{"id":70153,"date":"2017-04-10T09:20:42","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T14:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=70153"},"modified":"2017-04-10T21:53:19","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T02:53:19","slug":"when-inspiration-porn-involves-animals-it-dehumanizes-as-well-as-objectifies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2017\/04\/10\/when-inspiration-porn-involves-animals-it-dehumanizes-as-well-as-objectifies\/","title":{"rendered":"Animal “inspiration porn”: Implications for othering and accommodation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The term “inspiration porn” was coined<\/a>\u00a0by disability activist Stella Young. Aimed at able-bodied viewers, inspiration porn features people with disabilities\u00a0who appear\u00a0happy<\/em> or are doing things<\/em>, alongside an encouraging message. She explains:<\/p>\n

Inspiration porn is an image of a person with a disability, often a kid, doing something completely ordinary — like playing, or talking, or running, or drawing a picture, or hitting a tennis ball — carrying a caption like “your excuse is invalid” or “before you quit, try.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or, the famous one: “The only disability is a bad attitude.”<\/p>\n

She called it porn quite deliberately, arguing<\/a> that inspiration porn is like sexual porn in that the images\u00a0“objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people.”<\/p>\n

And, as with sexual porn, it sometimes involves animals.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At Disability Intersections<\/a>, Anna Hamilton suggests that inspiration porn involving animals is another step removed from recognizing the full humanity of people with disabilities. These “inspiring” stories, she argues, “provide a way for nondisabled people to talk about and engage with disability in a facile way.”<\/p>\n

Disability isn’t just othered; it’s cute, adorable, fuzzy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hamilton continues:<\/p>\n

If one is constantly gawking and aww-ing over pictures and stories about animals with disabilities, then they don\u2019t have to spend time thinking about actual disabled people, or the ableism against disabled humans that still exists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When featuring animals, accommodation is no longer the least<\/em>\u00a0a society can do: a basic acknowledgement that human beings in all forms deserve access to their societies. Instead, it’s over-the-top, idiosyncratic\u00a0and rare,\u00a0even excessive in its\u00a0generosity. To find inspiration in a turtle\u00a0who has been fitted with a tiny skateboard, for example, is to frame accommodation as something one does out of the goodness of one’s heart, not a human and civil right.<\/p>\n

Inspiration porn others and objectifies people with disabilities. When featuring animals, it dehumanizes them, too.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The term “inspiration porn” was coined\u00a0by disability activist Stella Young. Aimed at able-bodied viewers, inspiration porn features people with disabilities\u00a0who appear\u00a0happy or are doing things, alongside an encouraging message. She explains: Inspiration porn is an image of a person with a disability, often a kid, doing something completely ordinary — like playing, or talking, or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":70159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[155,345,23717,129,1047,283],"class_list":["post-70153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animals","tag-disability","tag-disability-prejudicediscrimination","tag-media","tag-pornography","tag-prejudicediscrimination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/03\/15.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70153"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70212,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70153\/revisions\/70212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}