Episode 82: Unspirational

TRANSCRIPT OF “UNSPIRATIONAL”

[rock guitar music]

MALE VO [00:03]
This is Bad Attitudes.

[rock guitar music]

LAURA [00:20]
Hello friends and strangers! Welcome to another episode of Bad Attitudes: An Uninspiring Podcast about Disability. I’m your host, Laura.

It’s just me, your friendly neighborhood uninspiring disabled person.

Today’s episode is sponsored by Bella Smith! Thank you, Bella!

If you would like to sponsor an episode, visit ko-fi.com/badattitudespod and make a donation. Every donation gets a shout-out in a future episode and your donations help keep the pod running.

If you like this episode, share it and the podcast with your friends. Word of mouth is absolutely the best way to grow this podcast and our community. And please make sure you are rating and reviewing the podcast on your preferred platform. It really helps me out!

For questions, comments, or ideas, email badattitudespod@gmail.com or reach out through social media. Follow @BadAttitudesPod on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. I’m also on Threads, but I never remember to post there, so I’m going to stop mentioning it in every episode. And, if you’re wondering, I’m never going to refer to Twitter as “X”.

As always, I want to remind you that disability is not a monolith. My experience as a disabled person is going to be different from the experiences of other disabled people. I am one voice for the disabled community but I am not the only voice.

[01:57]
[rock guitar chord]

I’ve really been leaning into this identity of “uninspiring disabled person.” At my TEDx talk on September 13, I wore a t-shirt that read “uninspiring disabled person.” I even had business cards made with that title under my name. 

I want to clear something up. Being an “uninspiring disabled person” is not the same as being an “uninspiring person.”

I’m not so delusional that I would declare myself inspiring. I never set out to be inspiring. My aim was simply to let people know what it is like to live as a disabled person in the 21st century — the struggles we deal with, the ableism we face, the fights we undertake. And if that happened to inspire someone to take some positive action, so be it.

I don’t consider myself inspiring. I think I’m far too cynical for anyone to look at me as inspirational. In fact, when I started this podcast, I intended to be anti-inspirational. I didn’t want to be off-putting, but I did want to give voice to the anger and frustration the disabled community experiences on the daily. Generally, when you express your anger, most people don’t consider you inspirational. In fact, a LOT of people have a real problem with marginalized communities expressing their anger.

I think it’s important to clarify that when I say I’m an uninspiring disabled person, I’m emphasizing the use of the word disabled. Too often, disabled people are praised for the simplest, most common tasks. “Oh, you remembered your name! Aren’t you clever?” The bar of expectation is so low for disabled people, it might as well be in a ditch.

In her own TED talk, Stella Young, the comedian and activist who coined the term inspiration porn, shared a story from her adolescence. When she was 15, her hometown in Australia wanted to give her an award for being inspirational. The problem was, she hadn’t done anything.

This is how a lot of people view the disabled community. We don’t have to actually accomplish anything in order to be considered inspiring because, to those on the outside, our lives look so miserable, that the fact that we haven’t all unalived ourselves at the first opportunity seems inspirational.

It might sound positive. Disabled people don’t have to do anything difficult in order to get people to admire them! Easy peasy.

But this actually dehumanizes disabled people. It ignores the fact that disabled people, just like anyone else, have talents and skills and abilities and passions. It ignores the fact that our lives are about MORE than just survival. It ignores the fact that we have dreams and hopes and goals. It ignores the fact that disabled people are PEOPLE.

Disabled people CAN be inspiring. But, they can also be average. They can also be assholes! [unintelligible]  Look at Madison Cawthorn and Greg Abbott! And none of it has anything to do with their disabilities.

That’s why I lean so hard into the idea of being an “uninspiring disabled person.” When I was preparing to give my TEDx talk, I knew people would see a woman using a wheelchair come out on stage and they would have certain expectations. Expectations that I had every intention of subverting.

I have watched a lot of TED talks on disability. And a lot of them — not all, but a significant amount — are inspiring. They’re not inspiration porn — that particular genre tends to be authored by the non-disabled. But they very much fall under the umbrella of “overcoming adversity” or “achieving exceptional heights.” Those are great, and very much needed. However, when the only stories told about disabled people are either highly inspiring or highly pitying, it leaves no place for the average disabled person to tell THEIR story.

Most disabled people are never going to accomplish something astonishing, like climbing Mt. Everest. At the same time, most disabled people are not the pitiable poster children society paints us as. We are just regular people, living in slightly irregular circumstances.

Respect disabled people by acknowledging that we do inspiring things that have nothing to do with our disabilities. If you find a disabled person inspiring, acknowledge that they are inspiring AND disabled and that those two qualities are generally mutually exclusive.

Don’t expect a disabled person to inspire you. We don’t owe anyone inspiration. We don’t owe anyone ANYTHING.

Disabled people are not here to make non-disabled people feel better about their lives. A disabled person’s good life is not immediately worse than a non-disabled person’s crappy life just because they’re disabled. 

I encourage other disabled people to be UNspirational. Don’t push yourself to do things that you think will make non-disabled people view you more positively unless they are things you actually WANT to do. 

If you want to inspire someone, inspire yourself. Inspire yourself to be a better version of you. Inspire yourself to follow YOUR dreams, to reach for YOUR goals. Let the Ableds take care of themselves.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you in the next one.

[08:03]
[rock guitar music]