"I'm not your inspiration, thank you" Stella Young on disability

[NadaTeTurbe]

I really liked this Ted Talks on disability. (there's a transcrip if you don't have the time to listen it) 

http://www.ted.com/talks/stella_young_i_m_not_your_inspiration_thank_you_very_much/transcript?language=en 

I'm disable (I have Elhers Danlos Syndrom), I have a wheelchair sometimes, etc... and I really agree with her. "I want to live in a world where we don't have such low expectations of disabled people that we are congratulated for getting out of bed and remembering our own names in the morning" I think there's a pro-life message in this - disable people are not exceptionnal people, they are just people. 

[beatitude]

I'm disabled too and I feel the same way. In fact, I've never met a disabled person who didn't. I get especially concerned when I see Christians making arguments against selective abortion with, "But disabled people inspire us to be more loving and compassionate!" This invites people who agree with selective abortion to make arguments about all the disabled people who get abused or whose conditions are so incredibly hard for their families to cope with that the family breaks down. And so it goes. This always makes me want to interject with, "Err, this debate shouldn't be about whether I'm capable of inspiring you or not, it should be about why it's arrogant and demeaning for you to be having this conversation in the first place - do you justify your own lives by talking about how inspiring you are to others?! No, thought not."

[Ice_nine]

Some people call it inspiration porn.

But the video won't play for me

[veritasluxmea]

I'm inspired that she said her value isn't based on her ability to inspire people. 

[Spem in alium]

I'm staggered by the amount of times I've been told I'm "brave" or an "inspiration" in living with my own medical issues, when all I'm doing is just that - living. There are parts of me that don't work, and there are things I can't do which most people can, but does that make me an inspiration? I don't think so. 

[hotpink]

What annoys me about this culture is the perception of hardship based on visual cues.

At my college graduation from a school on the smaller side with mostly white, wealthy kids there were several loud cheers.

-1(which I didn't mind) for the young men and women in uniform who were in ROTC and were going off to fight

-2(which was tolerable) for the young men (and a few women) on the campus sports teams

-3(which annoyed me) for the blind guy that was pretty much a jerk and who, on any given day 90% of campus hated

-4(which annoyed me) for the girl in a motor wheel chair who EVERYONE ignored.  Literally.  Like once she was stuck in the middle of campus trying to get to class for over a hour but couldn't and no one helped her.  She begged people to let campus saftey know she was stuck and they seemed to forget by the time they got to class.  I was only a casual friend and in a club with her but she was basically invisible even when she asked for help. 

-5 is actually one that no one clapped for (which greatly annoyed me) was the Lost Boys of Sudan.  These young men had been through the brutality of war.  Seen brothers die before them and sisters raped and killed.  These guys were amesome despite having no family and little support.  But since they were visually just black dudes no one cared.

 

No one cared about so many of the other invisible achievers.  The girl who was loosing her hearing, or survived a violent assault or the guy who worked endless hours to pay for his education.  All the stories that I didn't know.

 

I walked away from my graduation saddened more than I've ever been because I saw in full force a group of  a few thousand hipocrates (about 1k students and their families) all happy to clap along and no idea why.

[Era Might]

I'm not disabled so I have no experience what it is like. I don't feel inspired when I see a disabled person or, for example, a person with Down's Syndrome, or even a homeless person or a disturbed person. But I feel "something"...the closest word I can think of is ashamed or something akin to sadness, the vanity of the world we live in and the lives we lead. One of my intellectual heros lived many years with a large tumor on his face. He was a critic of the medicalization of suffering and lived with the tumor as a reminder of his mortality. I can imagine how Americans in particular turn disability into inspiration, we're all about that health and wealth and doing whatever it takes. I like Jean Vanier because he built a community around the mentally handicapped...I guess what I feel when I see a disabled person is that I'm not Jean Vanier, it's a sadness like the Rich Young Man in the Gospel who went away sad because he had great possessions. Plus our sick and lame are not in the streets as they were when Jesus was healing them, so to see one is kind of an abrupt descent into the human condition we have worked so hard to suppress.

[Era Might]

Btw, I avoid Ted Talks, they seem to me part of the American inspiration porn mentioned above lol, but I'll watch this one when I get a chance.

[veritasluxmea]

I avoid Ted Talks, they seem to me part of the American inspiration porn mentioned above

Ted Talks as a business have a pretty liberal, anti-religious agenda. There are really good ones and ones worth watching (I like their music education videos and public speaking skills, and they have random gems like how to reduce paper towel usage) but some of them are just... wow. 

[Ice_nine]

I like Ted Talks for the most part.

But I'm also an awful person, So there's that.

[MarysLittleFlower]

Just some thoughts.  I think the reason all the inspiration talk is annoying is because its in the end, self serving. Its like saying "the point of life is to succeed and achieve and that's my dream. Here's a person who has something that maybe made it harder and they achieved it. That inspires me that I can too". But was it ever about us? What about a person who has - disability, poverty, anything - and doesn't seem to succeed? Are their lives less valuable because they don't "inspire"? The fact that God made a life gives it meaning, and that's enough. If I call someone inspiring, its like I'm making it all about me. 

Edited August 29, 2015 by MarysLittleFlower