 Some philosophers have argued more affirmatively that disabilities are “neutral” characteristics or “mere differences”, with no average or generally adverse impact on well-being. They argue that disability should be regarded as a characteristic like race or sex, which are widely seen as neutral with respect to well-being, once discrimination and its effects are factored out—or even if they are not. Disability is grouped with these characteristics in anti-discrimination law. But it is also grouped with those characteristics by writers who argue, more ambitiously, that disability, no less than race or sex, is a neutral characteristic—one that, in the absence of social exclusion, does not make lives go any worse on average (Barnes 2009a; McBryde-Johnson 2003). These writers do not deny that becoming disabled may make life go worse for some time, but no more so than other wrenching changes, like losing a job, home, or loved one. In the former case as well as the latter, the bad or harm is in the transition—in the loss and disruption—and not in the end state. Any disadvantage that persists after the transition is plausibly attributed to social factors.