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?

The thing is, if appropriating a disability is a trend trend that is happening (which seems to be the case judging by my recent experiences of going to gigs and any other events where there are lots of young people) I do think it risks causing significant problems for genuinely disabled people.

Disability is a very different protected characteristic to eg sexual orientation. Society doesn't really need to do much to accommodate people who are same sex attracted other than eg letting people get married to partners of the same sex. Disability by its nature requires accommodation and change. If lots of additional people are claiming to be disabled and asking for accommodation it is taking away resources for those who genuinely need it. And if lots of people think people are pretending to be disabled, they will be less willing to help. Giving up your seat on the bus/tube for someone who says that they are disabled has always been an occasional inconvenience for able-bodied people that is accepted, but if there are a lots of young women perceived as falsely claiming a disability everyone will become more skeptical and unwilling. I don't think it will normalise disability and cane usage - I think it does quite the opposite.

I don't think it's surprising that there is a link between LGBTQ+++ and this. That, and in particular adoption of a non-binary identity, was the last identity politics trend and this seems to be the next one, so it will attract the same people. It's also not surprising that it seems to be mostly young women as young women do seem particularly susceptible to these kind of identity fads.

Having said this, I don't know how we tackle this given that it's hard to judge at an individual level. I wouldn't advocate questioning people who say they are disabled before giving up your seat of course. But I am nevertheless worried by this trend and hope it will die out quickly.

I think this is a good point. I would like to be optimistic that it's a harm reduction.

Though I do wonder about the extremes some may go to in identifying with a disability. I do think it's worth keeping an eye on and I'm glad the OP raised it.

Sorry, but can you point out to me where I was "really needlessly rude"?

Are you confusing me with another poster?

What makes you think I begrudge disabled people anything?

But that also has to be balanced against the harm done to disabled people when people imply their very real physical battles are a mere invention

I know people whose physical battles have been compounded by friends and family asserting those type of opinions, meaning that alongside very real physical difficulties (and medication side effects that are often unpleasant) they also have to isolate themselves from people they once held close. This includes people whose condition has had them on ventilation in ICU.

I'm not thinking about people faking a disability to get PIP or any of the other points raised. I completely appreciate invisible disabilities.This is not about me judging whether someone has a disability or not.

My concern is vulnerable young girls identifying as disabled when they are not and causing potential significant harm to themselves in the process. Some fantasise about being amputees, blind or deaf. This is very rare but gender dysphoria was also very rare and look where we are now.

We have seen the lengths girls will go to, self harm, anorexia, PBs, mastectomies. I am not fear mongering and I hope this is completely misplaced. Trans is moving on and we need to keep an eye on where it's going.

Oh god I'm really sorry - I had mixed you up with @RoyalCorgi

I think it may just be less shame/taboo about having a mobility aid. I can imagine a lot of people struggling and just not walking very far etc with some chronic conditions that make walking hard because they didn't want to 'look disabled' but with increasing acceptance, more people feel able to go out and about with mobility aids, which they may not need all the time but can help with flare ups of certain fatigue or joint issues.

As others have pointed out, this is very much a feminist issue bc women's health concerns are more likely to be minimized or completely dismissed. Even doctors often see us as hysterical women who, at best, are exaggerating for attention. It takes longer for us to get diagnosed.

It makes it harder for all disabled women, including those of us with visible disabilities. (And many of us have both visible and invisible disabilities.)

I have and wear a sunflower lanyard, as I have since well before COVID. I got it after a particularly horrendous experience on the tram where I was having a horrific panic attack and people were shoving past me, and saying horrible stuff like "she must be on drugs" etc. older people get a lot of stock but actually an elderly gentleman was the only person who asked if I was ok and tried to help (and insisted I have his seat) and he even walked me into work to make sure I was ok. Id heard of them being used in airports and thought it would be useful. I've had panic attacks since and since I've worn it people do actually tend to me more understanding and helpful.

I don't look disabled (nor do I look my age which is almost 40 😬) but I can't cope in crowded places after nearly being knocked out and crushed by a crowdsufer in 2007. And public transport is the worst. I need to be able to get off as quickly as I can of if I feel it happening, I do have meds I take but they only really help with palpitations.

And yes I did also have a mask exemption during COVID because everytime I tried to cover my face it resulted in my experiencing flashbacks to the time I died in hospital and had to be resuscitated, it was that bad that during COVID even seeing an ambulance was causing me to reexperince the trauma.

So yes you lot would probably judge me (but good news I work and now have normal blonde hair....)

But this is intrinsically linked with invisible disabilities because the only evidence people have that these people are making it up is that they "don't look ill/disabled".
And the other limb is a really regressive insistence that things like CFS/EDS/long covid etc are psychological when they are very real physical conditions.
Some of the most fantastic people I know have CFS. They have a real zest for life. Their body just has other ideas.

This too. 20 years it took me to get a diagnosis. And lots of horribly dismissive doctors appointments during that time.
The difficulty in getting a diagnosis, and difficulty in getting conditions like endometriosis properly understood, really is a feminist issue

Yes true. As I think I said previously, I don't think that's helpful at all.

But if there is a trend, we do need to notice it. We do need to be watchful of vulnerable girls. It may be nothing (I hope it isn't) but given how quickly these things can latch on on social media, we (who are technically not so great like myself) can see it coming. So I'm grateful the OP raised it.

I didn't really want to post my previous post but I sadly don't think it's against any realms of possibility.

Sorry I think maybe you misunderstood me. I'm worried that girls will harm themselves to make themselves actually disabled. I'm sorry to have to be blunt about as it's really upsetting but that's my concern.

It's not just a question of them not looking disabled - although I have noticed a lot of these young people using sticks have a normal gait - but for me a large part of it is how the numbers have exploded and the links with certain subcultures.

It would be a bit like if you suddenly saw loads of goths wearing hearing aids. You see one or 2 and you just think it's someone who happens to like dressing in a goth style and happens to need a hearing aid, but when you see 100s of them and you were recall that you never saw any such cases until a year or two ago it makes you think something must be going on to cause this.

I have a normal gait. But sometimes my legs suddenly start to "go". So the stick helps me stay safe. I also can't stand for any length of time at all and a stick helps me then too

And in the goth example - what if the trend was that lots of deaf people were drawn to the goth culture due to their deaf communities they had formed with other deaf people. Or found the goth culture in some way comforting or reassuring in a world that they found isolating. It's one thing to notice a pattern, it's another to assume what is cause and what is effect

There have been a lot of posts by disabled people on this thread explaining that they are drawn to colour, that the disability came before the assumption of the colourful style. But those posts dont seem to have got much attention.

Absolutely. You could well be right.

But this is about identity as an ideology. If this ideology moves across from trans to disability, what issues might arise from that?

This is a group convinced that it is possible to change sex and that this can be achieved by medication and surgery which has high risks of bodily harm and sterilisation.

If this group then turns to disability as an identity choice, will they stick to something akin to gender non conformity or something much more harmful?

And in the goth example - what if the trend was that lots of deaf people were drawn to the goth culture due to their deaf communities they had formed with other deaf people. Or found the goth culture in some way comforting or reassuring in a world that they found isolating. It's one thing to notice a pattern, it's another to assume what is cause and what is effect

It would be a possible explanation but a) it wouldn't explain why there was such a sharp and sudden increase in young people needing hearing aids and b) Occam's razor suggests that the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. The simplest explanation in my view is that there has been a fad of claiming trans and non-binary identities, and there seems to be an new fad amongst the same group of identifying as disabled.

Honestly cane usage amongst young people is something that I have seen very shapely rise at gigs that I attend literally over the last year or 2 only. It used to be that you would see one or two at a gig and now it's in the tens or twenties. You can say that it's due to canes being normalised, in the same way that people have said that the explosion of people saying that they are trans and have gender dysphoria is due to that being more accepted, but everything I have seen points to social contagion.

That's OK. 🙂 I thought you'd confused me with another poster - although I didn't think their comment was particularly that rude either.

I don't think I begrudge disabled people anything, and having worked for over 25 years in a NHS trust providing mental health and learning disability services I think I have a reasonable understanding of invisible disabilities, but I think it would be naive to believe that everybody who identifies as disabled is necessarily disabled, or is disabled in any meaningful way. (See my previous posts regarding the ONS Family Resources Survey ).

I think perhaps you and some other posters might be confusing what I think is a legitimate question - "what is a disability?" - with a denial that disability exists at all. That isn't my position.

I tend to agree with the earlier post from @AmateurNoun that if the concept of "disabilty" becomes appropriated by people who are not genuinely disabled, then that must inevitably have an adverse effect on the disabled community.

Back in March Radio 4 serialised parts of "The Age of Diagnosis" by Suzanne O'Sullivan and one of the areas she looked at was the rise in the diagnosis of autism. She looked at how much of the discourse around autism was now dominated by relatively high-functioning mild cases of autism and how those with more severe and debilitating manifestations of the condition were being neglected or overlooked as "too difficult". Now whether that's true with regard to autism I don't know, but I am a bit concerned that if the disabilty net gets wider then those with real disabilities will suffer in a similar way.

The Age of Diagnosis by Suzanne O'Sullivan - 3: Autism - BBC Sounds

And yet the only people I know with bright coloured hair have genuine diagnosed disabilities (arthritis; hip condition that has required multiple operations). So it's quite possible for the "social contagion" to work the other way too and as people become disabled they reach out to other disabled people and embrace a culture where coloured hair is much more acceptable/desirable. They might also share music tastes with each other.

So possibly there are multiple trends going on here e

I think you are extrapolating into the realms of the wildly hypothetical at the expense of the very real lives of actual disabled people

I think that's a reasonable discussion to have. But it has to start with a recognition that we cannot see who is more disabled than someone else. A lot of the bad parts of invisible disability are managed in private,.and the good moments or days are the public moments.

By way of an example: If I can't walk easily, I don't go into the office. And if my legs get bad when I am in the office I am allowed to go home before they get worse. (Same if it's my vision or speech that are affected ). Therefore my colleagues only see me on the days and in the moments when my walking/vision/speech is ok.

Well, you might think so.

It would have been seen as 'wildly hypothetical ' only a decade ago re the number of trans kids.

The number of girls starving themselves to death due to anorexia is equally not 'wildly hypothetical '.

I don't think anything I have said is at the expense of disabled people. Far from it.

The discussion is about an ideology that has this far convinced vast swathes of the population that individual harm is beneficial. To attain an aim that is unattainable.

Why do you think that it is wild thinking that a group that would harm themselves to attain the impossible (change sex) would not harm themselves to attain the completely possible (become disabled)?

I thought i was simply giving an explanation of how using mobility aids as a coping strategy is (a) an issue close to my heart and (b) an inappropriate coping response.

You surely don't have to have personal experience of their level of trauma to see that what they were doing with the wheelchair is exactly what we are talking about - young women appropriating disability because it gives them a coping strategy.

But I also want to make the point that the fact that most people haven't experienced what they did is irrelevant. We cant treat them as irrelevant outliers. There are many people in this country who have suffered incredible harm as babies / toddlers / children. You cant just exclude them from the conversation. Now that would indeed be ignoring invisible disability (foetal alcohol syndrome, brain injury, developmental trauma, attachment disorder, mental health issues..all are endemic in people adopted from the UK care system and most people can't see it).

I haven't suggested that anyone is lying. I have merely wondered about a possible trend, about people perhaps using inappropriate coping strategies, and about them taking resources. This is reasonable in terms of the debate, I think.

You accused me of being spiteful and now obsessed, needing therapy. I think that's unfair. As it happens I have had a lot of therapy to help me deal with two highly traumatised young people. I will always advocate for them and that's what I'm doing here.

I’m not sure why you’re going after Cassandra like this, but it’s coming over as bullying now.

You asked an intrusive question, got an answer, then bristled on when asked why you wanted to know.

Calling them hypersensitive etc is just rudeness. And now you’re chasing them and those who agree with them off the thread.

Nothing about us without us.

For what it’s worth, this pattern (intrusive question followed by insults if you dare to challenge on why they’re asking) is a big part of why many disabled people are reluctant to be seen with mobility aids, or choose to get brightly coloured in your face versions to try and stave off this sort of bullshittery.