Greetings STARFLEET,

Today’s topic is something seen every day, and it’s often viewed in a positive light. It crosses everyone’s eyes on social media, commercials, and the local news every day in the feel-good section. This stuff has a name, and that name is inspiration porn.

Disability activist Stella Young coined the term. She defined it as portraying people experiencing disabilities as inspirational because they are disabled. Inspiration porn is unfortunately widely prevalent in a global society.

Let’s look at a meme example. Someone has taken a picture of a child born without all of their fingers. The child seems cute, and she’s holding a pencil tracing her name on a sheet of paper. The text on the meme reads, “the only disability is a bad attitude.” That’s inspiration porn.

Another example is a story that periodically goes around the internet. In it, a man takes a flight, and his family fails to inform the airline that he needs an interpreter since he is deaf. Someone learning sign language in school steps in to interpret, and there’s a heartwarming story about it. That’s inspiration porn since the man is reduced to a prop in the story.

Those are just two of the countless examples. From athletic company ads featuring prosthetics to stories of blind men climbing Mount Everest, the vast majority of it is inspiration porn. By definition, it’s also degrading, dehumanizing, and ableist.

The continued spread of inspiration porn perpetuates the myth that disabled people must inspire abled people for their lives to matter. It also perpetuates the feel-good for abled people who think they have done something worthy of recognition simply because they treated a disabled person like a human being. Neither is something we should want in our society.

Disabled people are people, and they have their own lives to live. As for steps to take, consider simply not sharing inspiration porn or perpetuating it in any way. Recognizing that it is a problem, we can make a difference.

Be the Change, STARFLEET.