My Experience with Disabilities and My Thoughts on "inspiration porn"

      Hello readers, welcome and thank you for tuning in to my first ever blog post on this page. The topics I will be discussing is my personal experiences with disabilities and my thoughts on people with disabilities being used for "inspiration porn." First, I will be discussing my personal experience with having a reading disability. Then, I will breakdown what "inspiration porn" is and my reaction to people with disabilities being used for it.

     It was when I was in 2nd grade that it had been determined by my teacher that I had some sort of reading disability. After this I started to get pulled out once a day during class to see a reading/learning specialist at the school. The reading specialist confirmed that I did indeed have a reading disability and was reading far below a "normal" reading level for my age (Figure 1). As well as difficulty focusing on what my teachers were teaching with outside noises coming from surrounding classmates (Figure 1). To help with this I continued to be pulled out of class once a day during the time my class would be learning to read/write to see the reading/learning specialist. The point of me being pulled out of my class was that I was in an environment with only the specialist and myself, so I was able to truly focus on my reading ability. This routine continued from 2nd grade all the way through 8th grade, and slowly I was closing on the gap between my reading level and what is deemed as the "normal" reading level by age. In high school it was a little different because it was not one on one sessions anymore. Although, it was only class sizes of four people including myself so there still was not a lot of distracting noise in the classroom.

(Figure 1): Image of a Reading Disability

     Even though these specialized learning environments greatly helped me with my reading and learning ability, it came with many devastating draw backs. The other students in my grade of course noticed that I was pulled out for these learning sessions daily, this led to a lot of social isolation as mentioned in the course content article (Figure 2). Due to my reading disability, I felt less than the other kids my age at school as well as they reminded me with every chance they could that I was (Figure 2). I was harshly bullied all through middle school and the first half of high school for being in specialized classes and my reading disability. While going through this I experienced low self-confidence as well as my confidence in my reading ability was at an all-time low. It was not until I was able to surround myself with supportive people in my second half of high school that I was able to gain a lot of self-confidence along with confidence in my reading. I am now a full-time college student with a goal of getting my doctorate in physical therapy, and my favorite hobby being reading books.

(Figure 2): Image of Social Isolation

     Now to transition to the second topic of this blog, which being "inspiration porn" and my reaction to people with disabilities being used for it. "Inspiration porn" as described in the course content article is the use of disabled people for audiences of nondisabled people to inspire them and is generally characterized by sentimentality, pity, or an uplifting moral message (Hardin, R., & Pate, J. R., 2024). My thoughts of "inspiration porn" is a bit to both sides of the coin, on one side I can see it can be very uplifting to people with disabilities seeing these videos. But on the other side it seems that if these videos are targeted towards nondisabled people, they are in turn quite offensive to people with disabilities. The reason I believe they are offensive is because the underlying message of the video is that if a person with a disability can do something that must mean anyone can do it. Which is an inaccurate message because it does not take in the amount of mental and physical labor it took for that person with a disability to get to that achievement. These videos focus more on the disability than the actual person who metaphorically climbed the mountain to reach their goals. 

     Lastly, thank you again for tuning into my blog and staying up to date with my page. I will be posting weekly about all sorts of topics involving the disability and sports community.

References

Hardin, R., & Pate, J. R. (2024). Introduction to Adaptive Sport and Recreation. Human Kinetics Publishers. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781718214545

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