Cripple Media founder Emily Flores gets candid on why disabled media representation matters.
Digital platform Cripple Media is providing us with authentic narratives about disabled living. With article titles such as “Ready to Rage-Disabled People Don’t Owe You Strength” to “Thoughts On Biden’s Stutter From a Stutterer,” Cripple Media is “representing the disabled community accurately and honestly,” explains founder Emily Flores over email to Mission. Via a Y2K aesthetic (a dusty purple home screen, fluttering hearts, and other cutesy visuals), Cripple Media lets us into the world of the disabled community.
Created in 2018, Cripple Media was a chance for Flores to “build a space where young disabled people can create and lead conversations in mainstream media, without non-disabled adults managing or informing those conversations.” Having muscular dystrophy herself, Flores explains how “life today for disabled teens is like every other teen’s life, while also not like every other teen.” The difference in their experiences derives from the fact that “disabled teens spend most of their lives demanding access for their needs, and respect,” she explains.
This need for respect stems from narratives perpetuated through TV, film, and other modern forms of media, that paint disabled individuals as “inspirational, tragic” and are “dehumanizing,” says Flores. According to Flores, these false narratives can even hold power to “influence the politics and legislation for disabled people.” This political influence is something that can lead to “government-funded programs for disabled people in the U.S. to be woefully underfunded.”
Additionally, members of Cripple Media took to Instagram’s ‘story’ feature to discuss TikTok’s “shadow banning of disabled creators,” which is not only an issue for the members of Cripple Media, TikTok’s shadow banning effects “marginalized creators in general,” Flores states. According to Flores, TikTok’s media algorithm “amplifies hateful interactions and comments towards these creators. Due to how policies are set up on social media apps, marginalized creators are often targeted by these policies that claim to protect them.”
There is much work to be done in the fight against America’s treatment of the disabled community. While many disabled individuals receive “much less [than] the social rights that nondisabled people are given. For example, autonomy, self-agency, privacy, and boundaries that are afforded to nondisabled people,” there are ways this can be changed. Flores states that we can make space for members of the disabled community by “showing up as an ally to the disabled community, consistently providing accessibility in your groups, protests, and always passing the microphone to a disabled person on disability issues.” Through first-hand accounts brought to life by Cripple Media, the platform is paving the way for a new wave of authentic media narratives and making it known that the life of disabled individuals is one to embrace, not pity.
Images courtesy of Cripple Media.
