Girls Using Walking Sticks

Frankly, it's bizarre.

We all know there are dishonest or deluded people in the world. Who will pretend all kinds of things.

Surely we also all know what kinds of crazy things people will believe about "identity" we can see it all around us. We can see it with gender identity, we can sometimes see it in groups that believe they are being possessed by spirits, there was the girls in the US all going to their doctors with what they claimed was tourettes.

Why would anyone think that couldn't or wouldn't happen with any other condition?

That doesn't mena anyone who knows these things believes they don't exist.

It boggles my mind that anyone who is a real sufferer would defend people engaging in this kind of fakery, either consciously or nt.

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. The name describes quick changes in posture causing fast heartbeat. There are also other symptoms. Most people have immediate (I'm not sure you can call them) reflexes in the autonomic nervous system that compensate for sudden changes in blood flow, such as happen when you stand up. People with POTS have trouble with that.

And I will be clear, I absolutely think it's a trend associated with id pol, because all of the young people I've seen in the doing it are from that group.

If it was a real change in people's health, or medical practice, that wouldn't be the case.

Yup, I saw this at a concert a couple of months ago. Totally filled with blue-haired non-binary women in their teens and very early 20s. Weirdly a lot with canes.

Since then I have noticed it's a thing with the young identity obsessed.

I've interpreted it as the next thing after mental health and "neurodivergency" being the focus for identity. People complained no one was paying attention to disability, so....

There was also some talk about teens self diagnosing Tourettes and DID from Tik Tok a while back. I remember reading an article and also discussing it with a friend as several of her teenagers friends had developed tics and were saying it was Tourettes. They were also trans/enby.

I have hypermobility and was in a wheelchair for 5 years because of the severity of displacia in my hips. I used walking aids following these years because I absolutely could not walk unaided. I have worked very hard through physio to the point I don’t use walking aids now but some days the pain is so severe I struggle to walk short distances or manage stairs. My current physio says it’s unlikely my pain will ever be less than a 5/10 and all I can do is manage and continue to keep the muscles around my joints working.

It’s very possible to have the same conditions at different severity levels to other people, shocking though that may be. The kind of joint pain that can be experienced and actual damage done because of extremely loose joints and repeated dislocations is no fucking joke.

Some people with hypermobility experience no pain. Some of us have severe problems and impairments from childhood/adolescence.

Hi, sorry but it was just a personal experience. The physios gave me a pair of bentwood sticks so that I could keep the weight of my upper body off my lower spine. As my lower back improved I simply forgot that I needed the sticks and forgot to take them with me. I know that I left one one the Tube. God alone knows what happened to the other one.

To add, I'm sure in the case of some females using puberty blockers and testosterone, they do really need them due to the damage being done to their bodies as a result.

"Is it a trend? Where's the evidence that there is any social contagion?"

Look at photos of any pride parade and you'll a large amount of young trans, 'queer' and non binary indentified females using canes. It is a trend amongst that demographic, otherwise the increase would be seen across the board and it really isnt. Doesnt mean that other young people with disabilities don't exist but despite what people are insisting on here, its really not that common for young people to need walking aids, certainly no where near 15%.

Couldn't it be more that young people who need a walking aid are feeling more comfortable using them? To me, that's a good thing!

With there being a big disability 'branch' of identity politics, I also guess that some disabled people have bought into identity politics and are deciding they are non-binary and want blue hair, rather than blue-haired non-binary people "deciding" they have a disability?

I do understand people's suspicion to a degree, thanks to the 'oppression points' concept that comes with identity politics: i.e. it might seem tempting for people totally wrapped up in it to exaggerate or fake a disability to gain more 'oppression points', but I think that's rare and we shouldn't treat disabled people with disdain and suspicion because there's a tiny possibility they're faking it!

Many of the conditions listed on these pages cause people to collapse. If you are noticing people with sticks, multiply it up by thousands and thousands to get the number of people who could collapse out and about - possibly heading to the loo if they feel ill.

Over 7 million have heart disease, every few minutes people die of strokes and heart attacks. 11% of cardiac attacks are on the loo. I know of a teenage girl who fainted and got life changing head injuries as she wasn’t supported when she fell.

I have mixed emotions about this thread. But it is a good example of why I want everyone to use the toilet of their sex. Single sex toilets can have door gaps.

Mixed sex toilets are private with doors from floor to ceiling so more dangerous for people who are at risk of ending up on the floor of the toilet room/cubicle without anyone knowing. Same dangers with assaults of course - you don’t know how many people are in there.

Seeing as there seem to be a lot of new names on this thread I thought I would raise awareness of why unisex toilets don’t work for anyone at their most vulnerable.

I can completely understand your concerns. It's not an easy time to have a disability (obviously there is never an easy time but it's dire just now) or care for someone who has one.

X is just horrendous.

I'm just being cynical because I'm probably coming from a similar perspective of concern. That there's loads of bashing against disabled people right now.

As pp said, time will tell. Maybe we'll now have confirmation bias because everyone on this thread will be looking out for it!

How would beta blockers help POTS.
with POTS your blood doesn’t get up to your brain fast enough. I can’t see what restricting your heart rate would do other than make things worse surely?

There was an explosion in the numbers of girls identifying as transgender over a very few years recently. This, lately, appears to be losing its attraction as a way of dealing with unhappiness, often associated with neurodiversity. Affirmative treatment is harder to access and much of the nonsense around genderism has been debunked. Very few people, even impressionable teenagers, can think about it for two minutes and genuinely believe people can change sex. Transgender spokespeople are frequently and visibly old and unattractive men. It is losing its appeal.
However, identifying as someone with an illness or disability requires far less effort or cognitive dissonance - after all, anyone can get ill or become disabled without the elaborate belief system transgenderism requires - and you may genuinely feel physically unwell, tired and suffer aches and pains. How nice it is if people look after you and are kind because of your condition.
If this is really a trend - and it’s certainly no more weird than trans - then I’m not really very surprised.

Well, time will tell, because the people who actually need sticks will presumably carry on using them, and anyone who is doing it for other reasons will have moved on to whatever is then fashionable. Perhaps we should revisit this thread in a year or three and see what's going on then!

Absolutely! I didn't mean to diminish the real need of ambulatory wheelchair users; I should have clarified that I don't mean ambulatory wheelchair users shouldn't use wheelchairs and I'm sorry if it came across that way. In fact, I wish they were easier to access for those who would benefit, as I know chairs are expensive and difficult to obtain. I only mean that in comparison, a cane is an affordable aid that people can usually acquire without those same barriers, so it makes sense that people see more cane-users out and about than wheelchair users, and that some cane-users are people who would benefit from a chair but haven't been able to get one.

You could get one of those folding ones, and scrupulously put the folded stick straight into your bag when not in use. I say this as I was in a shop the other day, and the customer in front of me at the till left hers behind, hanging on the edge of the counter. I went to catch up with her to give it back. She was looking in her bag for it as she thought she had folded it and put it away.

And maybe I don't believe them 🤔 😉

And yet we have no idea why they are qualified to conclude that, or whether it's just prejudices at work

But there are others on this thread who have also said they work with young people or work in some sort of health provision service and they do recognise this as a form of social contagion.

Is it a trend? Where's the evidence that there is any social contagion? That article is absolutely dreadful and X is a binfire of people who want to bash disabled people.

Sorry @Arran2024. I was not really meaning to suggest you are not genuine in your post or real, but I think this thread will attract those right leaning posters that I don't recognize as being typical for MN until fairly recently.

What I do think is that gen Z are very vocal. They will speak up and they will argue and yes, can be dramatic. Maybe this then comes across as attention seeking. It doesn't mean they're making up disabilities though. I don't know that I agree there are swathes of young women identifying as disabled who are not. I work with young people. It's not something I recognise.

Disability isn't equally distributed. Genetic conditions will often have multiple effects, ASD often comes with concurrent physical issues, 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, difficulties in communication or not being taken seriously by doctors (or teachers, or parents) can mean that minor health problems go untreated and become serious,and plenty of prescription drugs can have physical side effects. Having one disability means you are much more likely than a random non-disabled person to have another disability.

And that's without even taking into account additional factors like poverty and social exclusion.

No, no it won't be "vanishingly small".
I can think of multiple conditions where mobility aids are helpful and that young people can have.

And covid has caused bad flares and exacerbations for many people with auto immune conditions.