Sometimes I just wish it was all over

Abstract

In this article I reflect upon having recently been invited to join a new departmental group being set up to talk about Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; at the same time having been told to remember that my perspective is just one among equally valid others. I reflect upon what Drake (1999) has described as the ‘fundamentally opposed’ natures of the medical and social models, and upon the absurdity involved in a requirement to give assent to both. I consider the unfortunate dualism involved in claims that people ‘have disabilities’, and suggest that Sartre’s dictum ‘existence precedes essence’ offers a way of thinking about disability that the medical model can’t begin to make sense of. I draw upon statements by disabled people about how they feel about themselves to challenge conventional personal tragedy assumptions.