Girls Using Walking Sticks

[Arran2024]

I saw a post about this on X this morning. Apparently it is a trend.

Anyway, I went into town this afternoon and sure enough, I saw a number of young women with walking sticks. None of them looked like they were leaning hard on their stick, just kind of walking along like it was a big umbrella.

Is anyone else seeing this?

It was just clumsy wording and i apologise.

Because it's the natural home for hate speech? 😉

Just how many young women and girls are there out there who have suddenly started using sticks when previously they may have felt too stigmatised or proud to do so, but could have benefited from them nonetheless?

POTS apparently affects 0.2% of the population and EDS anywhere between 1 in 5,000 to 1 in 250,000 depending on the exact type of EDS you have.

Am I to believe that in a small city with a population of less than 150k I've encountered two teenaged girls who both genuinely need walking sticks in the space of less than two hours?

Social capital can be complicated, I think (and not only in this context) , because it depends where you are looking for it. For example:

• 'mainstream' householders who have someone knock on their door and try to convert them to a religion may regard that person as a pestilential nuisance, but within their religious community (whose opinion and support they value more), being willing to beard householders in their den may give them status and admiration, and their accounts of hostile responses will garner sympathy.

• the kind of teenage behaviours and style choices that drive parents and teachers to distraction may give street cred within a teenage peer group, precisely because the adults don't like it and doing it is an act of defiance.

So in the case of an invisible disability, I could envisage a situation for some people where the aggro of being "out" as disabled in the world at large is outweighed, socially and emotionally, by the sympathy and admiration of a small group (friends, or activists, or an online community) whose support that person values more.

You are, rather bizarrely, assuming POTS and EDS are the only relevant conditions

I have already mentioned my condition, Myasthenia. (which, as an aside, is thought to be underdiagnosed).

There's also conditions like arthritis, and muscular dystrophies etc.

i quite often find myself in a lift with someone else with a stick, and often end up chatting. People are dealing with all sorts of conditions, things you might not realise even exist.

Added up, a decent percentage of the population is disabled. Why should we hide away? Why should we avoid using mobility aids just because some judgy fucker will think we are using them for fun?

Just how many young women and girls are there out there who have suddenly started using sticks when previously they may have felt too stigmatised or proud to do so, but could have benefited from them nonetheless?

It’s the same (recycled) argument used for why there’s been a 4000% increase in girls IDing as trans. “Society is so much more accepting now”. But at the same time we are supposed to believe there is a trans genocide or that inexplicably a bunch of women on a feminist board are ableist meanies (even though many of us have disabilities or long term chronic health conditions ourselves) for noticing a growing trend amongst young girls from a particular demographic.

I'm not sure it's at all fair or sensible to extrapolate from one to the other.

And it's very well-known that women face a harder battle to believed by doctors, so can wait years for diagnosis

And I have already explained that better and more sensitive tests mean far more people are being diagnosed with my condition in the last 5 years. That's not self ID it's specific blood tests for specific antibodies.

And the same applies to other conditions too.

Where once we might have faced dismissal after dismissal by GPs who thought we were just making a fuss, now we are getting diagnoses that give us the confidence and guidance to get the mobility aids we need.

Combine that with a much nicer range of mobility aids and you start to see a pattern

When my dad bought me a stick in my twenties, because I was without a diagnosis but he could see how much I struggled on my commute, I cried. Because it was an "old man stick" and I was a 20 something professional who wanted to look fashionable. I would have felt quite differently had all the nice options we have now been available. And seeing people like Christina Applegate normalise using a stick on the red carpet also helped me feel brave enough to use one. Whereas I don't remember anyone doing that when I was at my most fashion conscious

A decent percentage of the population is classed as disabled one way or another, as the definition of disability has been hugely widened over recent years. But what percentage of the under 25 female population is disabled with something that genuinely affects their mobility, but not enough to use a wheelchair? I''m going to guess that it's vanishingly small.

I was just going to mention this.

Is it a huge coincidence that the right wing shit of a human Lord Toby Young, wrote this today about that article?

https://x.com/toadmeister/status/1942161695549399469?t=MQOaDSrnBRBnp1bhAS2e-g&s=19

Is it a coincidence that there's been a campaign to cut disability benefits?
MN has been flooded with so many suss posters in recent years. I think there's a lot of planted stuff and stuff from political agitators.

I used to think mn was lefty. So many right leaning people these days and posts that are all about how they earn over 100k and can't afford a holiday because of people on benefits.

I am massively 🤨 at this thread.

Agreed

And I think it's notable that the "it's the same as the trans thing" posters don't engage in my explanations of things like how there used to be no fashionable sticks, and no famous female role models using sticks, and we used to not be able to "find" other disabled people with our conditions so easily whereas now even when bedbound we can join groups on social media and online chat groups and discuss what helps and what doesn't, and encourage each other to over come the fear and and embarrassment of using sticks.

It seems that these are inconvenient truths to be ignored.

I have always "looked" abled bodied. I have always been disabled since my late teens. I feel much less disabled now I have a diagnosis and have made peace with it and use a wheelchair/stick as required. I feel less disabled because I am stuck at home less. I can go out to museums or shopping or the theatre. All things I had tended to avoid doing because they made me ill so fast.

15% of women in their twenties have some sort of disability, so the number who use a mobility aid is unlikely to be vanishingly small, especially if you add in people who aren't disabled but have a temporary condition which makes as stick useful. I used a stick for a few months when I had a knee problem, and DD borrowed it when she had a minor sports injury that made walking painful for a week or so.

I'd actually imagine that far more people struggle with mobility enough to benefit from a cane than struggle enough to require a wheelchair.

I think that's an important part of it, actually; that people are unlikely to use a wheelchair unless they strictly need it to get around. They're expensive, often unwieldy, and make accessibility far harder. I'm sure there are many people who would benefit from using a chair without yet requiring one, but don't use one as they finds the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. On the other hand, canes are relatively affordable, often lightweight and portable, and provide a small but beneficial boost to those with mobility issues, balance problems, muscle weakness or fatigue. Therefore people are more likely to use a cane to make their lives better without waiting until they physically can't walk without one. Personally I think that's a good thing; there's no virtue in suffering needlessly from a disability when there's something that can help.

That's how I used mine, in the few years I needed it. I was suffering from chronic fatigue and recovering from recurrent hypermobility-related injuries, and using the cane for that time meant I gave my body the chance to build back some strength and allow me to get back to my full ability. If you'd seen me at that time you may well have thought I "didn't really need" a cane, but in reality using the cane on a walk around town meant I then had the energy to also do the weekly shop, and that I wasn't then having to take painkillers to stand up long enough to make dinner.

It's simply impossible to tell from the street why people need the mobility aids they do, but I would always rather give them the benefit of the doubt than start playing "no true Scotsman" with other disabled people's wellbeing. Unless they've told you themselves, or you happen to be their doctor or physiotherapist, you just don't know. And that's fine, because nobody else actually needs to know!

'some sort of disability' will include an awful lot of ASD, anxiety, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, Down Syndrome, Turner Syndrome, Dyspraxia, visual or hearing impairment, various and numerous LDs and SENs, none of which affect their ability to walk.

And even then 15% is an implausible stretch, because as I said, the parameters and definitions of disabilities have been widened hugely in recent years. I stand by my statement that the amount of females under 25 who have a disability that affects their ability to walk or stand unaided, will be vanishingly small. Remove the ones who have disabilities so severe that they cannot walk at all, not even with a stick, and it's even smaller.

Actually a lot of wheelchair users use them when they need to. Not everyone who uses a chair cannot walk at all.

It's a bit of a misunderstanding about disabled people too and puts people off using them because people think they're faking it they then get up out of it and can walk.

The other thing that people conveniently don't want to consider is the effect of the pandemic on the health of the country. There will be lots of people, young and old, who have developed long covid and Mecfs after having covid. Those conditions have comorbidities with eds and pots.

Well no, I explained earlier that both my adult daughters get PIP. I didnt read anything by Toby Young, but it was a discussion on X which was suggesting it as the new social contagion and using disability as an identity really upsets me - I dont want disability to be appropriated as a lifestyle choice.

People have given thoughtful ideas about why women might be so much more highly affected by disabilities which require walking aids. They have suggested that there is less stigma too.

It doesnt it all though. If some young women are using disability as a coping strategy, I think we should be able to discuss this.

It doesnt mean I don't believe that there are women who genuinely need walking aids. I know several. But surely we should be curious about this apparent trend?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

And maybe I don't believe them 🤔 😉

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.

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.

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!

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.