I grew up in a very, very homogenous part of England - which was no bad thing at the time. I enjoyed my childhood, never really having a particular issue, which of course now I am very thankful for. Most people around me were of a similar ilk, which led to a sense of security, although I wasn’t really aware enough to realise this at the time.
Yet since moving to London for work, I have been hit in the face with what a broad, diverse part of the country it is. There are so many people from so many different walks of life; different cultures, religions, ethnicities, languages, sharing different political views, social opinions, and effectively any type of person one could imagine. This has opened to my eyes to the (many) different gaps in my knowledge, as my exposure to the ‘real world’ was so narrow, back in Sleepy Suffolk.
One aspect I have gained an interest in, partly through my work in healthcare, is how we view disability within our society. An overwhelming need to educate myself on a multitude of topics, including disability, has catapulted me into research and improving my understanding. I certainly have a long way to go, and I write this post far from being at a gold standard. Most importantly, I realised, was the need for me to understand my own biases on this topic.
We all have biases, whether conscious or not, and it is vitally important to be aware of them. They are deep, ingrown within us, and airing them may be quite uncomfortable. But we cannot grow as human beings unless we reflect on ourselves, and be accepting of the need to change. We are a product of our surroundings, and if you have grown up in a homogenous, very white area of the country, where a large proportion of the families have remained embedded in the county for several generations, it is not surprising your views may be slightly skewed.
One bias I am embarrassed to dig up is my understanding of disability in our society. I am very grateful and privileged to have been raised by two parents who did their best to embed the philosophy that ‘you should treat everyone as you would wish to be treated’ - and so, I thought, I was in the clear for my opinions. I would never dream of intentionally belittling, discriminating or ostracizing someone with a disability. And so I did not think much of this issue, partially because it rarely affected me (of which I understand was part of the issue), and I believed my opinions were quite liberal. My views were in the upper percentile, or so I thought, in comparison to the fourth generation Joe Bloggs who held some rather questionable views on disability (and race for that matter), which was unfortunately not too uncommon in the depths of East Anglia.
Yet what I wasn’t aware of when I was growing up in the countryside, were my subconscious biases. Although I would never consciously act in a certain way, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be impacted by my immediate surroundings. And this is where the issue of growing up in a homogenous area starts to come to light.
I had no real understanding of the spectrum of disability. From my worryingly foggy memory, I do not recall more than one or two children in my seven years at school with a noticeable disability. Embarrassingly at that time, my understanding of disability was that the person had to have a painstakingly obvious physical or mental disability that was the opposite of subtle - which of course is far from the truth - in order to be confidently ‘disabled’.
So it is no surprise that I did not have a normalised view of the broad spectrum of disabled people who are within our society. We did not have any disabled teachers, nor were they included in our textbooks whether that was in Art, History, Religious Education, nor were they our Doctors or Nurses, and a scare few were in any ‘normal’ job role in the area. My only real exposure to people with a disability, came when we had the occasional Paralympian or Activist visit our school to deliver a speech on ‘Perseverance’ or ‘Aiming for greatness’. (Or so I thought at the time, in reality they were simply telling their story, and it was my skewed lens that warped the meaning).
No wonder my perception was so crooked. I had subconsciously built an associative link between people with disability, and the upper echelon of excellence or achievement in life. This trip down my memory lane was inspired by learning about the late Australian Disability Rights Activist (and Comedian and Journalist), Stella Young.
In one of her popular Ted Talks titled ‘I’m not your inspiration, thank you very much’, Stella recalls a story of when she worked as a school teacher.
“I was about 20 minutes into a Year 11 legal studies class, when a boy put up his hand and said ‘Hey miss, when are you going to do your speech?’. And so I said, ‘What Speech?’. I’d been talking about deformation law for a good 20 minutes…
And he said ‘You know, about your motivational speaking. When people in wheelchairs come to school, they usually say inspirational, stuff? It’s usually in the big hall.’ And it then dawned on me - this kid had only ever experienced disabled people as objects as inspiration.”
And there I was, watching this TedTalk, thinking fuck me - I am that little Melbourne kid with such a skewed perception of disability. I had never been exposed to ‘normal’ disabled people. Our school had those people visit, and indeed - it was in the big hall. At that age, my understanding was that the majority of disabled people go on to do ‘exceptional things’, because of their heightened motivation for perseverance and ‘true grit’. Now I understand that this must place such an awful pressure on the normal disabled people among us to ‘achieve excellence’.
[As a slight adjunct - I of course, write as an able-bodied person and thus have no idea of how this feels, and the associative emotions it brings. I write in a bid to improve the image of disabled people in our society as an ally - but if you want to know how this truly affects people, it cannot come from me. It must come from disabled people themselves, and if you need to, I implore you to take this opportunity when it arises to better your understanding.]
Do we hold this expectation, this unrealistic goal, for each able-bodied person to become an Olympian, Activist, or climb Mount Everest? No fucking way. That would be absurd. And that’s because society is based around abled bodied people, and thus there are no ridiculous expectations for people to achieve excellence. This highlights one of many, many barriers disabled people face.
I have since (again, embarrassing to think I was unaware of this prior), learned that there are millions of normal disabled people who are part of our society, who go about their day-to-day very happily - who do not live their lives with ‘pure grit and determination’. Yes, there are barriers they have to face, but so many of them live normal, full lives. The barriers in place actually come from within our society, which I will talk on shortly. Yet there is a real sense of 'feeling sorry’ for someone with a disability in our society, looking down on them as if their life were somehow less meaningful.
There is also an embarrassing culture of giving unnecessary praise to people with disabilities, for doing overwhelmingly normal day to day tasks. Stella talks about how people often come up to her, or other disabled people, delivering a sense of commendation for simply getting out of bed in the morning, because of their disability. “Wow, it must be so tough for you. Well done you for battling on.” - the white able-bodied mother says to a young girl for turning up to school fully dressed.
That is so far from a sense of social justice and equality. These people - normal, every day people, can function perfectly fine during every day tasks. Yes, there are some who have severe physical limitations as a result of their medical condition, that some tasks such as getting dressed, can be challenging. But this doesn’t mean they don’t thrive in other aspects of life. And not everyone you see in a wheelchair or using an assistive aid has ‘done so well’ to get dressed in the morning. “We have been sold the lie that disability is a bad thing”, Stella discusses, “and to live with disability, makes you exceptional. It’s not a bad thing, and it doesn’t make you exceptional.”
Stella goes on to talk about how she loves the body she has, and that she uses it to its full potential, just like anyone else does. In my mind, how is a gentleman who uses his arms to help transfer his legs from his wheelchair to bed, which are paralysed secondary to a medical condition, any different than the man who can’t bend down to pick something off the floor because of his ‘dodgy knees’? Yet one has been labelled as exceptional for his ‘struggle’, while the other isn’t given a second glance.
In her talk, Stella mentions the Social Model of Disability, and how she prescribes to this. This model is based off the idea that the way our society is built, is generating the barriers to disabled people, not their physical or mental disability itself - the idea behind the Medical Model of Disability. I recommend further reading behind this social model, as the medial model is unnecessarily engrained into us from a very young age.
Lastly, I want to talk about the fantastic term, inspiration porn, coined by Stella herself. Inspiration porn, although Stella did a much better job at explaining than me, is the use of images of disabled people, labelled with ‘motivational’ text, used by able-bodied people for inspiration. She uses the term porn purposefully, as it objectifies one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. I have included ‘classic’ examples below.
What’s even more terrible about these images (as examples), is that often they are shared among able-bodied people, without the permission of the person in the photo. Do you think the creator of the first image, went and asked that child, or his parents, whether they were ok with them slapping some poorly designed WordArt on his picture to share on the internet? I think not. And more often than not, Stella explains, the quote slapped onto the image, is actually falsified - nor does it reflect who the actual photo is of.
“The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you… so that we [able bodied people] can look at them and think well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person. But what if you are that person?”
The quote above from Stella’s talk really hit me. She had such a funny, yet deeply powerful way of discussing this issue. These are real people, with real emotions and feelings. I do not use the term ‘real’ to belittle them, rather to simply highlight that there is no real difference between them or able-bodied people, other than the barriers implemented by the social model of disability. I will reiterate here that I advise speaking to someone with a disability, if they are ok with it, to understand how these images affect them, to better understand the impact of this inspiration porn culture.
So I hope I have done this topic some justice. I of course, need to further educate myself, and do not expect to have hit the nail on the head with this post. There is a painful, warped perception in our society of disabled people that vitally needs to be changed. If any of this content struck a cord with you, or sounded a bit too familiar - go and educate yourself on the topic. Watch Stella’s TedTalk. But not just the easy parts - go and read different disability rights activist’s stories and blogposts, understand how your local government negatively impacts the Social Model of Disability, and most importantly - reflect on your own biases, and work out what needs to be changed.