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

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weekly… I get on really fine with this chap… and he was a prison warden…he took
a stroke… but he was retired before then…I‟m almost pushed into mixing because
of the centres I go to… like with mental health… like, this is how… I mix with
people with mental health and people with physical disabilities… (l.1:752ff.)
For somebody as susceptible to depression as Ash, being situated in an environment where
interaction is required is experienced as a good thing. He values Bonnybank Centre as a
place where his identity is confirmed:
You want to have somebody there to say “Oh, I had a sore leg today,” and they‟ll
say “Oh, my leg was sore too…” (l.1:674)
This identity, however, is not one which involves questioning existing social arrangements.
Scrabble is more popular in day centres than conscientisation.
Rose also speaks of the importance of talking with other disabled people. In the following
passage she recounts the part that mixing with disabled people had in her own acceptance of
being disabled:
I went on holiday with a disabled group, er… and I thought “Rose, grab the bull by
the horns… go and see what it‟s like… it can only be… you know… it can only be
bad...”… and I think that would have been in about 1990… early 1990s… 91…
92…and… I went off alone, with a scooter in tow on the back of a car… and I‟d had
to borrow everything… I borrowed equipment, to try it out… and I met all these
people… and at that stage, it was… “I‟m Rose… they‟re disabled… I‟m going to
meet them…” and by the time those few days with them were over… that‟s when I
thought “They‟re just the same as me…” ...they‟ve got exactly the same concerns,
likes and dislikes, needs and whatever… and I think that is when… that is when I
fully embraced the idea of being disabled… because I wasn‟t afraid of it any more…
(l.1:419ff.)
It is likely that Roses‟s fear of „the idea of being disabled‟ involved, to a large extent, fear of
the role that disability involves. As Sheldon Stryker notes, roles, as „relatively stable,
morphological components of social structure‟ (Stryker, 2002:54), carry shared behavioural
expectations: