I keep coming back to this amazing thread from @slooterman about this. I want to add a couple things. People really underestimate:
(1) the reality of the *industry,* including many disability-oriented nonprofits, pushing PWD here. (1/n)
(1) the reality of the *industry,* including many disability-oriented nonprofits, pushing PWD here. (1/n)
(2) The role of many nondisabled people in supporting and feeding that industry, even if they aren't aware of it, and of pushing the young PWD in their lives in that direction. (2/n)
(3) How *young* PWD start getting pushed into inspiration porn in an organized way (I know of workshops for *middle schoolers* with ID on how to Tell Your Story To Inspire Others) (3/n)
(4) How tightly people restrict what we can talk about when they ask us to "tell our stories." Telling your story can be powerful, but too often folks only want inspiration or tragedy. It becomes yet another way to flatten and silence us. (4/n)
(5) How hard folks in the policy world work to push self-advocates back into the Telling Our Story and inspiration porn box, how much happier and nicer they are when we stay there, and how ugly things can get when self-advocates want to do anything else. (5/n)
ASAN would face virtually no opposition if we agreed to just Tell Our Story. If we made that story inspiring/tragic, we would be rolling in $$$. Because we refuse to do that--because we insist on talking about policy change, and in particular that rights are for everyone-- (6/n)
--we face a wall of outrage. People try desperately to shove us back into that box, to say we only advocate for rights because of our own personal experience, that rights silence other "stories." Which I think illustrates really well the last thing people don't realize: (7/8)
(6) Inspiration porn exists to keep PWD separate from one another. To keep us from organizing. To keep the focus on our individual stories as told by/for others. When we realize we share experiences of systemic problems and put the focus there, we become powerful. (8/9)
And they don't like that. (9/9)
