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?

I think what you are saying is true if I accused a particular individual of appropriating disability, of judging them of not being disabled etc

But I'm not doing that. I'm never going to call someone out because I think they aren't disabled - even the people who park in my local mini Tesco car park disabled spot and rush in and out without displaying a badge. I do not query individuals.

But I think it is completely different to query a group, a cluster, however you want to describe it.

You can disagree with me but I still think it is reasonable to ask what is going on.

I adopted my daughters. Their birth mother was involved in a highly sophisticated programme of fictitious illness by proxy on one of them and on another child.

I have a lot of concerns about fictitious illness as a result. And you cant tell me it doesnt exist.

It is deeply concerning if people are claiming an identity based on fabricated illness. We are allowed to talk about it. You cannot pull out a card that gives you the right to determine the conversation and everyone else has to acquiesce.

From the Guardian a few months ago.

www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/01/the-number-of-people-with-chronic-conditions-is-soaring-are-we-less-healthy-than-we-used-to-be-or-overdiagnosing-illness

Myasthenia Gravis. Yes. Diagnosed by a neurologist and by antibody tests and SFEMG (not that it is anyone's business but mine and my neurologists)

I'm not trying to do that. But I am entitled to call out anyone who claims you can look at someone and "know" whether or not they are disabled. Because I am absolutely entitled to educate people about invisible disability and how it presents and about my disability in particular

Diagnostic rates of severe ADHD, as Kendra had, are actually quite stable. But those with severe ADHD are now vastly outnumbered by those with mild ADHD. As with autism, there have been staggering increases in the number of people diagnosed with ADHD in the last 30 years, but that growth is almost all at the milder end of the spectrum.
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But ADHD is slowly being incorporated into the identities of many young people. Some support groups discourage the attempt to overcome ADHD traits. People are told to unmask and to share their ADHD selves with others. But learning to control our moods, behaviour and impulses is part of growing up, whether one has ADHD or not. We all become more socially competent, gain focus and are better able to cope through practice. Encouraging young people to do otherwise may be well-intentioned but potentially sets them up for non-recovery. The rise in subtler ADHD presentations in adults may also undermine a young person’s expectation that their difficulties will disappear in time. A growing population of adults have incorporated ADHD into their self-concept. When a medical problem is part of a person’s identity, it becomes inescapable.

I think that's very suggestive, especially when it comes to a subset of young people who have (a) a certain personal identity forged in online circles and (b) multiple comorbid conditions which are often not formally diagnosed.

It's not that difficult to encounter the Extremely Online Girl who, after giving you her pronouns, rattles off a list of up to a dozen conditions she says she has, from autism to lactose intolerance.

But your children's biological mum I assume had Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Which is also an illness, so whilst they are a very small amount of people faking illnesses or using mobility aids - that makes them ill. If someone is really going to lengths to do so (they often make themselves actually sick in the process). I'm not saying I support faking an illness (I don't) but many PPs in this thread have engaged in ideas of what disabled people look like and thus believe that many young women are faking illnesses or using mobility aids when they don't need them. When in reality some if those posts failed to acknowledge invisible disabilities and thus they think they're protecting the 'real' disabled people. When many of those people are likely disabled.

Also I wasn't just addressing your comments but also the comments of many across the thread which were along similar lines - so I just wanted to address them in one post.

An auto-immune condition.

Out of interest was it triggered by anything in particular.....by covid or similar, for example? Have you always lived with it?

I have had it since my late teens. No, no trigger, but there are a lot of auto -.immune conditions in my family which would indicate a genetic link.

Can I ask why you are interested @Shortshriftandlethal ?

That's fair. Like I said, I would not call out an individual. I have no idea what they might be suffering. My younger daughter is particularly pretty and is therefore not seen as disabled - even at school they didnt believe her asd diagnosis and the PIP assessor basically thought she must be able to cook and read and do maths because she came across so pleasantly (overturned at MA - the GP wrote "not as able as she looks" on his submission).

Because we're having a conversation/discussion and you have mentioned that you have a health condition. I tend to be interested in lots of things, especially if we're talking about them.

You’re talking about people with a very serious mental health issue, which is also a protected disability in its own right. These people need help - not judgement.

I think you're absolutely right about invisible disabilities.

I am also concerned about the issue of people who fake illnesses making themselves sick in the process.

Given what we know about the demographics of the girls who are enthralled with gender ID, their wide ranging vulnerabilities, an uptick in them using sticks is concerning.

Maybe they genuinely need them and always have and the uptick is a growth in confidence. If so great. But maybe that uptick is a result of an increase in underlying cause, which needs looking into.

Or maybe they don't need the sticks and are identifying into disability. If this is the issue, then as you say, it's a mental health concern. Given the extreme lengths this group has already demonstrated that they will go to, it worries me where this might lead.

For me, the big difference is how difficult it can be to get diagnosed as disabled and how skeptical even many doctors are about disability, esp for girls and women. E.g., I have Tourette's. I did not seek this diagnosis: a doctor noticed my tics and referred me to a specialist, who happened to be one of the leading Tourette's doctors. I haven't gained anything from the diagnosis since I was already collecting disability. But I've had other docs, including neurologists, assume I was faking. One neurologist even repeatedly yelled at me to stop ticcing, as if I was doing it to annoy him. I've known many other women who struggled to get a diagnosis for their medical problems. So I am very wary of those who question disabilities. It makes it more difficult for everyone with an invisible disability bc it adds to the narrative that people, esp women who we all know are hysterical attention seekers, are faking their disability and that the general public can know who is and is not disabled.

I think some people malinger. They need a different kind of help. But I've known many more people who are afraid to use a mobility aid when it would help them. (I don't care if they are fully disabled, if a walking stick makes walking or standing safer or more comfortable, I hope people will use them.) I think when more people use mobility aids, they become more accepted so are more likely to be used by those who need them.

It’s when people are hurtful and question it that’s the worst
I had posted on a thread on here and mentioned an allergy to exercise/heat got “bollocks, any excuse just to be fat”
like.. sure I inject a biologic and under dermatology for it but I’m just making it up!

But I am entitled to call out anyone who claims you can look at someone and "know" whether or not they are disabled.

But that isn't what this discussion is about, and I doubt very much that there's anyone on this thread that isn't aware that some disabilities can be invisible.

What people are talking about is people - generic "people", not "that specific person that I saw the other day who didn't outwardly look disabled" - who are appropriating disability as some kind of identity when they are not actually disabled at all.

That it happens doesn't mean anyone can tell by looking who they are, just that we acknowledge that it happens.

We all know about things like PIP assessments, but in important ways disability provision relies on the honour system. I sometimes use the disabled loo if my mobility is particularly bad, but usually I don't because, if I don't absolutely need it, I want to leave it free for someone who needs it more than me.

And the girls I'm thinking of aren't necessarily pretending to be disabled in a cynical way. They're often sad, anxious, alienated, spending too much time online, ruminating on their worries, looking for labels for their alienation, because if you can label it, maybe you can control it. And if loneliness is a problem, they can bond with others who've labelled their situation the same way.

You know how, when we were kids, music was often a way of overcoming alienation? In different ways, of course. I remember the difference between those kids who were into REM and those who were into Kiss. Michael Stipe spoke to sensitive, often gay kids and said "you may feel alone now, but it's all part of growing up and it will get better." Paul Stanley spoke to weird misfit kids and said "don't listen to anyone who says you're unpopular, you're part of the millions strong Kiss Army and that makes you part of a bigger crowd than they can imagine."

In retrospect that's very benign considering some of the ways alienated kids can connect.

And we also know there are sometimes psychosomatic elements to chronic illness.

The Reddit thread I linked upthread is really interesting because it was made 3 years ago in a smallish trans community that's set up to facilitate difficult conversations, and tries to avoid the dogpiling of the big trans subreddits. There's one long post by a disabled poster that's worth reading in full: Bizarre uptick of queer people using canes? : r/honesttransgender

Couple of outtakes:
Probably the biggest group I met was people claiming to have symptoms like vague chronic pain with no diagnosis. Chronic pain is a legitimate reason to use a mobility aid, but ideally you’d get evaluated first. I mean use a mobility aid when you need it, but see a doc to be sure you’re getting an appropriate aid and know how to use it. And get a diagnosis of some kind of actually permanent condition before identifying yourself as a disabled person and making yourself a local spokesperson for the disabled community. I never cared about people doing what they want for themselves, but I routinely got talked over about disability by people who have been using a cane for 2 months for a few hours per week for undiagnosed sore knees or whatever.
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I met so many people claiming to have medical conditions that they clearly did not understand at all to a point that it could only be dishonesty. I met someone claiming to have spasticity (not a muscle spasm, actual neurological spasticity) while also claiming to have diminished reflexes, for example. No doctor would confuse this or allow a patient to misunderstand something that serious, and it’s very obvious even if you just google real quick. It just became very clear that there were people around me who did not have the disabilities they claimed to have and had no idea what it was actually like to live with such a disability.

TLDR: It's kind of the old "dad's been reading the medical dictionary again" problem, but with the added drama of young women.

Yes, but if someone says they have cancer (for instance) it wouldn't cross my mind to ask if they have been "formally diagnosed".

DD’s first auto immune condition (coeliac disease) we believe was triggered by shingles. Obviously she must always have had the gene for coeliac disease but it only seemed to turn on after shingles. But hard to say for sure to be honest as she was a bit randomly “pukey” before the shingles.

since then she’s collected a few more autoimmune illnesses but that’s not unusual, once you have one you tend to get others. They’re now beginning to think POTS is autoimmune and they know EDS is linked to autoimmune illnesses.

yes to it running in families. A sibling of mine has coeliac and Hashimotos. All of which are formally diagnosed with blood tests, etc.

My dad had GPA and Srogjens and the treatment for his GPA killed him in his 60s. His conditions also formally diagnosed.

DH is obviously not related to my family but is DD’s dad and he has bullous pemphigoid which is a rare autoimmune disease. Diagnosed by biopsy.

Don’t think my siblings, my dads or dh’s were triggered by anything. My sibling and dad were pre covid.

dh was after covid times but he’s never had a noticeable bout of covid. However there’s a lot of evidence that there’s been a big increase in autoimmune diseases including diabetes since covid became a thing. Maybe this is what’s making younger people sicker?

For Dh’s illness I read some research which seemed to suggest the increase in numbers of people with BP was more linked to the vaccine rather than covid itself so God knows.

@MoominUnderWater Wow that's a lot. I hope you get more answers 💐

Look! You seem incredibly touchy.....so let's just leave it there.

Maybe you've had experience with people doubting the veracity of your condition, I don't know. But why involve yourself in a discussion if you are not open or prepared to share some of your story? That is generally the way it goes on this forum. Nobody expects people just to accept everything they say without any explanation, qualification, or exposition of the reasons and ways we have arrived at where we are.

Not touchy at all. Just genuinely curious. I would love to know your thought process. I'd explained in quite some detail in my previous post what happens to me if I exert myself. So I can understand wanting to know the condition, in fact I am always happy to talk about it as I am keen to raise awareness (it is definitely underdiagnosed due to lack of awareness) ...but I dont understand the follow up question about whether I have been formally diagnosed? So I am curious where you were coming from.

And it's not that I have had people in real life doubt the veracity of my condition, but it's most odd to share you have a health condition (and give quite a lot of detail about the mechanics of it) and then he asked if you have been formally diagnosed. If someone says they've broken their leg do you ask to see the X ray?

While I was waiting for diagnosis I described it as "I might have Myasthenia". Indeed while I was waiting to find out if it was the generic or autoimmune variant I even said that.

Just curious what it is about invisible disabilities that makes people think that is a reasonable question to ask

I do think covid; the covid vaccination programme, and the lockdown have all contributed to an uptick in health, and mental health, related issues, most certainly. And considerable set-backs for certain demographics of young children.

I started to develop some heart related issues which I'm pretty convinced came about because of the vaccine. Nothing life threatening in my case, but persistent and worrysome nonetheless. The vaccine, and covid itself seems to have triggered a myriad of different complaints and conditions -maybe according to an individual's existing, under-lying weaknesses.