Stela Young’s Dialectic on Disability

Abstract

This paper is a retrospective study of a distinguished disabled woman, Stella Young (24th Feb, 1982 – 6^thDec, 2014), an osteogenesis imperfecta inflicted person who lived as an educator, comedian, disability activist, and broadcaster. Her thoughts and experiences of life as a disabled person on her Blog in ABC’s ‘Ramp up’ will be the domain of this study. Her ideas on exclusion and marginalisation, sense of classlessness, sexuality, rights, social attitudes and architectural barriers experienced by the disabled people will be explored. Her thundering statement in her TED talk: Disability as ‘inspiration porn’ for non-disabled people, the objectification of disability is another area of this study. This study gives a different perspective on normative inclusiveness and suggestive normality of disabled persons in this beautiful world.