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?

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.

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).

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.

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.

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!

Your typical blue hairs....

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

@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.

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.

I have already explained thati have 2 daughters on PIP, one on high rate mobility, the other on standard. And my concern is people appropriating disability. You can disagree with that of course but you cannot accused me of not understanding Invisible disability.

As it turns out, there was a concert in town that evening by the artist Yungblud. His fans are mainly girls/young women with a goth/punk/alternative look. I believe that the reason I saw so many young women with sticks is because this demographic was in town. Many contributors to this thread have talked about the cross over between this group and health and identity issues.

This is upsetting to read. I work full time and claim PIP while having rheumatoid arthritis and sometimes wearing dungarees. Horrible to know I'm being judged for limping while wearing dungarees. They're easy for me to wear due to having no buttons or zips.
I have got a stick and a green lanyard for very difficult situations but I'm genuinely apprehensive about using them and it seems I'm right to be so.

It’s a shame, obviously only trans people and disability fakers would wear dungarees - burn them all now. And someone alert all the farmers!

Or absolutely ignore the judgemental arseholes who would look and assume someone’s medical history and disability status based purely on their outfit or (gasp) their hair colour. Bet you look cute AF in your dungers hen

I went down a TikTok rabbit hole last night on the back of this thread. I typed in POTS and autism and one particular returned result was fascinating. There was only a passing reference to POTS as it turned out, but it was a young FTM trans person who had facial hair they were obviously trying to cultivate into a beard and moustache, and recent top surgery which they were thrilled with.

But then, after the 'chest reveal' there was a video of them modelling all the clothes they said they 'could finally wear and look good in, now they've had their surgery' but the clothes were all stereotypically female. So they were twirling for the camera in strappy dresses and girl's crop tops etc with their beard and moustache and no more boobs. WTF is that about? They want to be socially accepted as a man but still go around in girl's clothes?

The same person did an awful lot of talking about their eating disorders and how they'd messed up their digestive system and now have GERD from years of induced vomiting. It was obvious from their videos that their weight was all over the place from obese to very thin, although that could have as much to do with the 'gender affirming' hormone therapy as any disordered eating, I believe.

Then they talked about how their FTM hormone treatment has messed with their health in other ways including exacerbating their GERD.

And then they talked about their MH and their numerous psychotic episodes.

There was a lot to unpack. No idea whether they used a stick to walk, mind.

Also to all of you saying that your not mocking disabled people just those who pretend to be disabled. The whole point about those who have invisible and hidden disabilities is that you do not know if they aredisabled or not. So what qualifies you to decide. Thus you are playing into tropes that people fake disability and that x condition is not worthy of being a disability.

Also as many have mentioned its so hard to get diagnosed with POTS or MCAS because many doctors are not even trained in them. People spend years looking for a diagnoses especially women, when we know about the women's pain gap. So yes social media has helped, especially women get diagnosed because they've often been suffering for years (in those years you might think they were pretending to be sick or fishing for a diagnoses but newsflash to get diagnosed with something you actually have to have been suffering with it and disabled people are fishing for diagnoses before we get them because we want treatment none of us know that we have incurable conditions).

Social media has helped loads of people justhave the confidence to use mobility aids that they needed but dint because of fear of judgement and abelism. So yes I think it's a good thing that young people and women feel that they can use their mobility aids when needed. It's a good thing that social media is educating women especially on the fact that the medical misogyny and gaslighting they've faced is not okay and has normalisedpain and conditions for women. It's a good thing that it's eecuated women to know that what they've been facing for years isn't normal and help them to better advocate for themselves to doctors. In fact many OBGYNs do this on social medica because they care Dr Fran, Dr Arif etc and they have also educated their colleagues to know more about these conditions.

Also 16 million people in the UK (24% of the population are disabled - 26% are women and 22% men). Disabled people have always been pushed out and alienated and this sort of discourse just furthers that. Why is it a shock to see disabled people out perhaps using mobility aids? Maybe reflect on that, maybe consider how many places are inaccessible (and stop thinking about accessibilityas just a wheelchair ramp, there are so many different disabilities and so little places which are accessible). @Arran2024 Maybe you should have talked about the concerns then and whether or not it's a trend with Youngblood's fan base. Also having disabled children doesn't absolve you of abelism or mean you can't be ableist (that's like when people say to me I have a Black friend so I can't be racist). You're not flying the flag for disabled people by doing this and just focusing on those who you think are 'appropriating disability' because they're likely disabled and you don't know. Maybe challenge structural abelism, maybe challenge the medical misogyny that means women what longer for diagnoses, treatment, pain management etc.

I'd have thought that people who were genuinely disabled would be pissed off at at other people appropriating disability. But now apparently if someone says they're disabled, we have to accept that they are disabled, in much the same way that if someone says they are the opposite sex, we have to accept that they are the opposite sex.

All very bizarre. To my mind when you get a large number of people claiming to be disabled when they're not, all that does is make things more difficult for people with genuine disabilities.

Sorry....you post makes no coherent sense whatsoever. You do seem to have an issue, though, with people talking about the trend for walking sticks; its over-lap with 'queer' identities and with self diagnosed mental health conditions.

That's not what we are saying.
We are saying you can't tell from looking at someone whether they are disabled.

My disability doesn't affect my appearance. It doesnt usually affect my gait or movement. There's no pain involved. Just if I do more than a small amount of activity I gradually lose the ability for my nerves to talk to my muscles and get weaker and weaker until I can't even speak or swallow or hold my head up. Most of those symptoms appear in the evening and I tend to feel at my best in the morning

In fact I would say our argument is far more analogous with the argument that biological sex just "is", it's not how we present to the world, it's how we actually are that determines whether or not we are disabled.

Well you kind of do have to accept it in a way
mine are all invisible, so it’s either accept it or ask me to produce medical paperwork

a lot of women with endometriosis use mobility aids too which affects younger women

Do you have a formal diagnosis? If so, what is it?