A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

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minicom… but these are just… you just build them into your life… (l.1.382ff.)
Anne identifies negative consequences in terms of being both disabled and hearing impaired:
I get a bit annoyed with not having subtitles at the cinema, things like that… you
think “Oh, bloody hell, this is…” …in other ways it‟s not a huge thing… sometimes
if I sit and think about it, I think yes, I am missing out on an awful lot of things… in
terms of music… or picking up 99% of the conversation as opposed to 60% of it…
er… it‟s quite annoying when somebody‟s standing behind me saying “Excuse
me…” and they think I‟m rudely ignoring them… when, of course, I‟m not rudely
ignoring them… I don‟t know they‟re saying “Excuse me…” (l.1.182ff.)
However, having acknowledged these issues, Anne insists that for her deafness is not a
primary identity:
I find it hard to… distinguish me as a deaf person from me… because it‟s just part of
me… it‟s just part of a bigger thing… I can‟t just focus on that one thing… (l.304f.)
What Anne says about herself, in terms of her reluctance to identify as disabled, appears on
the surface to involve rejection of the idea of group identities in general as opposed to simply
group identity as disabled:
I use the term „impairment‟… because I don‟t really consider myself disabled…
because that‟s a community I don‟t particularly want to belong to… in the sense that
I don‟t particularly want to belong to a community… I‟ve no need… and that could
be because of my colour, it could be because of my gender, it could be because I
can‟t hear… it could be anything… but I don‟t particularly want to be segregated
based on anything like that… I‟m me and I am an individual… so let‟s talk about me
as an individual… (l.1.162ff.)
The question arises here about whether identifying as a white woman would involve the risk
of disaffirmation in quite the same way involved in identifying as disabled. John Swain and I
have commented on the fact that, as for gay men and lesbian women, there is a coming out
process for disabled people which involves a declaration of identity outside the norm (Swain
and Cameron, 1999:68). Where normality is presumed, those aspects of a person‟s identity
considered normal are unlikely to present themselves as areas for introspection and anxiety.
Group identity as disabled is more likely, within contemporary social arrangements, to
involve stigma than group identity as white or as a heterosexual woman.