Have you ever seen a picture of a person without a leg swimming or running with the caption “the only disability in life is a bad attitude?” Or maybe some other picture of a person with a disability doing some everyday task with an inspirational quote underneath it? If you have never experienced disability, you may have felt motivated or inspired after seeing a picture like this. Although many of the people seeing these may come away with positive feelings, a lot of people in the disabled community aren’t happy with the way they are being portrayed through these “inspiration porn” pictures.
The term, inspiration porn was coined by an Australian Disability Activist Stella Young. These types of images got its name since they objectify people with disabilities the same way porn objectifies women. Society mostly promotes the idea that having a disability is inherently bad and that their existence elicits feelings of pity and sympathy. The general population tends to frame information about disabled people around all the things they “can’t do” and that reinforces the idea that everyone should strive towards able-bodied standards and goals resulting in people feeling like disabled people doing common tasks as inspirational.
Many people in the disabled community don’t see their disability as a bad thing but as an integral part of their identity. Cara Liebowitz is an activist and writer with multiple disabilities and she explains why these portrayals are bad, “Because a) she’s not doing anything particularly motivating and b) she doesn’t exist to motivate you. Reducing a human being – and a stranger, at that – to “inspiring” or “brave” or any of those labels is problematic, because you’re filling in qualities that may or may not be true in order to make yourself feel better. It’s using disabled people as tools for your own betterment.” When able-bodied people see inspiration porn they assume that every time someone with a disability does anything it’s courageous while the person with the disability has accepted and adapted so it’s just like a normal thing.
Australian Paralympian, Sam McIntosh, illustrated this concept in meme form on his website’s blog.
He adds the following comical description to help people tell the difference between inspiration and inspiration porn:
“Ah what a classic. Some disabled people are inspirations...just not all of them…
Leaving the house: Not an inspiration
Winning a Paralympic gold medal: Inspiration
Grocery Shopping: Not an inspiration
Getting a PhD: Inspiration
Walking my dog: Not an inspiration
Dog walking me: Canine Inspiration
Glad we straightened this out.”
Inspiration porn is problematic because of the assumptions it can lead us to make. It makes us assume that having a disability is bad and that disabled people doing everyday things is exceptional. Many disabled people have embraced their disability and live happy lives. Inspiration porn is made to make an able-bodied person think, “however bad my life is, it could be worse.” In a disabled person’s eyes their life is no worse than your life but society tells them that their life is worse. Society creates problems for disabled people. Stella Young points out that the quote, “the only disability in life is a bad attitude,” is a bunch of crap. She notes how no amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has made a ramp appear for a wheelchair user or how staring and hoping that closed captions appear on a video has never made them available for a Deaf or hard of hearing person.