[Nfbf-l] Disabled people aren't here to inspire you

[Alan Dicey]

Dear Friends,
I came across this article and thought it worth sharing, because for me it 
is a perfect verbal illustration of our struggle .
It's pasted below and also if you wish can be accessed via the following URL

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/05/disabled-people-super-bowl-advert-deaf-nfl-footballer-derrick-coleman?CMP=share_btn_fb

If the link doesn't work you'll need to copy it and open manually, but see 
the article below.

Disabled people aren't here to inspire you
By Charlie Swinbourne
Advertising agencies don't miss a trick. In the run-up to the 2014 Super 
Bowl, an advertisement from Duracell that featured a deaf NFL footballer 
called Derrick Coleman went viral. Coleman narrated it himself, saying: 
"They gave up on me, told me I should quit. But I've been deaf since I was 
three, so I didn't listen."

That trend's been followed up this year, with two advertisements being aired 
during the Super Bowl featuring disabilities.
One, featuring a six-year old boy called Braylon O'Neill, shows how, with 
the help of Microsoft technology, he can use prostheses to walk. The other 
shows Paralympic snowboarder Amy Purdy, who also uses prosthetics, gliding 
across the snow to promote a car company.
Both advertisements have prompted a debate on "inspiration porn".

I've got nothing against Coleman, Purdy or O'Neill. If their ads make people 
look at disabled people a little more positively, then I can see there's a 
benefit. I just wish that we were being encouraged to admire them, rather 
then feel inspired by them.
My problem is summed up by the Microsoft advertisements, which begins with 
the line "What can you do?"
That line reveals how these advertisements use disability, and the narrative 
of overcoming disability, as an emotional hook, to make non-disabled people 
feel like achieving more. These disabled people's achievements are not 
enough on their own - their value really lies in what they can make everyone 
else feel like doing!
I feel strongly about this because I've been called words like "brave", and 
"inspiring" before. I was called "brave" by a woman merely for going on my 
school's foreign exchange trip, and I was called "inspiring" by a journalist 
just for being deaf and working in the media. On one level, I was aware that 
there was no malice intended, they were simply trying to pay me a 
compliment, and they thought these were appropriate terms to us, so I 
responded as such.
But on another, hidden level, I felt deeply patronised. Those words revealed 
low expectations - as though, simply because I'm deaf, I wasn't expected to 
achieve anything. As if anything I did do became noteworthy as a result
It's not that deaf and disabled people don't have to battle with all kinds 
of barriers in life - of course we do. It's the fact that society seems to 
seems to forget that it's often the world around us - physical barriers, 
communication issues, or attitudes - that are far more "disabling" than the 
disability itself. Non-disabled people may feel inspired by the idea of us 
"overcoming" or "beating" our disability, but we wouldn't have much to 
overcome if society treated us more equally.
Another issue with "inspiration porn" is how polarised the way disabled 
people are seen has become. Right now, in the UK, disabled people are on the 
whole seen as either scroungers or "supercrips". We're either a drain on 
society, in which case we are seen as taking something from you, or we're an 
example to look up to, in which case, you want to take something- 
inspiration - from us.
The reality is that most of us are neither of these things.

The biggest problem with inspiration porn is that although it shows people 
overcoming disability, it often means disabled people are not shown as being 
complex human beings, with more to us than the sum of our disability alone. 
And that in itself is limiting.
Nick Sturley, a deaf man with Usher syndrome, put it perfectly when he said 
this to me last year:
"Don't define me by a condition I happen to have.

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