 According to the rival “social model”, disability is not a departure from normal or healthy human functioning which makes an atypical condition a “bad difference” from the norm; rather it is a “mere difference” (Barnes 2016). Although disabilities may make people worse off in general, this is due to the way society is set up, rather than any physical impairment. Disability in itself is just variation, analogous to features like sexuality, gender and race. The social model was pushed by disability activists who defined disability as “the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organisation which takes little or no account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from participation in the mainstream of social activities” (UPIAS 1975, quoted in Shakespeare 2010). The scientific basis for this position appeals to the idea that “the partitioning of human variation into the normal versus the abnormal has no firmer footing than the partitioning into races. Diversity of function is a fact of biology” (Amundson 2000, p. 34). The resulting partition, it is held, is a reflection of social norms rather than underlying physical impairments. This position resembles what will here be termed the constructivist position with regard to health.