Inspiration Porn

[photo: black and white image of a bearded, white, tattoo'd, bespectacled person wearing a black tshirt, overalls and cap, sitting in a motorized mobility scooter, clasping their hands together while smiling big, with their forearm crutches sticking up behind them; text reads: "Know what i'm tired of? Images of disabled people doing random things, turned into "inspiration porn". These images (e.g. children joyfully running with their prosthetic legs, someone painting with their toes, an elder skiing, etc), are then emblazoned with text like "what's your excuse?", "your excuse is invalid", "if ___ can do it, why can't you?" and other gems. They call on non-disabled people to buck up and stop making excuses for not doing something, and guilt other disabled folks into feeling like crap for not being able to pull themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps & "just do it". These images & sentiments are an ableist tool. They exceptionalize disabled people based in ablesist notions of accomplishment & worth. They build on & reenforce able bodied pitydom of gimps. Just fucking stop it ok? We're just doing our thing, yknow? We are not a goddamn guilt-trip tool to get you to do stuff. Please, if you need to use gimps as a tool to get you to do stuff, yer using the wrong starting point. (*for example, in this photo, i am simply enjoying a moment with a friend... I AM NOT YOUR INSPIRATION!)"]

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Think about it... if you wanted to surf, i bet you've seen many photos of random people surfing, and if you're reading this now you've got access to a computer and, like, so many photos and videos [e.g. when i type in "surfing" into google, i get about 298,000,000 results]. So ask yourself: why does it take the image of a disabled person doing it to get you to do it? Here's what i think, take it or leave it, i just ask that you ponder it some:

Society creates stories out of disabled folks. Stories which vilify us or exceptionalize us, and in the case of these images it's the latter (but it ultimately leads to the former as well, but that's for another post).

It seems like it taps into a few things:

A sense of pity (however subconscious) for the disabled person, because wow, is that ever sad!

A sense of "well if they can do it so can i!". But why didn't you have that reaction when you saw 297,999,990 shots of able bodied people doing the exact same thing? Just the mere SIGHT of a disabled person propelled you to do it? Wow! Now THAT'S power and influence!

A sense of "duty" / "obligation" somehow. Because if disabled people are doing this, you cant possibly say no. That wouldn't look right. What would your friends think? How could you look at yourself in the morning if there was a poor disabled child out there running joyfully with their prosthetic legs while you whined about schedules and whatnot?

[Us just existing and not crawling into a hole you can see really makes folks think of the big picture, of humanity, of you know, the like meaning of life and shit.]

You look at that kid running  [ that same running kid i mentioned earlier ], and maybe you see the joy on their face. You want to capture some of that for yourself, maybe remember what it's like to feel like that. But what you're also doing when you read the words "your excuse is invalid" [aside from probably not even thinking about the use of that word "invalid" in this context] and you leap off the couch to find your old track suit, is that you are creating a story for that kid based on able-bodied perceptions of worth, of success, of joy; you are pitying that kid, you are maybe feeling silly for ever thinking you couldnt do it because wow, that kid can do it! 

And that dear reader is ableism.

Just ponder it, ok?

And before i get any "you don't want to see gimps doing stuff!!" messages, that's not what this is about. i love seeing images of gimps doing stuff. What i don't dig is the ableist sentimentality which so often accompanies it. i dislike having our lives used as a tool to reenforce the very systems which cause us to be "disabled" in the first place [you know, disability as a social construct and all that jazz]. Different stuff.