ladies and gentlemen I grew up in a very
small country town
in Victoria I had a very normal low-key
time of upbringing you know I went to
school I hung out with my friends I
fought with my younger sisters it's 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 really nice but
there's kind of one glaring problem with
that she hasn't actually achieved
anything yeah and they were right you
know I went to school I got good marks I
had a very low-key after-school job in
my mum'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
you know I wasn't doing anything that
was out of the ordinary at all um I
wasn't doing anything that could be
considered an achievement if you took
disability out of the equation years
later I was on my second teaching around
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's [ __ ] you know I've been
talking to them about defamation law for
a good 20 minutes and so he said you
know like your motivational speaking you
know when people in wheelchairs come to
school they usually say like
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 you
know to this kid and it's not his fault
I mean that's true for many of us you
know 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 um and 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
ya well ladies and gentlemen I'm afraid
I'm going to disappoint you dramatically
I'm not here to inspire you I'm 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 hmm or this
one your excuse is invalid indeed or
this one before you quit try yeah but
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 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
um and these images you know there are
lots of them out there they are what we
call inspiration corn
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 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
but what if you are that person I've
lost count of the number of times that
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 managing to get up
in the morning and remember my own name
and it is objectifying these images
these images objectified disabled people
for the benefit of non-disabled people
you know they are there so that you can
look at them and think that things are
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're overcoming are not the things
that you think they are they are not
things to do with our bodies I used 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 our
bodies but by the society that we live
in rather than by our bodies and our
diagnoses so I have I've lived in this
body a long time I'm quite fond of it is
it it does the things that I needed to
do and I've learnt I've learnt to use it
to the best of its capacity just as you
have and that's the thing about those
kids in those pictures as well they're
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 people mean people when they say
you know 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 light because we've
been sold this way but disability makes
you exceptional and it honestly doesn't
and I know what you're thinking you know
I'm up here bagging out inspiration you
thinking cheese door 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 am
learning that it's a genius idea to use
a pair of barbecue 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 from each
other strength and endurance not against
our bodies and our diagnosis but against
a world that exceptional eise's and
objectifies us I really think that this
lie that we've been sold about
disability is the greatest injustice um
it is it makes life it makes life hard
for us um the Emmet quote the only
disability in life is about attitude the
reason that that's [ __ ] is because
it's just not true because of the social
level of disability you know no amount
of smiling at a flight of stairs has
ever made it turn into a rap never
you know smiling at a television screen
isn't going to make closed captions
appear for people who are deaf no no
about its standing in the middle of a
bookshop it's radiating a positive
attitude is going to turn all those
books into Braille it's just not gonna
happen it's just not gonna happen
um 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 fifteen 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 that
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
wheelchair user disability doesn't make
you exceptional but questioning what you
think you know about it does thank you
you