I recently came across the term "inspiration porn." My initial reaction was just that it was hilarious, but the more I think about it, the analogy is actually perfect. Inspiration porn is using someone's story of overcoming extreme challenges or disability to make yourself feel better. I'll often hear people say things like "they remained so positive, despite everything!" or "they never let it keep them down!" There are memes saying "the only disability is a bad attitude" with an image of a child running with prosthetic legs.
So why does any of this matter? Just like regular porn, there's nothing inherently horrible about it. Who cares if someone finds personal pleasure in something they find on the internet? Yet the outcomes of such practices can be problematic in similar ways. First of all, inspiration porn isn't real. It is an idealized, almost fetishized, version of perseverance. They've taken the best moments of someone's experience in isolation. I seriously doubt that anyone is always upbeat about their challenges, or never gets grumpy, or that the kid running in the memes genuinely feels that her prosthetic limbs truly don't hinder her life in any way.
Another issue with inspiration porn is consent. If I personally share a story from my own experience that helps me feel inspired because you look like you need some motivation, that's fine! But if I were to share a story about someone I know who has a disability, and isn't it wonderful how well they're doing... I'm now sharing personal information about them and telling their story so that they have no way to express consent or confirm the accuracy of the story, etc. Thus, it becomes violating.
Objectification can also be a nasty outcome. The actors in inspiration porn are not being shown as complete people, but rather manifestations of their currently attractive quality -- their disability. This contributes to "othering" people, pointing out their differences, and and making their balance between owning their condition vs. letting it define them that much harder.
The reality is that inspiration porn can create a monster of all three (and other) problems combining at once. So when I write my stories or tell people in person, I am very conscious of this happening in subtle ways. Don't get me wrong -- I love hearing people's responses to my writing. I love when it brings them hope, motivation, empathy and understanding, or solidarity. But sometimes I hear people close to me using my life as simplified morals to their own stories. They love to hear how strong I am despite everything, or how positive I remain. The problem is that as soon as my positivity slips or I no longer feel strong, people stop listening and I become a failure. I constantly feel it. The worse I am, and the more I need people to surround me with inspiration and motivation, the less interesting I become. They pull away and I'm left feeling like they used my vulnerability to serve their purposes, but as soon as it stopped feeling good for them, they backed out. When I start to show what it's really like to fight in order to not feel constantly miserable, people look elsewhere for a better story to hear.
Granted, I do want my blog to be place of positive endings, hope, inspiration... that's what the world needs, and that's why I go to the internet when I feel lost. In person, though, I hope people will give me the chance to be a real, non-idealized, full and flawed human going through deeply painful shit. And once in a while I will also post those moments on this blog, because I do think it is good modeling for people to hear what happens when a generally upbeat and positive person falls apart. I will make it back up to the top, but I don't want to pretend that the fall doesn't exist. So please, read it even when it's not fun or sexy or inspirational. Not for my sake, but for the sake of acknowledging that battle is not always easy.
To be continued in Part 2.