It lurks on your Facebook
newsfeed. It creeps in the murky depths of Huffington Post, and finds its way
onto every talk show imaginable. It is inspiration porn, and somewhere on the
Internet, it’s just waiting to keep people with disabilities down.
Inspiration porn is corny,
patronizing media that showboats disabled people for doing regular things.
Regular, boring, hardly newsworthy things like walking down the street,
participating in sporting events, and other mindblowing things like going to
school. All things that people are supposed to do, mind you. Inspiration porn
allows disabled people to become a commodity, shared, tweeted, emailed, and
cooed about for the sake of a public that wants to be “inspired” by them, to
see their everyday accomplishments and participation in life as an uplifting
exception and not a rule. Using people with disabilities as “heartwarming”
stories when they accomplish the same feats as their non-disabled peers implies
a glaring lack of expectations for them. OH MY GOD. A person in a wheelchair
ran a race! Society honored his right to participation! My heart be still! Call
CNN! Perhaps you’ve been lucky and your newsfeed has not yet been cluttered by
this terrible… I mean, touching, form of media. Here’s a few gems to give you a
taste of the uproar it causes in the press when people with disabilities do things instead of sitting in their
pajamas and eating chocolates… although even then, a short film may be produced
or a fifth grader may be encouraged to take a photo of the Hershey’s wrapper
for a “My Hero” essay.
The infamous “a disabled person
going to prom must be on the news!” article. See here After a much too successful Google
search, I came across this 2012 article. In the text, Foothill High senior
Meagan Baker made the news for inviting
“wheelchair bound” Ben Bunker to the prom. Excuse me, while I go throw up.
People with disabilities are people. With feelings. They can be pretty and
handsome. They can make good prom dates. They deserve to have dates with the
quiet high school angst of every other. Why must we call the paper, alert the
feel goodies when a person in a wheelchair goes to prom? To find his
participation surprising is a blatant act of ableism, because he is merely
taking part in the same age- old ritual as everyone else. The fact that a peer
invited him to prom is framed as an act of charity by a media that seems
unwilling to believe that someone may choose to go with him because they like him.
It’s 2013, and we have 70
million disabled people in the United States. Still, inclusion is not a matter
of course. Inclusion is not a normal part of life. It is seen as an elusive act
undertaken only by the benevolent, who are given special attention for treating
their disabled peers like part of the human family.
If your emesis basin is still
empty, there’s more. A video went viral last year of a boy with cerebral palsy
taking part in field day, which. he. is. entitled. to. do. His classmates are
elevated to a saintliness of sorts for cheering him on and taking the time to
run with him. This, folks, should not be anything for which people are publicly
praised. Click here. The other children were supporting him. That’s what friends do. That’s
what inclusion looks like. And it should be granted to people with disabilities
in the same matter of fact manner that it is for every other child on the
playground. When we reward able-bodied people for treating disabled people
equally, it becomes an “extra special” moment instead of a civil right. It
implies that people with disabilities are not otherwise worthy of inclusion,
unless the public is hungry for a pat yourself on the back, warm and fuzzy
treat.
And after the 30-second video
ends, the same people are not challenged to think of the need to make all
people a part of society, beyond the cornball segment to accompany your coffee.
When inclusion and ordinary participation becomes so incredible, so rarely
incorporated that it summons the media, we all have a great deal left to learn.
I hope that one day, people with disabilities doing things will be allowed to
happen without fanfare. Until then, you can keep your inspiration porn to
yourself. And please, please know that I will crawl into a hole if you ever
call me handicapable. You can stop fainting and gasping when people with
disabilities leave the house. Truly, it’s becoming a public health concern. So,
if you care about your health, save your fainting spells for something out of
the ordinary. It would really warm my heart.