Children in Need and Inspiration Porn

Tonight is the annual Children in Need telethon. Usually staid newsreaders will dance in their pants, the casts of soap operas will stage production numbers, and pop groups will try to revive flagging careers - all to encourage the Great British Public to phone in with donations to help disadvantaged children in the UK. Members of the public will already have completed various sponsored challenges: shaving their heads, lying in baths of baked beans, and so on.

So...great, right? Charities get money. Celebs get to tit around doing fun things and feeling the glow of philanthropy Members of the public get to laugh at said celebs and also sometimes take part in events. Win-win-win!.

Or is it? What about the recipients of this largesse?

If a child is living in poverty, that's something the government should be fixing. I pay my taxes for that. (Yes, yes, I know, we currently have the ConDems, but I'm talking should.) It shouldn't be down to charity to sort out the problems of inequality in our society.

Then there's the whole pity thing. If you can bear to watch, you'll see a lot of kids in wheelchairs gazing out of windows, a tear in their eye. The message seems to be that if you're disabled, you're an object of pity, and can't possibly be happy. Well, dammit. I may be disabled, but anyone who tries pitying me will get their arm ripped off and beaten to death with the soggy end. And pity promotes charity, rather than inclusion in society. While I have my moments, like everyone else, I'm generally pretty happy. Disability doesn't preclude happiness, any more than any other human state does.

There's a thing that's been called "Inspiration Porn". It involves removing a disabled person's individuality and humanity, presenting a snapshot of them to get (generally non-disabled) people to gee their ideas up. The disabled person can be doing the most everyday thing: I've been called "brave" for doing my shopping (was there a killer shark in the vegetable aisle?), but the "I" word will still be used.

Programmes like Children in Need are full of inspiration porn. The other day I watched the Children in Need special of a DIY show. They were renovating a day centre for children with special needs. At one point, I clicked on the Twitter hashtag for the programme, #DIYSOS.

Apart from one charmer who thought disabled kids got treated far too well, many tweets were fully inspiration porned up. For instance:

...puts all our little daily gripes into perspective when you see what these kids have to go through #DIYSOS

#DIYSOS amazing achievement, bless them kids & their families. Don't realise how lucky we are. 

Children, yes even disabled children, are more than fodder for inspirational snapshots of their lives. They are real, complex, sometimes happy and sometimes sad, sometimes angry with their situation and sometimes not bothered, and Always. Just. Kids.

Let's treat them as that, yeah? Rather than as pathetic objects, needing pity and charity. Not good for the self-esteem.

Women and disability - the burden of double inequality

Today is International Women's Day 2011! The aim of IWD is to celebrate women's achievements, while also drawing attention to the inequalities that women still face.

The burden of disability varies, depending on your sex. Some disabilities are more likely to happen to men than to women, or vice versa. For instance, considerably more women than men develop MS - four times as many in 2000, and it is thought that the gender gap is still widening. The reason for this difference is not known, although it may be partly genetic.

Other disabilities are more common among men, a prime example being spinal cord injury. Again the ratio is 4:1, but this time it is four times as many men who are affected. In this case, the difference is thought to be mainly due to higher frequencies of  "risk-taking" behaviour among young men (typically, a spinal cord injury occurs when the individual is between 20 and 40). More than half of the injuries occur in road traffic collisions, with the remainder most often happening in falls, industrial accidents, sports, or (rarely) violence.

When an individual is disabled, they frequently encounter disadvantage. For instance, compared with a non-disabled, younger white man in a relationship, a disabled person in the UK has over 15% less chance of finding paid work. Similarly, a woman in a relationship and without children has nearly 10% less chance, and a mother of young children in a relationship over 35% less chance.

In 2006, 90 per cent of those with no "disadvantage" in the UK were in work, compared to 80 per cent of those with one "disadvantage" and around 50 per cent of those with two. Being a disabled woman is considerably more disadvantageous than being a disabled man (though both, of course, are disadvantaged compared to able-bodied men). It also seems that having two or more "disadvantages" may multiply the problems experienced: it's not just a case of adding them together.

 

The situation in the developing world is even more extreme. Women make up the three-quarters of the people with disabilities in developing countries. Current estimates are that:

• Women with disabilities make up at least 10% of all women globally
• Women in general are more likely than men to become disabled because of poorer working conditions, poor access to quality healthcare, and gender-based violence
• Only 25% of women with disabilities are in the global workforce
• Because of increased risk of gender-based violence and lack of access to reproductive health care services, women with disabilities face unique challenges in preventing HIV infection
• Literacy rates for women with disabilities globally may be as low as 1%
• Mortality rates amongst girls with disabilities are much higher than for boys with disabilities 

Much has been done in the fight to counter inequalities against both women and disabled people, but much more work remains to be done. Let's fight together for a future where all citizens of the world are equal, and have an equal chance in life!