Inspiration Porn - Why Stephen Hawking isn't your Hero

Sarah Jacobs

As society has progressed disabled people have become more accepted in everyday life thanks to years of campaigning. In classrooms across the country you can now find inspirational posters with disabled heroes like Stephen Hawking or Ellie Simmonds motivating children to overcome obstacles and follow their dreams. But is this new attitude to disability helping or hindering the community?

All too often, when disabled people are shown on TV or are put on posters it is to inspire non-disabled people rather than celebrate them as a person.

This is what has become known as ‘inspiration porn’.

The phrase is used to describe when disabled people are praised and admired for living with a disability. We have all seen it. The poster of a runner with prosthetic legs entitled ‘what’s your excuse?’ or perhaps the child who wins an Adversity award every year because they have Cerebral Palsy.

Inspiration porn reduces a disabled person down to their disability – not their achievements.

The reason this is harmful is that it says that disabled people’s place in society to inspire able-bodied people. No longer are you praising Stephen Hawking for his scientific work but rather because he managed to do it despite his disability. Hawking himself said that he preferred to be known as “a scientist first, popular science writer second, and, in all the ways that matter, a normal human being with the same desires, drives, dreams, and ambitions as the next person.”

Inspiration porn is dehumanising and exclusionary. When you applaud a person for rising above their disability you are showing that they were meant to fail. Catherine Soper explained this in her article ‘How to Avoid 'Inspiration Porn' When Talking about Disability’. “We’ve been told that disability is a bad sad thing. Therefore by proxy anybody with a disability is overcoming a cruel fate, and is inspirational simply for living daily life.” Not only does this show society still has incredibly negative attitudes towards disabled people but also shows that they can only hold value in society if they perform above and beyond what was expected of them.

This also has a secondary effect of people in positions of power not making changes to the systems that make life so difficult in the first place. Why change the attendance system in schools that disproportionately punishes those with disabilities and long term illnesses? Instead, let us give a certificate of perseverance to the one child who managed to attend class despite their struggles. The one or two who succeed are raised up whilst the rest are abandoned.

Most of the people guilty of this are doing so from a place of kindness. They believe they are being inclusive by praising those with disabilities for triumphing against the odds. What they forget is that in the background of their hero are thousands of others just like them who could have succeeded if they were given the proper care and support.

I’m not telling you not to lift up your heroes who have disabilities. I’m asking you to question why they are your hero in the first place.

Sincerely,

The girl with an Adversity award.

Soper, C (2016) ‘How to Avoid 'Inspiration Porn' When Talking about Disability’ Available at: https://themighty.com/2016/08/how-to-avoid-inspiration-porn-when-talking-about-disability/ (Accessed 08/07/2020)