We all know about things like PIP assessments, but in important ways disability provision relies on the honour system. I sometimes use the disabled loo if my mobility is particularly bad, but usually I don't because, if I don't absolutely need it, I want to leave it free for someone who needs it more than me.
And the girls I'm thinking of aren't necessarily pretending to be disabled in a cynical way. They're often sad, anxious, alienated, spending too much time online, ruminating on their worries, looking for labels for their alienation, because if you can label it, maybe you can control it. And if loneliness is a problem, they can bond with others who've labelled their situation the same way.
You know how, when we were kids, music was often a way of overcoming alienation? In different ways, of course. I remember the difference between those kids who were into REM and those who were into Kiss. Michael Stipe spoke to sensitive, often gay kids and said "you may feel alone now, but it's all part of growing up and it will get better." Paul Stanley spoke to weird misfit kids and said "don't listen to anyone who says you're unpopular, you're part of the millions strong Kiss Army and that makes you part of a bigger crowd than they can imagine."
In retrospect that's very benign considering some of the ways alienated kids can connect.
And we also know there are sometimes psychosomatic elements to chronic illness.
The Reddit thread I linked upthread is really interesting because it was made 3 years ago in a smallish trans community that's set up to facilitate difficult conversations, and tries to avoid the dogpiling of the big trans subreddits. There's one long post by a disabled poster that's worth reading in full: Bizarre uptick of queer people using canes? : r/honesttransgender
Couple of outtakes:
Probably the biggest group I met was people claiming to have symptoms like vague chronic pain with no diagnosis. Chronic pain is a legitimate reason to use a mobility aid, but ideally you’d get evaluated first. I mean use a mobility aid when you need it, but see a doc to be sure you’re getting an appropriate aid and know how to use it. And get a diagnosis of some kind of actually permanent condition before identifying yourself as a disabled person and making yourself a local spokesperson for the disabled community. I never cared about people doing what they want for themselves, but I routinely got talked over about disability by people who have been using a cane for 2 months for a few hours per week for undiagnosed sore knees or whatever.
...
I met so many people claiming to have medical conditions that they clearly did not understand at all to a point that it could only be dishonesty. I met someone claiming to have spasticity (not a muscle spasm, actual neurological spasticity) while also claiming to have diminished reflexes, for example. No doctor would confuse this or allow a patient to misunderstand something that serious, and it’s very obvious even if you just google real quick. It just became very clear that there were people around me who did not have the disabilities they claimed to have and had no idea what it was actually like to live with such a disability.