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

In gaining an understanding of the social model Mary became able to critically recognise her
own experience as having involved oppression and to understand the causes of that
oppression. She had, up till this point, accepted uncritically her experience of having been
segregated as a child and of the denial of the validity of her own experience. Even as she
started work as an access auditor she still protested that she was not really disabled. While
she focused on the barriers which exclude disabled people, she still considered disability a
discreditable personal characteristic. Gaining an understanding of disability as oppression
meant that Mary became able to accept herself as somebody with an impairment. Viewing
her own situation in a new light transforms her self-perception and her response to her
situation, so that through transformative action she is able to pursue her right to be valued as
who she is rather than for what she aspires to be.
Mary‟s politicisation as a disabled person emerged as a result of talking with other disabled
people, but Charles points out that it does not necessarily have to happen this way:
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In my case it was talking to politicised people who actually weren‟t disabled… but
probably had a much better understanding… of… certainly of the social model than
the disabled people I knew… later on, I encountered politicised disabled people,
yeah, but… I mean, I suppose that‟s not what you normally find, really… (l.1023ff.)
Charles makes the point here that what is important is not so much talking with disabled
people as with people who get what the social model is about. In his own experience his
political awakening as a disabled person occurred through talking with non-disabled allies
working within the social model. He goes further, too, arguing that many disabled people
still oppressed by the individual model have, in his opinion, little to say that is of value:
I suppose I‟ve talked to a lot of disabled people who weren‟t politicised who talk
shit… (l.1.1018)
Charles contends that it is not enough, or at least not necessary, to be disabled in order to
argue progressively:
And I think what the difference is whether you‟re working to the social model or
not…rather than… you know… whether or not they were disabled… (l.1:1042ff.)
Ben recalls his own involvement in the disabled people‟s movement during the 1980s:
Most of the time I just related to people at a political level… being involved in a