Disabled People are More Than a Source of Inspiration

Have you ever looked at a disabled person doing something totally ordinary and thought, “wow, that’s so inspirational?” I know I have, and if you’re a non-disabled (or “normal”) person like me, chances are you have too. And our reasons were valid; most of the time, disabled people face more difficulty doing the same tasks than their non-disabled peers. Because of this reason, society tends to exceptionalize the mundane tasks and achievements of disabled people because of the disability context.

But should the mundane challenges overcome by disabled people make them inspirational?

I still remember my first ever experience with this issue. When I was in grade 8, I had a classmate called Wafula. Wafula had a physical disability and moved around in a wheelchair. Everyone in the school knew him. In fact, the teachers were fond of publicly commending him for every small thing he did. However, we were surprised when he was awarded the “student who makes a difference” prize, the school’s most coveted prize. In our prior speculations, everyone overlooked him because he had no notable achievements or leadership roles. He couldn’t participate in most of the school’s extracurricular activities because none could accommodate him. Even classwork was a struggle for him; most times, the teachers had to offer him the teacher’s table to make writing more comfortable for him if they were sensitive enough. The reality is that he really struggled because everything in the school was designed for a non-disabled person.

While handing Wafula the award, the headmaster faced these difficulties that Wafula faced in school and how he had to work harder than everyone else. He said that Wafula was not disabled; he was “differently-abled.”

Wafula did impressive last term. He was number 47 in a class of 122. Despite coming to school in a wheelchair, he managed to perform better than half of you.

The Headmaster

• (explaining to us why Wafula deserved the award).

Although I had ranked first in the class, I still found myself clapping for someone’s lesser achievement, yet it all made perfect sense because he had a disability.

Looking back, I wonder if it would have been “normal” had Wafula ranked last. You see, by inflating Wafula’s average accomplishment and recognizing Wafula for ranking midway in a class, we indirectly reinforced the expectation that a disabled person should perform below a non-disabled person. Additionally, we also overlooked the challenges that Wafula faced in the school and the community. There is so much that we could have done to make school more bearable and fun for him. Instead, we chose to celebrate and clap for his struggle against the systemic barriers in the school and society.

Wafula might not have failed as we expected him to, but we as a society failed him.

Unfortunately, this issue of disabled people’s achievements being inflated and turned into inspiration is widespread in society. Most communities, constituted by a majority of non-disabled people, tend to exceptionalize the mundane achievements of disabled people as a way of recognizing the extra difficulty completing those tasks. Disabled people are then easily viewed as inspirational for accomplishments that would not be inspirational if done by a non-disabled person. In Else S. Henry’s

, Lydia Ransom, a blind burlesque dancer, decries this same issue. She laments how society finds her “edgy” and “shocking” for her otherwise ordinary achievements.

But that is not the full story. In Wafula’s case, society also viewed his physical disability as a sign of other disabilities, a phenomenon known as disability drift. Why else would we automatically expect him to perform below other students only because of his disability, to the extent of being impressed when he “managed” to rank midway?

One most-common effect of these issues (the exceptionalization of the mundane and disability drift) is that disabled people are often seen as “inspirational” for rather ordinary accomplishments. In 2012, this phenomenon finally got a fitting label from the Australian comedian, educator, and activist Stella Young: “inspiration porn.” In her

two years later, she explains how a community member wanted to nominate her for a community achievement award when she was 16, even though she had no notable achievements. Basically, inspiration porn uses disability and disabled people as a tool to make non-disabled people think, “However bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person.”

In her talk (embedded below), Stella Young poses the question we have been avoiding all along: But what if you were that person?

In reality, inspiration porn invents new barriers for disabled people in the community. Sure, disabled people can be truly inspirational, and many are. But when we label someone as inspirational for doing regular tasks solely because of their disability, we effectively reinforce a smaller expectation of the person and disabled people. As we shall later see, inspiration porn also diminishes the real accomplishments of disabled people, ultimately undermining their endeavors in society.

H does Inspiration Porn Spread?

There are various ways in which the idea of disability as inspiration is perpetrated in society, but here are the most common:

1. As “inspirational” or “motivational” posts online

This is rampant on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram. It is usually a picture of a disabled person doing a physically intensive activity such as a sport. The image is then accompanied by catchy captions such as “WHAT IS YOUR EXCUSE?” or “The only disability in life is a bad attitude.” Such captions are meant to make an audience of non-disabled people feel inspired and compelled to act, react, or at least feel better about their problems or situations.

However, the exceptionalization of the mundane is not the full picture. As I was doing my research on the subject, I realized that inspiration porn could take multiple other forms in society, which don’t necessarily involve seeing the average activities or accomplishments of disabled people as extraordinary. Sometimes a disabled person has genuinely impressive accomplishments, but society obsesses over these accomplishments only because of the disability. Other times, we misrepresent disability to make it fancy or inspirational to other people. Let’s take a closer look at these other forms.

2. Obsession with the Achievements of disabled people, because of their disability.

An example of how society obsesses over the inspirational achievements of disabled people only because of their disability is the case of Oscar Pistorius. Born in South Africa, 1986, Pistorius had both his feet amputated at an early age due to a physical condition. He describes in his 2008 autobiography

how his parents pushed him to be extraordinary: Pistorius rose to prominence in the early 2000s as an athlete using prosthetic limbs. In his heyday, he commanded worldwide recognition for his athletic performances in the Paralympics. He was even pushed by society to compete in the Olympics, but only to prove that disabled persons can be just as good, if not better, than their non-disabled peers.

Pistorius’s “achievement” in the Olympics was more exceptional and impressive in society’s eyes than the multiple world records he set in the Paralympics. A simple Google search for Pistorius’s impressive achievements says: “At the 2011 World Championships in Athletics, Pistorius was the first amputee to win a non-disabled world track medal. At the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, Pistorius was the first double-leg amputee participant.” Similar searches for other accomplished but non-disabled athletes talk about all the world records they broke. They won’t tell us that Pistorius, too, held world records, albeit in the Paralympics. Pistorius’s mere participation in a race against non-disabled peers trumps his exemplary performance in races against other disabled people in society’s eyes. In this case, inspiration porn shifts focus from the exemplary (and perhaps more important) achievements to those that “inspire” society more — his competing in the Olympics.