Girls Using Walking Sticks

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

How would you even begin to know if someone is disabled or not, what are you basing that on?.Is it the whole " we can always tell" argument again? 🙄

Same, minus the EDS.

This thread is exactly why I don't have a lanyard, even though there are certain situations where I've thought it might be a useful thing to have.

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

I have never in my life judged someone using a stick. I'm honestly baffled that anyone would and I'm sorry this happens.

However, I can absolutely believe that this could become the latest identity fad. And I'm concerned about the impact on disabled people if so.

The arguments above (it's only a small number of people, it doesn't affect you, ableist etc) we're used when concerns were raised about trans. But trans is easy to visually spot. As many have pointed out, many disabilities are invisible and would be easy to appropriate.

Yup - a highly diagnosable condition with very clear visible and medically detectable physical repercussions. Yet PP here will poo poo it away as “another fad”

Almost feels like some posters don’t see their own misogyny. Conditions that are predominantly suffered by women are the ones being demonised and called fake. “Pretend they like/have something to fit in with their peers? That’s just what girls do”

And you sit there and call yourselves feminists.

The train had terminated at a major station.

i am mad at assistance but i can also see a disability player at work. Im not going to link the person here but her videos are pretty awful for disabled people. Yet here’s me being called a cunt for pointing it out. Not everyone is genuine.

To diagnose POTS you put the patient laying down on a tilt table & then quickly swivel them upright. If their heart starts racing & blood pressure drops then they have POTS. The sufferers are predominantly young females.

Why not even consider that because walking aids are more accepted socially and also readily available you are then seeing more of these people, as they are then just simply outside more?

If people saying that these young people are using it due to genuine need are right, shoulf we all be MASSIVELY concerned about low health and "sudden" prevalence of physical disability amongst young people? That IS concerning. So would be if it's just a social contagion though.
How does UK compare to other European countries in this? Anyone knows?

If the train stops at the station for a few minutes then fucks off to the next station, what should she do? There’s no one in eyeshot. She stands up and gets on/off the train without her chair, then the train moves and leaves it behind. Not a very good scenario, is it? She can’t exactly run down the platform to find someone.

She did what the rail companies ask - which is alert to needing assistance on a particular platform at a particular time for a particular train. She took a video to highlight that she was let down and no assistance was available, and no person was even near by to call for. She wasn’t “playing victim” - she was highlighting the difficulty disabled people face every day. Even with supposed systems in place to make travel easier and accessible, they don’t always work out that way.

Why not be mad at the people responsible for making these accommodations, why not be mad that disabled access is not easier and more readily available as and when it is required and requested?

Instead you are mad that a disabled person did not push and exert themselves on this particular day in a way you can’t justify would have even helped the situation.

Every day? You know this woman personally, do you?
Or are you one of those strange hate follower people that get weirdly obsessed and think they know someone from some social media posts?!

I wasn’t suggesting anyone lifted a wheelchair.

she can fucking skip about the park every day. She can definitely stop acting the victim and seek help to get her chair off the train.

No really. I dont think she is ok every day because she is ok some days. The creator herself shows this in copious amounts. I know you think I’m being ignorant but it’s not beyond the pale to consider that actually some people are liars. The is also not too clever with it becsue it’s blatant.

No, what's pathetic is you being so ignorant that you think because you are ok some days, that means you always are, and then doubling down on that ignorance
That's what's fucking pathetic.

Agreed. Being able to stand or walk short distances SOME days is not the same as being able to stand up and safely lift their wheelchair onto the train by themselves. Its not that fucking hard to see you just have to not be a cunt

I knew someone would jump at me.

i made my comment based on that creators own information. If she can fucking stand up any other time and skip about the fucking park she can stand up and get off the bloody train.

Im The first to defend disabled people, what with being one myself and all, but don’t be acting like you are fucking stuck on a train when you upload multiple videos of you being absolutely able to get yourself help if needed. It’s pathetic.

OMG this place gets worse 😱🤣
So she apparently sometimes is able to stand she should "just stand the fuck up?!"
People can have better days than others where they have bad days. Or she may have been highlighting that there was literally no assistance for disabled wheelchair users so they'd be stuck - surely you're not so ignorant that you think anyone could just stand up and "stop playing victim?"
You sound delightful hotrendous

people with ADHD have high levels of risk taking behaviour which can lead to physical consequences, lack of control over your body is also more likely to lead to injury

So as a way of arguing that this walking stick phenomenon definitely isn't a social contagion thing, we are asked to consider that girls with ADHD and a stick might be hobbling around on sprained ankles because their ADHD meant they couldn't resist the urge to jump off a very tall wall?

I think that's a bit of a stretch, frankly.

If neurodivergent/autistic people are more likely to dye their hair vivid colours and be non-binary, then you would expect to see a higher proportion of "blue-haired non-binary women" to be using canes, as autism is linked with many physical health conditions including EDS, chronic fatigue, congenital heart disease, fainting, and fibromyalgia, all of which might make someone more likely to use a cane.

"I'm not a 'TRA'"

Fair enough. But, I wasn't accusing you specifically of being a TRA. In fact I phrased my response to avoid that implication:

"Isn't this part-and-parcel to TRA gaslighting? "

I was pointing out the trope of using 'transphobia' to gaslight people, i.e. arguing that it's the alleged transphobe (unproven) who has the delusion (due to their transphobia) - so their observations can't be trusted, even by themselves - instead of addressing the substance of the debate.

I was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease as a 20-year-old. Previously a very active person, I then had to use a walking stick to get around, and on occasion, a wheelchair. I wasn’t doing it for fun, identity purposes, and I certainly didn’t think it helped me look cool. In fact, I thought I looked like an elderly person, invisible, and ugly.

I think these issues are much more complex than they seem on the surface, and it doesn’t help to to frame other people as ‘dishonest’ or ‘deluded’ in such circumstances.

I'm not a "TRA"- go off on the usual trying to discredit anyone speaking out though if it makes you feel better 🙄

Isn't this part-and-parcel to TRA gaslighting? We're told not to believe our eyes - that obvious men could simply be women who don't look feminine enough, that the enormous increase in young people, especially girls, identifying as trans was akin to left-handedness, that the high correlation with autism was unremarkable. Once again we're being asked not to see a large spike in young women and girls using mobility canes who seem to be especially associated with alternative, on-line youth culture. And of course that injunction comes with shaming: if we did take note it's because we're psychologically deranged, it's not that we're seeing an obvious social trend of dis-regulated behavior around us, it's because we've become emotionally dis-regulated.

Of course it's possible that the observation is an illusion, that this cohort of mobility cane users has always been there we just haven't noticed before. It's also conceivable as some have argued that the epidemic has an underlying organic cause like long COVID. But the TRA approach to debate is not to contest evidence but to gaslight.

It boggles my mind that people can't see that their thinking has become twisted. If it has, don't you even on some level acknowledge it? Defending others saying that they're judging people on sight whether they think they have a disability or not via age, hair colour etc. 🙄
How would you even know what disabilities people have just by looking at them?!
Transphobia really does hurt everyone, doesn't it? Women who don't "look" feminine enough. Now it seems women who don't "look" disabled and/or have purple hair and are young and use a walking stick. Must be doing it due to social contagion, or as a pp alluded, it's a big conspiracy driven by........
(don't think they ever came back to clarify, was pretty clear what they were trying to say though)