Large rocks in Palo Duro Canyon

 

At Palo Duro Canyon on May 14th we saw many large rocks of various types.

 

  

Stone slabs capped a “window” in one formation, while elsewhere
erosion left a rock slab jutting out to form a shady overhang.

 

  

The size and rotundity of the rock below qualify it as a boulder (though not all writers of
dictionary definitions make so bold as to require roundness for a large rock to be considered a boulder).

 

  

 

 

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“The person experiencing Italianness who sang with a high voice and a uterus drew applause from the people living with many diverse genders who listened.”

If you find that a strange sentence, you’re hardly alone. I just made it up as an example of “person-first language,” by which activist ideologues purport to emphasize a person’s humanity while downplaying some difficulty or disadvantage. According to those ideologues, we must use an awkward locution like “people experiencing homelessness” rather than the simpler and universally understood phrase “the homeless.”

Curious to see what other people think about people-first language, I did a search. The first hit was a Reddit post titled “How do you feel about person first language?”

 

I’m disabled and I have become used to this fact in a way where I don’t feel like calling myself disabled is somehow a negative. At school I made a reference to “disabled people” and was told by a non disabled person that I need to use person first language and say “people who are living with a disability” because that reduces stigma. I was bothered by this but I don’t know if I am just being overly sensitive to being criticized or if I should actually be using person first language. I feel like being disabled is a neutral aspect of identity and trying to distance it from yourself is actually more stigmatizing towards disability because you are treating it like a bad word and not just a fact of your body like hair color. I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this.

 

You can read the replies if you’d like to.

 

And by the way, here’s a normal version of my sample sentence: “The Italian soprano drew applause from the audience.”

 

 

© 2024 Steven Schwartzman