Our understanding of disability has further to go.
 | By Peter Catapano Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
There is a slogan popular in the disability rights and justice movement in the United States: "Nothing about us without us." It is a demand for self-representation, for the right of disabled people to tell their own stories, to write and speak of their own experiences, and not let them be simplified, misrepresented and distorted by others. |
It has been and remains an uphill battle. There are so few disabled people in positions of power in the news and entertainment industries that it can be almost mathematically impossible to achieve anything like representation. |
While the internet and social media have disrupted that balance somewhat, on platforms like Twitter, TikTok and Instagram simplification is the norm. You don't have to scroll far to find images of Paralympic athletes crossing the finish line or bright, block-lettered designs with quotations meant to stoke a feeling of empowerment, like this one from the autobiography of Helen Keller: "One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar." |
In a guest essay for Times Opinion, the author M. Leona Godin considers the legacy of Keller, the deaf-blind author, activist and disability icon. Godin, who is blind, grew up with a mythologized version of Keller, as "a sort of deaf-blind angel" that she and other disabled people she knew could not relate to. "I've always been attracted to the dark and edgy cultural underbelly," Godin writes, "and Helen Keller's story struck me as too wholesome and precious." Godin uses the term "inspiration porn" to describe that version of Keller's life. |
Stella Young, the Australian journalist and activist credited with coining the term, said in a 2014 TED Talk that in inspiration porn, "We're objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, 'Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person.' " |
Over time, Godin, who is a scholar of literature and the humanities, gathered a more complete picture of Keller — as a woman, a political activist, an author and a performer — and found someone to be truly admired. A new PBS documentary, "Becoming Helen Keller," is evidence that our understanding of this figure and of disability in general has come a long way. Still, Godin writes: "The blind, deaf and deaf-blind experiences are diverse; we have so many stories to tell. Yet we seem to fall back to Keller as a kind of shorthand for the disabled experience, as if there were just one." |
Godin also suggests it's time to turn our attention from the stories of the past to the voices of the present and future. It's what Keller herself might have done. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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