Mastery and Belonging or Inspiration Porn and Bullying: Special Populations in Youth Sport

Abstract

This paper examines the factors that make up a high-quality youth-sport experience for special-population children. It is important to note that special-population youth are often very similar to nondisabled children (e.g., seeking enjoyment in sport), but they experience different contexts and socialization experiences such as fewer opportunities and more barriers to sport participation. The author first examines positive factors in the youth-sport experience and discusses mastery experiences and the generation of positive affect. He also discusses how sport can promote feelings of belongingness, freedom, and independence. In the second part of the paper he discusses how the youth-sport experience can contribute to a negative experience by examining bullying and teasing, as well as “inspiration porn.” Inspiration porn is a relatively new concept in the disability literature that has not been discussed in a sport context. The author proposes a five-component model that links anecdotal reports of inspiration porn to theory, thus providing a basis for future research on inspiration porn. Throughout the paper he examines research in each area, theories used, important findings, salient take-home points, and future research directions and imbues the paper in a disability social-relational model that asserts that individual, social, environmental, and cultural factors all play a role as proximal and distal influences in the sport experiences of special-population youth.

“They Don’t Really Care about my Results, they Prefer Selling my Life Story.” Inspirational Paralympians and Sponsorship

“…Here, we recognize what we called above a miserabilist representation of Paralympic athletes. As for the “courage ” that would necessarily characterize these Paralympic athletes and justify a financial compensation, we can assimilate it to the supposedly exceptional, inspirational will of Paralympic athletes and to the rhetoric of inspiration porn (Martin, 2019; 2022). John’s comments have allowed us to identify some of the main attributes of Paralympic athletes that can inspire sponsors.…”

“…This posture exceptionalizes and reifies those it claims to represent and takes the form of countless stories and images that can circulate, for example, on the Internet and in the print or audiovisual media. Martin (2019) reminded us that inspiration porn is particularly applicable to the field of parasport, and proposed a five-component model to facilitate its analysis (Martin, 2022). This model criticizes the erroneous idea of a supposedly tragic experience of disability.…”

“…The narrative of the story that the sponsors wish to sell fits in this case that of inspiration porn (Cottingham et al, 2015;Haller & Jeffrey, 2016;Martin, 2019). By explaining that it is "the sacrifice" he "makes every day that they seem to be more interested in," Stephan suggested that he knows precisely what he needs to stage, in terms of selfpresentation (Goffman, 1959), to curry favor with sponsors.…”

(Un)affirming assimilation: depictions of dis/ability in health textbooks

“…Positioning people with dis/abilities as heroes evidences what some refer to as “inspiration porn” – when societally marginalized groups, for whom members of the dominant group might feel pity, are put on display as “inspirations,” in an act that further marginalizes the group and sets them as farther apart from other members of society (Martin, 2019; Young, 2014). Young explains that inspiration porn is about “objectifying one group of people for the benefit of another group of people,” so that the dominant group can be “inspire[d]” and “motivate[d]” by the marginalized group, thinking, “Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse.…”

“…Positioning people with dis/abilities as heroes evidences what some refer to as "inspiration porn"-when societally marginalized groups, for whom members of the dominant group might feel pity, are put on display as "inspirations," in an act that further marginalizes the group and sets them as farther apart from other members of society (Martin, 2019;Young, 2014).…”