Argument 1: It is better when people are included

My thesis has several lines of argument within it. My current task is to track those. I thought it would be a good discipline for myself to try and articulate each argument I am making concisely here (and it might save a few people the time of reading my thesis!)

This argument is: It is better when people are included.

All people, specifically to this work people with profound intellectual and multiple disabiliites, but with regards to the argument I mean all people, so it includes people from other marginalised excluded populations.

And the better is not a for ‘them’ better, it is better for people: all people. This is an extension or a maturation of the argument I made in theTEDx talk:    • Inclusion: for pity’s sake? | Joanna ...   A

When you include difference you recognise difference you value difference. Counter arguments demand sameness, conformity, one size fits all, they state things like ALL will, or Everyone must. Sometimes claiming inclusiveness in those ALLs, but it is a contingent inclusiveness and in being so it is as meaningless as contingent love.

I give examples of exclusions I’ve encountered or experienced: the exclusion of autistic people from mental health research, the rise of conformist narratives within education.

I look at where certainty comes from, and how exclusory arguments are not necessarily countered by fighting them, but rather by answer the fear and vulnerability that fuels them.

The end goal is to have a research space, (and all the other spaces too) where people are seen for who they are, valued for who they are, and belong without having to change in order to do so.