Oh, I inspire you? Thaaaanks...

I didn’t think I would be writing my next disability essay so soon, but here we are. Strap yourselves in — this one’s a doozy.

This past week, I was scrolling through the dying-social-media-platform-gone-dumpster-fire that is Tumblr and the first thing to pop onto my feed was a post describing Edward Elric from the popular anime series Full Metal Alchemist. You’re probably wondering why this is significant. The post (Poeandtheporgs, Tumblr, accessed 2020) first made a dig at those nay-sayers that ask “How would a disabled protagonist work?” For those who aren’t familiar, Full Metal Alchemist’s answer is, fabulously, Ed: a double amputee who uses two prosthesis. The original Tumblr poster, Fandoms and Feminism, puts it perfectly. “‘What? Like, a disabled protagonist? How would that even work? How could someone with a disability be the hero in an action show?” local anime trash boy wonders while sitting next to his box sets of Full Metal Alchemist, showing no hint of irony or self awareness.’”

[Image description: Edward Elric from Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood: a blond-haired, golden eyed anime teen wearing a black shirt with white trim. There’s red blood on his face and on his prosthetic arm, which is extended as the blood makes a curved arc over the picture, Ed also has a prosthetic leg].

Now, I always knew Ed was disabled but I ever saw him as disabled. This lack of acknowledgement is a double-edged sword because on one hand his disability wasn’t the focus of the narrative—though they don’t shy away from the fact that his prosthetics has to be repaired or replaced every few episodes after a fight or when he travels into colder weather so he doesn’t get frostbite. On the other hand, I simply hadn’t realised that he is a representative of disability until I saw this Tumblr post. It was a misstep on my part, and it negates the validation of representation that Edward offers.

But what spurred me to write this post was the replies…

The first reply to this post was this: “but is Ed really disabled? sure I get he lost his arm and leg but he’s still able to move and do things perfectly,” (lazdrax, Tumblr, accessed 2020). It should be obvious why this makes me angry, but I’ll explain myself anyway: why are disabled people only disabled when there’s a difficulty involved? The answer: because it’s visible. Another commenter on the post made the statement: “Disability isn’t defined by ‘struggle’ or suffering.” (cruisinforarubberman, Tumblr, accessed 2020) And I agree that it shouldn’t be, but we have work to do.

[Image description: Eric Andre, during the Eric Andre show, wearing a light grey suit with a white shirt and tie. He’s leaning back in his chair saying the infamous quote: “Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?”]

In my experience and personal perceptions, there isn’t much room for disabled people in society. We’re simply perceived as different by the masses of able bodied people and reduced to our disabilities. That’s why the perception of disability is so tied with suffering—this suffering/struggle enables the othering of disabled people.

All people, disabled or abled, overcome struggle. It’s part of the human experience which I think people sometimes forget. Losing jobs, breakups, first kisses, getting married, getting a house—everyone experiences these moments. But a trend I’ve noticed is that disabled people get reduced to their disability and all of the experiences they’ve had are tied to disability. How have they adapted? What help have they needed to get to here and now?

Adaption is important for disabled people to live their lives, because the world hasn’t been built with us in mind. There’s nothing wrong with adaptations but it shouldn’t be an afterthought. We’re still having to fight for ramps to be put in place so we can exist in certain places. Braille still isn’t one hundred percent common place. Neuro-divergences like depression and anxiety have yet to be taken seriously by employers. In a post-pandemic world, we need to allow ourselves to be human, allow for time off, and let it be okay to have off days. We’ve all allowed remote working to serve as a lifeline for capitalism to continue to thrive. But tell that to the girl who was told to drop out of university because the institution wouldn’t allow her to work remotely—three weeks before lockdown when remote learning became the norm. There is still work to be done when it comes to inclusive changes across our society.

There’s also a narrative that is placed upon disabled people by outsiders—abled people—telling us that we’ve overcome our disability. The problem with this is it implies that our disability is a negative thing to get passed by and put behind us. What outsiders don’t realise is that disability is a lived experience: no matter the improvements we might’ve made in the past, we are still disabled. And that’s okay.

This brings me to the other reason I decided to write this essay. The Greatest Dancer was a BBC dance show hosted by Alesha Dixon and Jordan Banjo, the premise being that dancers audition and the live audience decides who goes through to the next round. There weren't judges at all but instead a stable of mentors who decided what dancers would be on what team. In 2019, the first series, a dancer with Down Syndrome auditioned. Obsessed with Strictly Come Dancing, Andrew, got into dance. His audition is to a Justin Timberlake song and the crowd love it, and put him through to the next round. As his dance came to an end, Alesha went up to him and hugged him. Then it was time to face the mentors—Cheryl, of Girls Aloud; Oti Mabuse from Strictly Come Dancing; and Matthew Morrison from Glee and Broadway. When it’s time for Cheryl to give her feedback she starts to cry, the dancer’s story having struck a chord with her. Matthew Morrison says the immortal words I take issue with. “You inspire people.” (The Greatest Dancer, YouTube, accessed 2021)

For me, the inspiration my disabled experience and other disabled people’s experience offers is a double-edged sword because though my unapologetic existence as the first physically disabled dancer on my course at university might indeed inspire someone who is also disabled to consider dance as a possibility and seek out opportunities, the inspiration I may offer abled people makes me uncomfortable. It dehumanizes me, and fetishizes my lived experience. This fetishization is also known as inspiration porn, a term coined by disabled activist Stella Young. It’s the idea of a non-disabled person saying “if a disabled person could do something, I can do it too.” This implies the disabled person in question started this something with incompetence. This objectifies people with disabilities for doing things we aren’t expected to be able to do, it suggests that we, as disabled people, have lower expectations set for us from the beginning. (Beller, accessed 2021)

These lower expectations are perceived as inspirational by able bodied people because as disabled people we’ve chosen to live with our disabilities, we have to adapt, and thus our quality of life is better, the shocking act of us living is inspirational because able bodied people would never imagine a life where there are physical blockades in front of them, so if they ever became disabled, heaven forbid, they could never live like that. This idea is perpetuated by the film Me Before You, starring Emilia Clarke as an in-home caretaker to Sam Claflin’s character who becomes paralysed from the neck down after an accident. Claflin himself is able bodied so it just perpetuates the idea of disabled people’s lives being lesser than, his character seeks euthanasia because death is better than living a disabled life, to an able audience that’s an easy pill to swallow.

How do we tackle society’s various implicit biases? It’s a simple answer: education. Many people’s education regarding something other than themselves comes from the media, and in that space representation is incredibly important. Yet we have so much more to do. Isaac from season two of Netflix’s Sex Education uses a wheelchair, and it’s the focus of a few scenes, but the writers decided to make him the villain of a love triangle, listening to a voicemail on Maeve’s phone and deleting it so Maeve and Otis can’t get together. I appreciate that he is treated seriously as a love interest for Maeve, but making someone already marginalised for their existence into someone for the audience to hate? That’s not it, sis.

We need more disabled people and particularly disabled people of colour in positions where they can educate society. Politics, schools, TV, cinema. It’s time to normalise disabled people.

We exist—why won’t you let us?

Edit: I should amend my stance on inspiration a little bit, if I inspire you because I've done something amazing then, yes I can be inspiring, but if I've done something that you didn't think I could do in the first place, that's when it dances along the line of condescending. I just wanted to make that clear. Leia :)