Girls Using Walking Sticks

How does one appear not to work? 🤔

It feels like there are (at least) three parallel discussions happening on this thread.

One is about a slightly unusual trend that some people are seeing of more young people, and particularly young girls/young women, using sticks than we are used to seeing and wondering whether this is a Trend (fashion statement) rather than just a trend (increase in the norm). And, if the latter, what is causing it.

The other discussion is about whether there is a trend for some people to self-diagnose some 'fashionable' conditions/hidden disabilities as part of a desire to have a more interesting identity.

And then there is a further discussion about whether those named 'fashionable' conditions - mentioned in sneery ways by some PP - are real or not. And those of us who suffer from them (not through any desire to be fashionable, but just because that's the shit hand we've been dealt) feeling demoralised when it seems like lots of posters think we're a bunch of self-absorbed fakes.

The first two are interesting discussions to have, but it is very easy for them to bleed into the third, which is ableist and unpleasant. While I'm sure lots of people did not mean to be so cruel and ableist, that is how many of the posts have come across, and that's not on.

Who is doing that?

Where did she say she pushed in? Oh... Nowhere.

Excuse me?

Because my child dated them and told me all the details (and I met them too)?

As a person with disabilities myself who has used walking aids when needed in the past, I do understand the need for aids at a young age and to feel unjudged for needing them.

I am aware there are some young people using canes for 'other reasons' and I do find that concerning. Pretending it is not actually a trend or a thing because genuine people with issues are offended they might be misidentified doesn't help.

@Baggingarea
fair play to you fur coming back and saying this.
i'm a tad sensitive as i watched my little boy go from the picture of health to a shadow of his former self in months. he was investigated for epilepsy, brain tumours and all sorts of different illnesses that terrified us before we were told it was PoTS. 2 years on and we are making progress, he’s gained weight, is in school full time and getting back into his sport.
i'm not naive to people exploiting illness or responding in challenging ways to their condition but PoTS just lit a blue touch paper for me.
i appreciate your comment 🙂

You know having a stick doesn’t make a jot of difference for a PIP assessment? If you use one you are questioned on where you got it, was it prescribed, who recommended it? And of course you have to be able to evidence how the condition you have affects you. ‘I bought it on Amazon’ doesn’t cut it.

Anthropologically, a noticeable trend of young people sharing a fashion and mobility aids could exist for a number of reasons. Rather than feeling isolated, young people with health conditions might be using the internet to connect with other young people who share their health conditions - along with their interests and fashions.

There are lots of disability influencers explaining how to advocate for yourself. Young people might find that this resonates with them and they feel empowered to advocate for themselves. Adopting the fashions and styles of these influencers they admire is human nature.

I supposed increased discussion/recognition of health conditions might lead some people to consider that they have similar challenges. They might seek to find ways to help them cope, a mobility aid being one such solution.

I wouldn’t think it was my place to question why a group of young girls I don’t know are using mobility aids.

I'm really sorry that you are not only experiencing a really challenging health issue, but having to read a lot of ignorant comments too.

It's perfectly understandable why you wear a sunflower wristband and well done for being brave enough to use a stick.

I wish more people would listen and not just assume a person is ok because their disability is invisible.

You take care xx

This looks like an interesting read (a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Exeter by Elena Sharratt)

Exploring the emergence and disappearance of transableism
on transabled.org: Digital ethnography of a transient mental
illness

ore.exeter.ac.uk/rest/bitstreams/177145/retrieve

I used self diagnosed pots as an example on an earlier post to reflect what some ableist posts said. Im really worried I have caused offence with specifically mentioning pots. I could have used any invisible disability in its place - hope i havent added any fuel to the fire.

It is very depressing to read this. A lot of the illnesses referred to in this thread predominantly affect females. They affect quality of life rather than causing death. For these two reasons they are often dismissed. Endometriosis used to fit in this category (“a problem in the upper classes” is what I learnt in medical school). However, that has changed with the advent of successful fertility treatments. The cynical part of me believes it’s because when a woman has difficulty conceiving in vivo it also impacts on a male partner. Hence, now that we have treatments that work, and help men, it has become a “real” disorder.

The problem of discounting female disorders that impact on quality of life has only begun to be recognised in medicine. Then I see this on the feminist board 😢

You are quite right that you can’t control how people identify but in previous generations when children / young people explore with their identity parents and society at large have always been allowed to discuss it without being called ableist or otherwise phobic.

People notice trends and fashions all the time and it is normal to talk about it. More recently discussion of the exploration of identity has become taboo subject. This isn’t normal and tbh the attempts to shut down discussion are more concerning than the phenomenon itself.

I’m shocked at how PoTS is being referred to in this thread. Some sort of ‘fashionable’ ailment, fabricated or worse fabricated by proxy and all the other ill informed nonsense.
My son has PoTS, was in primary school when it was diagnosed and only by sheer luck if a knowledgable paediatrician recognising the symptoms quickly.
He does everything he can to be ‘normal’ but that takes huge effort from us all including his medical team.
My idiot of an ex egged on by his equally idiotic new partner tried the fabricated illness thing and failed dismally, because err you know, it’s a thing and he has it.
how i could fabricate the change in his heart rate on an ecg machine when i wasn’t even in the same room is impressive! there are many ways people adapt to chronic illness and some of them can look attention seeking or performative but in my experience that’s generally linked to their personality type than the illness.
singling out a largely misunderstood debilitating illness is unfair, harmful and perpetuates myths galore making the life of people like my child even harder. as his mum i have to advocate for him, support him, challenge him to try things when he finds them tough and generally fight for him to have the best quality of life he can and reach his full potential.

Yes, I meant to mention that when I was talking about self diagnosis above!

Women are far, far more likely to have their symptoms dismissed than men. So this seems likely to leave many to feel that it's their only option. (I think it's interesting that we are, as a group, sympathetic to women with symptoms related to something like endometriosis, which is often dismissed, and not sympathetic to those who have symptoms they consider caused by eg POTS.)

What strikes me (since this is on the feminism board perhaps we'd like to look at some feminist perspectives rather than just mockery) is two things.

1. Self-diagnosis is being denigrated and mocked, and yet we know that women's health problems are not taken as seriously as men's and that there is bias in medicine. Perhaps for many young women self-diagnosis is the only part available to them?

1. If you believe in your own superpower to identify the real disabled people from the fake ones, then perhaps you could consider why some young women might make a disability (according to you). Some posters have mentioned attention seeking - what is attention seeking really? Attachment needing. What is calling all of these (again according to certain posters) young women to be serving attachment and connection? Why are they not about to get that through family and social relationships? Perhaps time would be better spent understanding and coming alongside, rather than this distinctly anti-feminist mess on this thread.

Agree.
Disabled people used to be hidden away, I can't get out much. I work from home
Now through social media we can find connection with each other and share our lives with the wider world.

Again, it's weird how this kind of sharing is seen as "brave" and "honest" if it's cancer but not if it is a less well known condition

No it isn't. "By proxy" means someone else is doing it on your behalf. (As in a proxy vote is when someone votes in your behalf - did you think that a proxy vote is just another word for a vote?!). 😂

The clinical world is moving away from these diagnosed anyway, we talk about factitious and fabricated illness.

This thread is full of disinformation being espoused as fact, so you're not the only one!

I was mangled in a RTA many years ago. There is a small section of these people who glamourise and even want to experience my type of disability.

That pisses me right off.

I still reckon there's a trend for certain people to use walking sticks unnecessarily.

If that makes me ableist, then so be it.

People are always going to explore with identity. When i was a teen I was a "skater". Can i skateboard? No and certainly not now lol.

I just dont think you can try control how people identify and by doing so nobody wins. And as Ive said so before, this perhaps is more visible because of social media.

Same. Using a stick is annoying and a faff and I hate drawing attention to myself.

I just think we are at risk of walking out of one batshit social contagion into another. As soon as people start attempting to shut down the conversation you know there is potentially a problem. Personally I don’t even think this is about faking disability or even about disability at all. It’s different to that. It’s more about identity.

I personally find self diagnosis problematic - for all kinds of reasons (for example, getting it wrong and missing the opportunity to have something else picked up and properly treated, as well as providing fuel for the kinds of attitudes displayed on this thread).

I also think that self diagnosis may well be the start of a slippery slope into a kind of self ID / transabled sort of scenario. As someone with a physical disability that I would really rather not live with I find the idea of "identifying" as disabled very offensive. I do not "identify" as disabled. It is a material fact about my body, and one that I wish, wish, wish I could "identify" out of.

But, having said all of that, I still find comments on this thread offensive. It is perfectly possible to have a conversation about social contagion, about the idea that that there may be some sort of social capital associated with a visual display of disability,* about the ways in which these phenomena intersect without policing the use of mobility aids by others. It is miserable to need to use a mobility aid in public, people are often unpleasant and sometimes violent to those who are disabled (I have been assaulted in the past, by someone who took issue with a device I was using to get around), and someone using a walking stick who doesn't need it doesn't affect me one iota. (This is, for example, in contrast with the use of women's changing facilities by people of the male sex, where the presence of one male potentially affects all the women there.)

*I find the assumption that there is some sort of social capital fascinating. My experience is the opposite!