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Gina and Rosemary’s Final Exam

Gina-Marie An & Rosemary Pauley

Dr. Foss

April 30, 2020

ENGL 384

Autism and Identity: The Cure is Repressive

Throughout our Autism unit, we have discussed the ways in which autism has been devalued. Specifically, we have read instances of how medicine and medical research impacts the quality of life of an autistic person. Part 1 of Stuart Murray’s Autism begins with a contrast between stress on medical research versus improved education and which of the two is more beneficial for the autistic community. Murray suggests that “An improvement in the quality of people’s lives will come more quickly not with high level medical science, but rather with improved education or with increased public spending on disability programs…” (Murray, 9-10). He suggests that through an emphasis on medical solutions and a cure, autistic characteristics begin to be viewed through an ableist society as a negative characteristic that needs to be changed (Murray, 10). This reinforces ableist stereotypes that autism is problematic, undesirable, and in need of change and even full erasure. Through this reinforcement, autistic persons are stripped of their identities and they are isolated in their experiences with their disability. Erasure of the disability acts as an erasure of a part of their identity, which is associated with pity and negativity and makes the value of what is so key to their personhood worthless to society.

Medical emphasis on a cure is just another way of creating a social divide between neurotypical people and autistic people. They are cast out and ostracized because they don’t fit the definition of what our ableist society sees as conventional. For many researchers working towards a cure, curing is meant to take away autistic traits and get as close to neurotypical as possible. This notion of essentially taking away a key part of an autistic person’s identity devalues their personhood and separates them further from neurotypical people. Murray sums up this problem in pushing for a cure in saying that “the word ‘cure’ is a threat, a barely disguised attempt to define difference as something inherently negative and unwanted” (Murray, 90). Curing autism insinuates that autistic people are inferior to nondisabled people, and by that standard, they should be fixed to better fit into ableist society. A cure would be selling the lie that getting rid of autism is better for those who have it when really it would be beneficial for neurotypical people who do not understand the disability to make an effort in better understanding autism and disability itself. This push for the cure can be misleading and it doesn’t target improvement for the life and environment of autistic persons, it is targeted towards erasing the disability for the benefit of nondisabled people.

Lack of consideration for actual autistic experience further stretches the divide between abled and disabled. Personal freedom and independence are lost at the cost of misguided stereotypes on the autistic community. Autistic persons are deemed as unpredictable, even dangerous, and are not given equal opportunities to be independent individuals in society. For example, in Braddock and Parish’s An Institutional History of Disability, they discuss the ways in which history has revealed wrongful treatment of disabled persons in the medical realm. The medical world is described as impersonal and sterile; case studies and primary texts ignore the personal experiences of autistic people. As political activism came to a rise with the availability of more service programs, autistic lives are further socialized and infantilized through ableist social construction. These constructions ultimately try to decide what autism is and what the label of autism means for autistic people themselves. Braddock and Parish discuss this categorization and construction, saying, “The process of categorizing persons with disabilities into the minutiae of their impairments resulted in the development of specialized treatments and residential and educational services, but also established and reinforced notions of the boundaries between normalcy and aberrance in Western society” (Braddock and Parish, 13). The autistic label is not a label that others outside of the disability deserve to construct and define for their own benefit. It is even more offensive that they push these ideas onto autistic persons themselves and tell them who they are, without listening to autistic voices and wants. Abled persons who want to have ownership of this word are minimizing autistic people’s personal ability to have choice and demeaning them to be insufficient enough to be self-determinant. Creating more restrictions for the autistic community is only silencing their voices and limiting their opportunities for personal growth. Autistic persons are a part of this world as equally as any other person and deserve to create and dictate their own narratives and experiences.

Murray describes autism as being “built into the fabric of the person who has it… it is not an illness” (Murray, 90). Ableist standards expect people with autism to want to break away from their disability and strive for a neurotypical life as a default, not taking into account how valuable their disability actually is. Autism is such a prevalent and essential piece of who they are that attempting to take away their disability is like taking away their identity. Erasing part of someone’s existence because it doesn’t match the ableist viewpoints of our society is dehumanizing and insulting to autistic people and punishes them for not aligning with nondisabled experiences.

Ableist views dictate that autism is the problem rather than admitting that the way our society treats autistic people is unacceptable, and extend this lack of respect further by pushing for a cure that erases autism altogether. It is important to recognize how this might impact autistic lives. We should strive for more representation of their everyday experiences as well as their experiences with a society that stereotypes what autistic persons are capable of. This type of prejudice continues to limit autistic experience and growth; it is dehumanizing and covertly assumes the notion that having a disability is a negative characteristic that needs to be mended. Abled people have to recognize that their disability is a major part of who they are as a person and trying to fully erase that part of their identity is insensitive. Looking inward towards ableist society and perspective can mend this awful misrepresentation of the autistic community and close the gap between neurotypical people and autistic people.

Word count: 1029

I pledge. Rosemary Pauley and Gina-Marie An

Works Cited

Braddock, David, and Susan Parish. “An Institutional History of Disability.” Disability at the Dawn of the 21st Century and the State of the States, 2002, pp. 11–68.

Murray, Stuart. Autism. Routledge, 2012.

Gina & Rosemary’s Major Paper

Gina-Marie An & Rosemary Pauley

Dr. Foss

April 23, 2020

ENGL 384

Inspiration Porn and Overcoming Narratives: Objectifying Disabled Lives

Throughout the course of our semester, we have addressed many ways in which disabled people are mistreated and misrepresented. Inspiration porn and overcoming narratives are particularly common yet highly offensive acts that are harmful towards people with disabilities. Able-bodied people tend to put a cap on a disabled person’s ability and infantilize their achievements through unnecessary praise, whereas their accomplishments are only viewed through their disability and not their own strength. They are often praised for attempting rather than achieving by able-bodied people, and that can be used as fuel for nondisabled people to work harder or whatever other cliches the inspiration porn is pushing towards. The objectification of disabled people is perpetuated by the presence and normalization of inspiration porn and overcoming narratives.

The term “inspiration porn” was coined by journalist and disability rights advocate Stella Young. Inspiration porn refers to when nondisabled people use the lives and stories of disabled people to inspire them, or use them to help or better themselves in some way. Examples of this could be inspirational posters that feature a disabled person doing some great feat or simply just doing an everyday task in a different way than an able-bodied person might do as if this in itself is some extraordinary feat. Already this poses a problem in making a spectacle of how people with disabilities exist in an ableist society, but it also continues the centuries-old stereotypes and assumptions that people with disabilities are somehow different or unconventional. They emphasize the idea that existing as a disabled person is difficult and effortful enough to inspire nondisabled people to work harder and do better in whatever they are trying to achieve.

Young addressed the prominence of these viewpoints, “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 a disability makes you exceptional. It’s not a bad thing, and it doesn’t make you exceptional” (Young 2014). Nondisabled people tend to see simply living with a disability as an achievement and use that as motivation or inspiration for themselves. Because society is inherently ableist, these assumptions about disability are widespread and widely accepted, allowing inspiration porn to be the popular and unsuspecting form of objectification that it is today. While many nondisabled people might think of these instances as a harmless way of uplifting people with disabilities or acknowledging them in a positive way, in actuality, it is condescending and belittling towards people with disabilities. Acting as if disabled people are accomplishing something incredible just by living out a normal life infantilizes and devalues them as people while also giving nondisabled people a source for inspiration porn and self-improvement.

In her TED Talk, “I’m not your inspiration, thank you very much,” Stella Young talks about her own experiences with nondisabled people expecting her to be uplifting and inspirational in every interaction with her, as if that is all that disabled people are meant to do. When explaining her use of inspiration porn, Young said, “I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people.” Able-bodied people are actively objectifying disabled people by using their stories and lives for their own beneficial reasons. This practice is extremely hurtful for people with disabilities because they are not only being used to the advantage of people without disabilities, but they are also being socially separated from nondisabled people. Value is being placed on these perceived achievements or accomplishments rather than the life of the actual disabled person. These uses of inspiration porn are essentially a more subtle way of putting disabled people on display, with the unsuccessful intent of addressing disability in a positive and opportunistic way. This objectification of people with disabilities is played off as acknowledging diversity and celebrating differences instead of being treated as an unethical practice.

An acknowledgment of inspiration porn can be found in a poem by Jillian Weise that we analyzed in class. In Jillian Weise’s “Nondisabled Demands,” the extent to which nondisabled people are intrusive in getting information about disability for inspiration porn is made abundantly clear. In the last stanza, Weise writes, “We’ll rope you / to the podium and ask / What do you have? / … Then we get to say / You’re an inspiration.” The image of roping someone to a podium for the entertainment of others is a prominent example of the objectification that surrounds inspiration porn. Personal information seems to be taken against their will, leaving disabled people feeling violated and used for the benefit or entertainment of others. Nondisabled people feel a sense of entitlement to know the intimate details behind someone’s disability. That entitlement then extends to using those details for their own benefit in cases of inspiration porn, further asserting their needs and wants above those of people with disabilities.

Weise’s poem also calls attention to how inspiration porn not only uses the stories of people with disabilities but also takes those individualistic narratives away from disabled people. After nondisabled people force out the details of their disability, their worth and ability are interpreted by nondisabled people. The narratives that are supposed to belong to disabled people are manipulated into something for the benefit of nondisabled people often at the expense of the disabled person’s opinions or feelings. When Weise notes in her last stanza that nondisabled people get to make the choice of labeling someone as an inspiration, they are also making a choice about what meaning is carried by their story rather than letting the disabled person have control of their own narrative. Inspiration porn objectifies people with disabilities by taking this control away from disabled people.

Inspiration porn coincides with the issue and notion of overcoming one’s own disability, often referred to as an “overcoming narrative.” This overcoming narrative addresses the abled perspective and how abled people push their own ideas of disability onto the disabled to insinuate what their disability is supposed to look like, how they are supposed to function, and what the limits to their disability are. Perceiving a disabled person’s existence as overcoming their disability often acts as fuel for the inspiration porn, as well as continues the viewpoint that disabilities must be overcome or removed in the first place.

Jessica Cox, the first world’s licensed and armless pilot, says in her TED Talk, “I grew up in a world built for someone with arms and it has taught me that pity prevents progress.” She describes her perseverance and lack of self-pity that enabled her to achieve far beyond what this world built for arms expected of her. She begins the TED Talk by describing a challenge she once had as a child: to tie her shoes. She sits down and begins to tie the laces with her feet, then as she finishes the last loop and secures the bow tie, the crowd roars into a cheer. However, when she stands up, she expresses, “I want you to look at me again and understand that I am not different.” Simi Linton, in “Reassigning Meanings,” describes the perpetuation of disabled persons and the ways in which even the meaningfulness of disabled lives are dictated by abled perspective and their preliminary understanding of disability. Simi Linton’s description of “nice words” can be shown through the crowd cheering for Jessica Cox. The language of cheer and appraisal, though wordless, exemplifies a crowd that may have viewed her disability as less capable and showcases their happiness or astonishment that she was able to do it otherwise. Nice words, or nice language, can reassign meaning to protect their own egos as a defense mechanism, therefore they will immediately praise the disabled person in order to stifle their prior feelings of doubt and disbelief. Jessica Cox’s quote emphasizes the simple want to be seen, to be seen as human and as equal, and not as a unique and extraordinary case to be idealized and inspired by, simply because of her disability.

Our abled society expects Jessica Cox to be passive, unable to claim an identity outside of their disability. However, Jessica Cox is arguing a similar shift in perspective. Simi Linton argues a change of thinking, a shift in the way we look at disabled persons and assume their social inferiority. Jessica Cox shows this by describing how she was treated and objected to pity. Her disability is treated as a hindrance or something to be ashamed of, until she “surprisingly” overcomes it despite societal expectations. This ableist perspective places value on her for “overcoming” the challenges she faced in their ableist society, making her an inspiration and something to behold.

In Kafer’s “Imagined Futures,” Kafer emphasizes the assumptions of disabled success, and that disabled success is misguided and abled success is simply not for disabled people. It was seen that her lack of arms was a “symbol of undesired futures.” Or rather, that her success was impossible and unexpected. Disabled person’s interaction with the world is seen as useless and even dangerous to the ableist structure that so many nondisabled people exist comfortably in. For example, Cox describes how she is told over and over that she cannot do something, that it is not for her. Cox expressed that this constant denial of participation made her want to prove them wrong. “People with disabilities usually realize that they must learn to live with their disability… The challenge is not to adapt their disability into an extraordinary power or an alternative image of ability. The challenge is to function” (Siebers, 180). It’s important to understand that Cox did not adapt to her disability, her real adaptation was to the people around her who did not have any hope for her. Instead of overcoming a disability like so many able-bodied people interpreted her to be doing, she overcame the confines of the ableist society that was manipulating the way she was to be seen and treated.

Addressing these issues and making an adjustment on the way we view disabled lives can help us better understand and respond better to insensitive behavior and make inspiration porn and objectification a known, inappropriate act. Recognition of this behavior can help dampen the misrepresentation and mistreatment disabled people go through. While disabled people can be and are inspiring, and they absolutely do overcome tough obstacles, it is not fair to objectify their lives and treat them as though they are inferior. They are more than their disability, more than “less than,” and should be given the same choices and opportunities as everyone else.

Word Count: 1766

I pledge. Rosemary Pauley and Gina-Marie An

Works Cited

Kafer, Alison. “Introduction; Imagined Futures.” Feminist, Queer, Crip, Amsterdam University Press, 2013, pp. 1–24.

Linton, Simi. “Reassigning Meaning.” Claiming Disability, Amsterdam University Press, 1998, pp. 8–33.

Siebers, Tobin. Disability in Theory: From Social Constructionism to the New Realism of the Body, American Literary History, Volume 13, Issue 4, Winter 2001, pp. 737–754, https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/13.4.737

TEDx Talks. “World’s First Certified Armless Pilot: Jessica Cox at TEDxSouthCapitolSt.” YouTube, uploaded by TEDx Talks, 4 Oct. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=31e_xTZHrqE.

Weise, J. (2018). Nondisabled Demands. Originally published in Poem-A-Day on March 9, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets

Young, Stella. “I’m Not Your Inspiration, Thank You Very Much.” TED Talks, uploaded by TEDx, Apr. 2014, www.ted.com/talks/stella_young_i_m_not_your_inspiration_thank_you_very_much?language=en.

Rosemary’s Response to the Great Lives Series: Stephen Hawking

Last Tuesday night, I rounded up a couple of friends and went to the Great Lives talk about Stephen Hawking. In all honesty, I did not know very much about Stephen Hawking before the event. I knew only the most basic stereotype of him; he was a disabled man who made great scientific discoveries and advancements for both his field and the human race as a whole. I felt guilty for having such a shallow and generic profile of him as I listened to his life story.

The talk was given by Kitty Ferguson, who had worked with Hawking before and was also a friend of his. Listening to someone who had a personal connection to such a well-known name changed how I perceived him. She gave him a new narrative, at least in my mind, by covering his life from childhood, marriages, friendships, and scientific contributions. While his disability was a prominent part of her talk, Ferguson never spoke about it in a discriminatory or defining way, it was just a fact of his life. She focused less on how ALS disabled him, and more on what he did in the midst of adjusting to his course of life.

Overall, I think Ferguson’s representation of Hawking as a brilliant person that happened to also be disabled was done really well. She used Hawking’s life to inspire the audience, but not in a derogatory or self-serving way that used his disability for pity. Ferguson’s talk left me feeling more connected and knowledgable about Stephen Hawking’s great life.

I’ll leave you with this quote from her; “He helped us all, disabled or abled alike, to be less afraid.”

Rosemary’s Response to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Jillian Weise’s “Nondisabled Demands”

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Arthur “Boo” Radley is seen as the town’s crazy resident, who never leaves his home and has all sorts of negative rumors spread about him. Jem and Scout’s curiosity about Boo Radley leads them to seek answers and pry into his strange life. Meanwhile in Jillian Weise’s “Nondisabled Demands,” Weise describes the entitlement that nondisabled people have when it comes to knowing personal details about people who have disabilities. In both of these works, the authors dictate the exploitation that people with disabilities face from able-bodied and -minded people on a daily basis.

In the fourth chapter of Lee’s novel, Jem, Dill, and Scout are looking for something to do when Jem comes up with a new game to play. He says “‘I know what we are going to play… Something new, something different… Boo Radley’”(43). This is essentially a proposal to use what little knowledge they have of Arthur to role play as what they would understand to be a crazy person. Not only is this notion rude in that they are using a game as an opportunity to make fun of Arthur, but they are also planning to participate in false assumptions about who he is. In the next chapter, Dill says “‘We’re askin’ him real politely to come out sometimes, and tell us what he does in there’”(52). Yet again the children are using what they think they know about Arthur’s disability as a means of entertainment. They are hoping that he will have some wild stories to tell, or that he really will be a commodity that they can observe. Arthur’s disability is exploited by the children as they intend to use it for their own enjoyment.

Weise’s poem also approaches the entertainment value that many nondisabled people take in learning about the lives of people with disabilities. “We’ll rope you / to the podium and ask / What do you have?” (lines 13-15). The image of being tied to a podium is very indicative of the resentment that some disabled people feel when they are bluntly and frequently asked about their disability. Weise later writes “then we get to say / You’re an inspiration” (lines 17-18). She is highlighting the tendency that many nondisabled people have to pity disabled people and view their disability as something they had to overcome. This attitude is then applied to their own lives in the general notion of “if they can overcome that, what do I have to be upset about?” This in itself is exploiting the lives of disabled people to make themselves feel better, or better themselves. These nondisabled people are using the narratives of people with disabilities for their own benefits.

Overall, both authors exemplify the derogatory views that are associated with disabilities and push the reader to consider what it might feel like to constantly be exploited in such a way that Arthur Radley, the speaker in Weise’s poem, and many disabled people are.

Word Count: 516

I pledge. Rosemary Pauley

Depression in Frankenstein

As my group was discussing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, I was particularly interested in the time we devoted to acknowledging the possible presence of depression in Victor’s life. We talked about how he was seeking a sense of companionship in pursuing his creation, but struggled to figure out why he felt like he needed a companion when he already had Elizabeth and his family.

Before we had started questioning this, someone in our group brought up the possibility of Victor being depressed. This clicked with me in our discussion, leading me to suggest that if Victor were a depressed individual, he might have felt alone no matter how many friends or family he had. For many people with depression, irrational feelings of loneliness and isolation are a prominent part of their disorder. From this viewpoint, it would make sense that Victor sought a relationship with someone that he knew would forever be connected to him.

This could all be a reach, but I think it was a very eye-opening part of our discussion and allowed us to look at Victor with sympathy, rather than with annoyance.