Why Do the Disabled Dislike Being Called an Inspiration?

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No, that's not like inspiration porn. The crucial difference is that their comments are centred around you and trying to show their positive feelings about something you are openly proud of because they understand what must have been involved and how hard you would have worked. If they ignored you and made it all about them and their feelings or about manipulating the feelings of others then that would be problematic. Do you see the difference? Inspiration porn is not about making the people with disabilities feel good, it using us to manipulate their own or other people's feelings without our consent or minimising our feelings by comparing us negatively to others.

I again read the articles linked, and I saw that some people were commenting on what was inspiration porn to them and how they interpreted inspiration porn and the purposes of the people making the inspiration porn posters or making comments like you are so inspiring, and ackshuly again, not much of what they said made much sense to me, as anything that I have ever genuinely felt and am likely to genuine feel in their situations, some of which didn't seem to be much different from situations that I have been in before.

Whenever I am told that I am an inspiration, I take it as a compliment. It's not like I get alot of them

I've had two people tell me today* I inspired them. But the inspiration was due to writing I had done over the past few years, and not because "how amazing is it that an autistic person can write at all?" Or if someone was like "Look at how this autistic woman writes about social justice!" as if I were doing a trick or putting on a show, that would not really be appropriate.

* People telling me this is not unusual, but is becoming less frequent because my work is in the past and I haven't done much recently.

Reading the comments of the articles to see various perspectives, I really don't see the pictures as meaning what some people in the comments said they meant or what some people on other blogs said that they meant. That is their opinion, not fact, and I didn't have same understanding of the pictures as the people having big problems with the pictures, and some people were like me, not interpreting the pictures to mean what other people said the pictures meant, which is rather nonsensical to me, so I can't write a makesensical summary here, as it makes no sense to me.

I honestly don't see it that way, but I get your point.

A lot of people (disabled and able-bodied) make EXCUSES for not trying. This is fact. It's one thing to not do something because you honestly have no interest. It's one thing to not achieve something because you simply can not (your best efforts simply were not good enough). I've been there, and I know how that feels.

However, it is an entirely different thing to have never made the effort. A lot of people DOUBT their ability to do something. A lot of people lack confidence in themselves. Hence, they never really try or they quit way before they've reached the limit of what they can do.

You should watch a documentary on Navy SEAL training. These guys go through a lot of abuse to earn the title they are granted, and most all of them will tell you the same thing....the training forced them to confront what they believed was the limit of their strength, endurance, will, etc. and realize they could go much farther. Normally, a person only learns what they are truly capable of when they are put in a bad situation and have to adapt or die. The Navy doesn't want their elite troopers tested that way, so they do the next best thing...letting those who want to drop out, drop out.

You can't argue with the results they get.

Every one of us, able and disabled, put limits on ourselves, and how many times do we go through a situation and realize we're stronger, smarter, better than we gave ourselves credit for? When you know the deck is stacked against you, it's easy to give into fear and doubt and choose to not give it your all...all the time telling yourself you did your best.

I know I couldn't be a Navy SEAL. I'm pretty sure by body would never have hacked it. I certainly know I don't want it bad enough to take the abuse they go through to get through BUDs and earn the title. Still, when I look at what these guys do, it makes me pause and question if what I think are my limits are indeed my limits. The human animal is programmed with a lot of safeties to warn us of harm and keep us safe, but they also prevent us from reaching our potential. Realizing that strength of will and using your brain can enable you to do a lot more than you thought you were capable of should motivate you to not readily accept the limits you think you have placed upon you until you know (personally) that you really have done all you know to do to expand your limits.

I think it could be condescending to call someone inspirational. When someone uses that word, it may imply that that inspirational person is seen as somehow inferior or something. I guess it depends on the context.

I was once in an awkward situation. I was with a deaf acquaintance (person A) and bumped into someone else I knew (person B). So all three of us talked (by writing with person A because he couldn't hear at all). In that conversation, person B asked me to tell person A that he (person B) was "impressed" by person A. I really didn't want to write it, but because person B was waiting for me to write it, I just wrote it. Then person A asked me why person B was impressed by him (person A). So I asked person B why. Now person B realized he shouldn't have said it because his comment implied that he (person B) thought that person A was not capable of living a normal life because of his disability. Although person A didn't explicitly show it, I could sense that he was offended.

I think this situation is a bit similar to calling someone inspirational.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUUVfPy0UgI[/youtube]

I honestly do not see being told that I am an inspiration is condescending. How I take it is that they are inspired, not by ' look what the weird lady can do even though she is autistic. she does 'normal things" so well" [not at all. I do very few 'normal things" well] but that despite some adverse circumstances, including being autistic, I soldier on, usually with a smile. I explain to them that there are some things I have handled well not so much in spite of being autistic, but because of being autistic.

BTW, most people are not inspired by me, and so many NTs' still treat me like crap.

Because many times people will be like "You're inspiring because you're autistic and manage normal people things so well!" And that is condescending.

"You're inspiring because you're autistic and you're able to give a speech"

vs

"You're inspiring because you're autistic and can't speak and you found away around that and gave a speech anyways"

vs

"You're inspiring because you do so well despite being in such a bad situation"

vs

"You're inspiring because you did things I could never do and did them when your impairments that I don't have affected those things you did"

vs

"You're inspiring because you're autistic and you are talking to me"


Different ways calling someone inspirational and including their autism are very different from each other.

When it comes to speech and language, there is ackshuly quite a story that I have about learning those things (involving lots of lucking into the right kind of help), so I find it reasonable for people to be inspired by that story of something typical and normal being atypically difficult for kid like me to learn and do, but I learned it in my own way, ackshuly an autistic way that can and has been applied for others to learn too.

Tuttle; This is a totally sincere statement. I am not entirely sure which of the comments are considered condescending [well, the last and first ones for sure] and which ones are not. I suppose you might be including the bad situation comment. But I would feel flattered because in my not so simple set of circumstances, being autistic is only one of many challenges and I would not fault someone for making the semantical error of addressing my current life as bad rather than as challenging. Especially because I take comments such as that as open doors to educating.

Being inspired by the story and being inspired by the action of them doing the typical thing are different.

Being inspired by someone who can't walk walking for the first time at graduation after they've privately done PT without telling anyone they're doing it, completely different than being inspired by someone walking just because they have a cerebral palsy diagnosis. Both are being inspired by someone walking.

I wasn't meaning the list to be one where everyone would necessarily agree, just ones that were very clearly different in terms of viewing them as condescending.

Being inspired by person with autism speaking and my and others' specific stories of people with autism speaking are not that different to me. The only thing is that someone unfamiliar with autism might think that most autistic people are non-verbal, but that is just not knowing the details of autism, like I don't know the details of other disorders like cerebral palsy.