ve had to think about, but it’s important to know the impact these pictures, posters, memes are having on the people depicted.
What’s “inspiration porn”?
Inspiration porn is an image of a person with a disability, often a kid, doing something completely ordinary – like playing, or talking, or running, or drawing a picture, or hitting a tennis ball – carrying a caption like “your excuse is invalid” or “before you quit, try”.
What are these images and posters really communicating?
Let me be clear about the intent of this inspiration porn; it’s there so that non-disabled people can put their worries into perspective. So they can go, “Oh well if that kid who doesn’t have any legs can smile while he’s having an awesome time, I should never, EVER feel bad about my life”. It’s there so that non-disabled people can look at us and think “well, it could be worse… I could be that person”.
In this way, these modified images exceptionalise and objectify those of us they claim to represent. It’s no coincidence that these genuinely adorable disabled kids in these images are never named: it doesn’t matter what their names are, they’re just there as objects of inspiration.
But using these images as feel-good tools, as “inspiration”, is based on an assumption that the people in them have terrible lives, and that it takes some extra kind of pluck or courage to live them.
For many of us, that is just not true.
Read the rest here.
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