Stella Young on the Social Model of Disability

Stella Young of Ramp Up explains the Social Model of Disability, Inspiration Porn, and the lie we’ve been sold about disability in this nine minute TED Talk.

Stella Young

Transcript<div class="fusion-video fusion-youtube" style="--awb-max-width:600px;--awb-max-height:350px;"><div class="video-shortcode"><lite-youtube videoid="8K9Gg164Bsw" class="landscape" params="wmode=transparent&autoplay=1&rel=0&enablejsapi=1" title="YouTube video player 1" width="600" height="350" data-thumbnail-size="auto"></lite-youtube></div></div>I grew up in a very small country town in Victoria. I had a very normal, low key kind of upbringing. I went to school, I hung out with my friends, I fought with my younger sisters. It was all very normal. And when I was 15, a member of my local community approached my parents and wanted to nominate me for a “Community Achievement Award”. And my parents said, “That’s very nice, but there’s kind of one glaring problem with that; she hasn’t actually achieved anything.Yeah. And they were right! I went to school. I got good marks. I had a very low-key after school job in my mom’s hairdressing salon and I spent a lot of time watching “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Dawson’s Creek”. Yeah. I know. What a contradiction. But they were right. I wasn’t doing anything that was out of the ordinary. At all. I wasn’t doing anything that would be considered an achievement if you took disability out of the equation.Years later, I was on my second teaching round in a Melbourne high school and I was about 20 minutes into a year 11 legal studies class when this boy put up his hand and said, “Hey, miss! When are you going to start doing your speech?” And I said, “What speech?” You know, I had been talking to them about defamation law for a good 20 minutes. And he said, “You know, like your motivational speaking.” “When people in wheelchairs come to school, they usually say inspirational stuff. It’s usually in the big hall.” And that’s when it dawned on me. This kid had only ever experienced disabled people as objects of inspiration. We are not. To this kid, and it’s not his fault, I mean, that’s true for many of us. For lots of us, disabled people are not our teachers, or our doctors, or our manicurists. We’re not real people. We are there to inspire. In fact, you know, I’m sitting on this stage, looking like I do in this wheelchair, and you are probably kind of expecting me to inspire you. Yeah. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am afraid that I am going to disappoint you dramatically. I am not here to inspire you. I am here to tell you that we have been lied to about disability. Yeah, we’ve been sold the lie that disability is a bad thing. Capital B, capital T. It’s a bad thing. And to live with disability makes you exceptional. It’s not a bad thing, and it doesn’t make you exceptional.And in the past few years, we’ve been able to propagate this lie even further via social media. You know, you may have seen images like this one: “The only disability in life is a bad attitude.” Or this one: “Your excuse is invalid” Indeed. Or this one: “Before you quit, try!” Yeah. These are just a couple of examples. but there are a lot of these images out there. You know, you might have seen the one of the little girl with no hands drawing a picture with a pencil held in her mouth. You might have seen a child running on carbon fiber prosthetic legs. And these images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call “inspiration porn”. And I use the term “porn” deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So, in this case, we’re objectifying disabled people for the benefit of non-disabled people. The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so we can look at them and think, “Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person.” But what if you are that person? I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been approached by strangers wanting to tell me that they think I’m brave or inspirational. And this was long before my work had any kind of public profile. They were just kind of congratulating me for getting up in the morning and remembering my own name. And it is objectifying. These images objectify disabled people for the benefit of non-disabled people. They are there so you can look at them and think that things aren’t so bad for you, to put your worries into perspective. And life as a disabled person is actually somewhat difficult. We do overcome some things. But the things that we are overcoming are not the things that you think they are. They are not things to do with our bodies. I use the term “disabled people” quite deliberately because I subscribe to what’s called the “social model of disability”, which tells us that we are more disabled by the society that we live in rather than by our bodies or our diagnoses. So, I have lived in this body a long time. I am quite fond of it. It does the things that I need it to do, and I have learned to use it to the best of its capacity just as you have. And that’s the thing about the kids in those pictures as well. They are not doing anything out of the ordinary. They are just using their bodies to the best of their capacity. So, is it really fair to objectify them in the way that we do? To share those images? When people say “You’re an inspiration”, they mean it as a compliment. They mean it as a compliment. And I know why it happens. It’s because of the lie. It’s because we’ve been sold this lie that disability makes you exceptional, and it honestly doesn’t. And I know what you’re thinking, you know, I’m up here batting out inspiration and you’re thinking, “Geez, Stella, aren’t you inspired sometimes by some things?” And the thing is, I am. I learn from other disabled people all the time. I’m learning not that I am luckier than them though. I’m learning that it’s a genius idea to use a pair of BBQ tongs to pick up things that you drop. I’m learning that nifty trick where you can charge your mobile phone battery from your chair battery. Genius. We are learning strength and endurance, not against our bodies and our diagnoses, but against a world that exceptionalizes and objectifies us. I really think that this lie that we’ve been sold about disability is the greatest injustice. It makes life, it makes life hard for us. And that quote, “The only disability in life is a bad attitude” the reason that that’s bullshit is because it’s just not true, because in the social model of disability. No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it into a ramp. Never. You know, smiling at a television screen is not going to make closed captions appear for people who are deaf. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshelf and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into braille. It’s just not going to happen.It’s just not going to happen. I really want to live in a world where disability is not the exception, but the norm. I want to live in a world where a 15 year-old girl sitting in her bedroom watching “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” isn’t referred to as achieving anything because she’s doing it sitting down. 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 want to live in a world where we value genuine achievement for disabled people. And I want to live in a world where, a kid in year 11 in a Melbourne High School is not one bit surprised that his new teacher is a wheelchair user. Disability doesn’t make you exceptional. But, questioning what you think you know about it does. Thank you.” <img decoding="async" class="lazyload alignleft wp-image-38704" src="https://ollibean.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Read-On-.png" data-orig-src="https://ollibean.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Read-On-.png" alt="Read On" width="220" height="45" srcset="data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27220%27%20height%3D%2745%27%20viewBox%3D%270%200%20220%2045%27%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%27220%27%20height%3D%2745%27%20fill-opacity%3D%220%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E" data-srcset="https://ollibean.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Read-On--200x40.png 200w, https://ollibean.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Read-On--300x61.png 300w, https://ollibean.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Read-On--400x81.png 400w, https://ollibean.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Read-On-.png 524w" data-sizes="auto" data-orig-sizes="(max-width: 220px) 100vw, 220px" /> <a title="Don’t Call Me Inspirational" href="http://ollibean.org/2013/11/05/inspiration/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Don’t Call Me Inspirational</a> <a title="Social Model of Disability" href="http://ollibean.org/2013/01/06/social-model-disability/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Social Model of Disability</a>

4 Comments

Debbie Gunter June 26, 2014 at 2:18 pm - Reply

This is really good!
Gayle Souter-Brown July 1, 2014 at 4:32 pm - Reply

Thank you for sharing your story – the message needs to be heard wide and far!
Ben Edwards July 9, 2014 at 12:49 am - Reply

Excellent. I absolutely hate the quote “Attitudes are the real disability.” That’s like saying attitudes are the real Jewishness or Asianness. If I were to spout that kind of lie I would be considered a racist but if I said attitudes are the real disability people would applaud me. I completely agree that we are inspirational for overcoming social prejudices and pressures, not for remembering our names, which is ridiculous to be remembered for if your in a wheelchair. It’s like people confuse that with having Alzheimers. They’re two completely different things. Namaste.
Naughty Autie May 30, 2019 at 10:49 am - Reply

I’m sorry, Stella, but you are my inspiration. Not because of having made achievements ‘despite your disability’ (whatever that means), but simply because you have stood, and continue to stand, up for your rights and the rights of other disabled people. It’s because of you and others like you that I am a Neurodiversity advocate in the broadest sense of the word ‘neurodiversity’.

Why The Lie We’ve Been Sold About Disability Is The Greatest Injustice

Why The Lie We’ve Been Sold About Disability Is The Greatest Injustice

Stella Young

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