While I appreciate the sentiment of “people first language” and similar efforts, the fact of the matter is that my disability mediates my interaction with the world and everyone in it from the moment I wake, and if you make me a “person with an amputation,” rather than an amputee, you’re not going to change anything except by making people sound really awkward when they talk.

For a great piece on the general issue of making people speak awkwardly about disability in the interest of sensitivity, check out this piece by C. Edwin Vaughan, “People-First Language:
An Unholy Crusade”(http://www.blind.net/pg000006.htm).

Some disabled people might agree with Greg. I don’t, and I don’t know Zupan, but I’d let him speak for himself.