Girls Using Walking Sticks

Yes, I worked with teens (mainstream college) who had walking and hearing aides in college without a connected diagnosis. Would ask for disabled lift pass. Parents furious and said they did things like rock climbing as a family. They would discuss all of the possible diagnosis’ and neurodiverse traits, would tell me they had diagnosis’ of things like hyper empathy. The actually disabled young people were held in high esteem, in someways there was total acceptance and that was nice, in other ways it was excruciating listening to these able bodied students talk about their non existent disabilities when their disabled peers were genuinely facing significant barriers in life.

@Arran2024 This might be hard for you to understand. But young people, young girls can be disabled. Whether or not you think they are in need of a mobility aid is irrelevant. Just because you see someone not leaning hard on it means nothing. Would you say that about an older women? Or do you just spot ableism for fun???

Also fibromyalgia is a very real and painful condition which is prgressuve and if someone needs a mobility aid as a way of helping them have a more fufilling aid then thats absolutely fine. This sort of nonsense is exactly what isolates disabled people because people have set views on what disabilities actually are and so if someone who doesn't fit that prism of disability uses an aid - they think its their place to police that. Hidden disabilities are often Debilitating and this ableism makes people often not get or use mobility aid that they need or even go out (because the mobility aid makes that possible) because ableist people judge them and mock them. @GirlOverboard123 The sunflower lanyard is a symbol for the exact purpose your talking about, it's so people can know when we have a hidden disability and just be a bit more careful or offer them a seat. So if seeing one annoys you, that's your own problem.

Also, most people who use mobility aids (wheelchairs, walking sticks) are ambulatory users (not always using them). Especially if you have a dynamic disability, whilst we're always in pain (that's great baseline with chronic illnesses etc) it flucates. So someone might not need a mobility aid all the time, depending on the severity of their symptoms that day and even during the day it may change. Just like able bodied people might use their car to get somewhere, because their tired and it will be easier, but another time they may walk.

I’m not sure how commenting that a particular Reddit post is really very much the same as a FWR regular like yourself would say? (Or thereabouts.) But of course you wouldn’t know as you don’t normally look at Reddit.

I read FWR frequently. I post less.

That Reddit thread (from three years ago!) has some really interesting points, where even then they were noticing a Venn diagram overlap between young people who choose a visibly "queer" style and young people who say they have chronic illnesses with fuzzy diagnostic criteria.

I'm just going to add an early sighting of the phenomenon:

Bizarre uptick of queer people using canes? : r/honesttransgender

Yes my DD school was the same. Big focus on self reflection and identity rather than resilience.

They haven't had the group back in for over a year (I only realised about them after the fact) and I've now alerted other parents so hopefully there'll be a bunch of us to raise concerns if it happens again.

Yes, I used to be a teacher ( I left in 2010) and neither 'trans' nor 'mental health' was a thing at all then. My daughter is a teacher now and just recently she explained exactly the same as you are suggesting. Someone came into school and told the class that up to a half of them could expect to suffer mental health issues going forward.

I don't normally look at at reddit...... but I'd not been aware, up until now, of this trend for walking sticks, so I googled it and that is what came up. Reddit was top of the search list with a post about 'walking sticks' and the 'chronic illness community'.

I'm speculating and sharing some thoughts and observations of contemporray culture and trends around mental health. I certainly don't recognise your username, so I imagine you have never come across mine ( I tend only to post on FWR)...you haven't the faintest idea what I think about almost anything. And I don't see a need to make things personal. Do you?

Your typical blue hairs....

But if loads and loads of people who didn't need to started using them and the disabled facilities would you feel the same

well it doesn’t affect me if other people use a stick so why would I care? As for disabled facilities? Like what?

You need a blue badge to use a disabled bay and you can’t very easily self identify your way to a blue badge. The council won’t give Dd one even though she has EDS, POTS, faints a lot, can’t carry bags because her fingers dislocate and keeps getting blood clots in her lungs which has affected her pulmonary capacity and caused heart damage 🤷‍♀️. I do keep meaning to help her appeal this but they make everything so difficult and she’s stopping driving anyway so past caring to be honest.

disabled toilets? I suppose it might get to a stage where people might have to queue for a disabled toilet? Bit like now how people might have to queue for a non disabled toilet? If things get that bad maybe people can campaign to have more disabled toilets built?

The only other thing I can think of is benches or the accessible seats on buses or trains? This is where me not having a stick makes me feel judged. So yesterday I was waiting for somewhere to open so sat on a bench outside, couple of other people sat on the bench too. Then a lady with a stick in her 40s rocks up and is glaring at me. I ignore her. If she’d asked me to move I’d have had to have said no, that I also needed the bench. I guess she wouldn’t have realised I needed it too as I don’t have a stick. But hey, who says she needs the stick? Maybe she just identifies as needing one for attention…..she did actually have blue hair so obviously one of those types 👀🙈🧐. Maybe they should provide more benches!

There is. And numerous companies going into schools who are making money from telling schools there is a massive mental health crisis and that... Ta da! they are the ones that can solve it. With huge links to promoting gender ID.

It's been a while coming, and like a lot of things in the culture that seem to have come out of nowhere, it incubated on Tumblr. For a certain type of white girls on Tumblr, baroque gender identities were only one of the things they adopted, though they're of interest to us because of the damage the girls do to themselves.

But they also all claimed to be ND - that might be a diagnosed condition or very often a self-diagnosed one - and they all had a huge laundry list of allergies and food intolerances.

Part of this is probably that NHS waiting lists are so long that they'll wait years for a proper assessment, and in lieu of that they find Reddit communities.

You didn't like to be harsh, especially because any individual might actually have any particular condition they're claiming, but taken as a group, you wondered how they coped with getting up and going to school in the morning. Many didn't.

I feel there's a thing where girls and young women cycle through these trends - it might be Goth or it might be old records of competitive fasting among nuns - and you can just hope the current trend is a relatively harmless one.

I’m not sure Reddit is the best of sources. You’re also confirming your own biases (I know the post you’re talking about).

And there seems to exist a whole new generation of activist counsellors who encourage their clients to identify themselves as either traumatised or oppressed...rather than enabling them to develop more emotional and psychological resillience. The number who say they are suffering from PTSD has rocketed.

Quite! I saw a reddit page earlier which was talking about the " Chronic illness community".

In a social media age and a society obsessed with 'identities' and with communities of those who share the same identities, there is an established and rapidly increasing rate of young people with diagnosed mental health issues, or with self diagnosed mental health issues or conditions. It is almost like we're moving on from 'trans' to ill health and disability as the latest on trend identity.

Something like 40% of people claiming disability benefits are claiming them for mental health issues.

University staff, including Kathleen Stock, talk of how a quarter of their students have mental health issues/conditions/labels. One lecturer talked of how almost a third of his class could not cope with regularly attending lectures, meeting deadlines, or, in some cases, even taking public transport. They have to have specialised learning plans created for them.

Maybe, but I think noticing that a particular group is vulnerable to this sort of thing is important.

I hesitate to jump in here, because I know exactly how these threads always turn out, but...

I have chronic health issues that impair my mobility, and sometimes I use a stick. I prefer not to, because it's a faff, but I will if necessary.

And yes, I know from experience that invisible disabilities exist.

I don't take offence at this thread because I know it's not about me.

But it's also difficult to not notice the trend. And I'm very cautious about speculating what's causing the trend. We know from trans/NB identification among girls that there's a high prevalence of autism and also a lot of girls who "identify as" vaguely neurodiverse. There's no clean and easy way of sorting them out.

And similarly, spend much time listening to girls in that identity group and you'll notice they're always complaining about how exhausted they are. I'm not saying they're all spoonies by any means; it's possible quite a few have fucked up their endocrine systems with cross-sex hormones; but there's a definite overlap with spoonie culture. It spreads in the same online spaces.

I'm not surprised that people with experience of disability and chronic illness, either themselves or others, are very sensitive to any implication that people are judging who is or isn't disabled. I understand that. Where I think it goes off track is people becoming irrationally furious at the suggestion that spoonies exist, when we know they do.

And this set of arguments:

• It's something that was always there but young people are just more confident about expressing it, like lefthandedness.
• All this stuff about social contagion and mental health comorbidities is just a dogwhistle that fails to conceal your hatey hate.
• It's a tiny number and doesn't affect you anyway.
• You're an ableist, you're bigoted and right wing and any genuine feminist would accept that these kids are exactly what they say they are.

Do you think this doesn't ring a bell? Do you think I don't know parents of trans-identified children who say exactly those things?

It's a trend. Lots of us have noticed it. There's maybe an interesting discussion to be had about why it's happening. That's very difficult to do if everything is framed as an attack on a vulnerable group.

Can i also point out that pps are ignoring that there could be a correlation between the state of the nhs (and out of control waiting times, referrals down the wrong route etc) which delay diagnosis by years.

There are a lot of people out there who dont rely know whats wrong with them but know they need help.

It took years for me to be diagnosed with a neurological issue (even after going private). I wish I'd had the confidence to use a stick then instead of staying indoors. Missing out on life events, losing friends and getting more and more depressed.

It could. Personally it's the stereotyping and one-size-fits-all-ness certain pps are expressing that's problematic, for me anyway.

I don't understand why some posters think it is a massive leap to think that young people who are convinced they are born in the wrong body could move on to being convinced they have a disability.

If trans is a symptom of distress, why could this distress not also be manifested in that way?

@OldMcDonaldHadABigMac would you care to enlighten us further about 'these types' and their 'hardships'? (I'd be particularly edified to learn why you felt 'hardships' warranted being put in quotes... 🤔)

Young women who have dyed blue or purple hair and/or wear dungarees and therefore they're more likely to be autistic and trans and faking disability and like to shout "look at meeee" so we all know about it.
Disclaimer not my view, just a summary from the posts on here. Seriously, posts on here are disgusting and I'm surprised (actually, no I'm not) that they're allowed to stand.

”These types”? Which types? Young women? Young women with dyed hair? Who exactly?

Sorry you feel unable to have something you may benefit from, it's easy to see how you feel that way though due to some of the vile comments on here.

That's entirely my point. How would you even know? And no of course you wouldn't be able to tell.

So what would happen to already too few disabled services if a whole bunch of people started using them who didn't actually need to?