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In “I'm not your inspiration, thank you very much” (TEDxSydney), Stella Young states we have all been lied to about disability. The concept of disability has been sold to us as a bad thing. Stella Young describes that disability has been used to create a lie about how living with a disability makes you an exceptional person. However, Stella Young is trying to explain how living with a disability doesn’t make you exceptional nor inspirational. Young’s approach to the concept of disability stems from society's willingness to accept disability as normal. Stella Young states the concept of “disability”, is being used to create a deception of inspiration (inspiration porn). The deception of the idea of disability being inspiring created something called Inspirational porn. …show more content…
Things that “normal” people do are taken for granted like walking and running. Seeing a picture of a handicapped person running with prosthetics brings motivation for healthy people but for disabled people it is just normal thing they have achieved with the advancement of technology. Stella Young’s wants the concept of “inspirational porn” hinders disabled people being able to live a normal life. She wants people to understand that we are creating a misconception of disability by awarding disabled people for doing their “norm”. “Disability doesn’t make you exceptional but questioning what you think you know about having a disability does”. I argue that Stella Young describes the concept of disability is used to create a deception of what inspires
Eli Clare in Reading Against the Grain mentioned that the mainstream culture has a tendency to stereotype people into eroticizes culture such as thinking all African Americans males and Latino women are hyper-sexual, perceiving Asians as passive beings, and assuming that disabled individuals have no sexual desires. Somehow people regurgitate these stereotypes as if they’re empirical facts. Objectification usually reinforces or maintains the institutionalized power differences, which can deprive some groups such as the disabled from self-determination. The section of Pride and Exile brings to light how some members of the disabled community feels that they are denied of their personal autonomy. In Clares case, she explains how the MDA fundraisers
Society is quick to judge and label people different from themselves. Whether it is because of different ethnicities or any form of disability. Most of the time these labels are put forward with intention to hurt the recipient’s feelings. In the passage Nancy Mairs challenges and rebels against society’s discrimination and use of improper labels. She emphasizes that she should only be called crippled rather than handicapped or disabled because from her perspective the other labels make her seem weak and inferior. Mairs establishes her claim through the use of rhetorical devices such as tone, diction, and anaphora.
Clare provides different paradigms of disability in order to demonstrate the wide variety of views concerning disabilities. He states that the paradigms of disability "all turn disability into problems faced by individual people, locate those problems in our bodies, and define those bodies as wrong," (Clare, 2001, p. 360). The first paradigm model Clare explains is the medical model which defines disability as a disease or a condition that is treatable. Next, he explains that the charity model defines disability as a tragedy and the supercrip model defines disability as a tough challenge that individuals overcome; the supercrip model makes individuals with disabilities out to be superheroes. Lastly, Clare explains that the moral model defines disability as a weakness. In order to demonstrate the paradigms and how they overlap, Clare cleverly uses an array of popular examples. One significant example is Jerry Lewis' telethon. During this time, Jerry Lewis attempts to raise money in order to find a cure for a condition. Overall, his Labor Day telethon raises money to end a disability by finding a cure for the broken bodies. This telethon employs the medical model because it demonstrates disability as a condition that needs to be treated. In addition, the telethon employs the charity model because it shows disability as a misfortune. All four disability paradigms are known as the social model because they are the ideas that society has about certain bodies. When society creates these ideas about disabilities, they create unnatural
All these and more evidences used in the book support Peterson’s thesis and purpose—all of them discuss how having a disability made Peterson and others in her situation a part of the “other”. Her personal experience on media and
Nancy Mairs, born in 1943, described herself as a radical feminist, pacifist, and cripple. She is crippled because she has multiple sclerosis (MS), which is a chronic disease involving damage to the nerve cells and spinal cord. In her essay Disability, Mairs’ focus is on how disabled people are portrayed, or rather un-portrayed in the media. There is more than one audience that Mairs could have been trying to reach out to with this piece. The less-obvious audience would be disabled people who can connect to her writing because they can relate to it. The more obvious audience would be physically-able people who have yet to notice the lack of disabled people being portrayed by the media. Her purpose is to persuade the audience that disabled people should be shown in the media more often, to help society better cope with and realize the presence of handicapped people. Mairs starts off by saying “For months now I’ve been consciously searching for representation of myself in the media, especially television. I know I’d recognize this self becaus...
As mentioned previously, the chances of becoming disabled over one’s lifetime are high, yet disabled people remain stigmatized, ostracized, and often stared upon. Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University, Mark Mossman shares his personal experience as a kidney transplant patient and single-leg amputee through a written narrative which he hopes will “constitute the groundwork through which disabled persons attempt to make themselves, to claim personhood or humanity” while simultaneously exploiting the “palpable tension that surrounds the visibly disabled body” (646). While he identifies the need for those with limitations to “make themselves” or “claim personhood or humanity,” Siebers describes their desires in greater detail. He suggests people with
Disability, a physical or mental condition that limits a person’s movement, senses, or activities. Lisa I. Iezzonis’ reading “Stand Out” depicts a rather stimulating framework of how the disability is seen and treated. The relationship between health, illness, and narrative in this reading marks the idea of discrimination of disability through her own life events by separation of identity, people. The author employs repeated phrases, metaphors and perspectives to display this. The form of literature is written and told in the form of the first-person perspective short story but in storytelling form.
Charles pleas to pathos is how much media is disrespecting disabled people, “It is important to know the full degree of damage wrecked by the demeaning and wildly inaccurate portrayal of people with disabilities, not it is altogether clear whether much current progress is being made” (531). This causes the readers to feel sympathy for people with disabilities and evokes readers to agree with author. This definitely supports what Charles said in the article because readers will now feel sympathetic for disabled people being portrayed in the media who needs
Gender has been broadly used within the humanities and social sciences as both a means to categories dissimilarities, and as a logical concept to give details differences. In both the humanities and social sciences. Disability studies has appeared partly as a result of challenges to give details gendered experience of disability and partly as a challenge to contemporary feminist theory on gender which fails to take description of disability. Disabled people have frequently been standing for as without gender, as asexual creatures, as freaks of nature, hideous, the ‘Other’ to the social norm. In this way it may be taking for granted that for disabled people gender has little bearing. However, the image of disability may be make physically powerful by gender - for women a sense of intensified passivity and helplessness, for men a dishonesties masculinity make by put into effected dependence. Moreover these images have real consequences in terms of
Disability is a ‘complex issue’ (Alperstein, M., Atkins, S., Bately, K., Coetzee, D., Duncan, M., Ferguson, G., Geiger, M. Hewett, G., et al.., 2009: 239) which affects a large percentage of the world’s population. Due to it being complex, one can say that disability depends on one’s perspective (Alperstein et al., 2009: 239). In this essay, I will draw on Dylan Alcott’s disability and use his story to further explain the four models of disability being The Traditional Model, The Medical Model, The Social Model and The Integrated Model of Disability. Through this, I will reflect on my thoughts and feelings in response to Dylan’s story as well as to draw on this task and my new found knowledge of disability in aiding me to become
In” Disabling Imagery in the media “Barnes asserts,“Disabled people are rarely shown as integral and productive members of the community; as students, as teachers, as part of the work-force or as parents. “(11). Popular culture excludes women with disabilities because they are different. Through Joanne’s character, Nussbaum demonstrates how women with disabilities operate in their daily lives.Nussbaum description of Joanne’s daily routine shows that women with Nussbaum 's character Joanne also demonstrates how women with disabilities are not burdens on
The two essays “On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs and “A Plague of Tics” by David Sedaris are excellent pieces of work that share many similarities. This paper would reflect on these similarities particularly in terms of the author, message and the targeted audience. On an everyday basis, people view those with disabilities in a different light and make them conscious at every step. This may be done without a conscious realisation but then it is probably human nature to observe and notice things that deviate from the normal in a society. In a way people are conditioned to look negatively at those individuals who are different in the conventional
In the essay “Disability,” Nancy Mairs discusses the lack of media attention for the disabled, writing: “To depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of life is to admit that there is something ordinary about disability itself, that it may enter anyone’s life.” An ordinary person has very little exposure to the disabled, and therefore can only draw conclusions from what is seen in the media. As soon as people can picture the disabled as regular people with a debilitating condition, they can begin to respect them and see to their needs without it seeming like an afterthought or a burden. As Mairs wrote: “The fact is that ours is the only minority you can join involuntarily, without warning, at any time.” Looking at the issue from this angle, it is easy to see that many disabled people were ordinary people prior to some sort of accident. Mairs develops this po...
Disability does not mean inability. This is a phrase Emmanuel’s mother told him and one he holds onto through his challenges. It is also a phrase I think is important for children to hear and comprehend which is why I choose Emmanuel’s Dream as an addition to my classroom collection. Today, learning disabilities are on the rise, and it is highly likely that at least one child in my class will be diagnosed with one. Despite having learning or physical disabilities, the courage and determination Emmanual shows throughout his story goes to show that a person can succeed even with a handicap.
Every day in America, a woman loses a job to a man, a homosexual high school student suffers from harassment, and someone with a physical or mental disability is looked down upon. People with disabilities make up the world’s largest and most disadvantaged minority, with about 56.7 million people living with disabilities in the United States today (Barlow). In every region of the country, people with disabilities often live on the margins of society, deprived from some of life’s fundamental experiences. They have little hope of inclusion within education, getting a job, or having their own home (Cox). Everyone deserves a fair chance to succeed in life, but discrimination is limiting opportunities and treating people badly because of their disability. Whether born from ignorance, fear, misunderstanding, or hate, society’s attitudes limit people from experiencing and appreciating the full potential a person with a disability can achieve. This treatment is unfair, unnecessary, and against the law (Purdie). Discrimination against people with disabilities is one of the greatest social injustices in the country today. Essential changes are needed in society’s basic outlook in order for people with disabilities to have an equal opportunity to succeed in life.