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 relevance is that when you start to see a pattern of questionable claims, or stories that don't make sense, you start to ask questions about what is going on.

Gaslighters tell you there is nothing to see here, but much of the time, there is.

So you are deliberately “baiting” other posters. I don’t quite know what point it is you think you’ve made but at least now it’s clear you aren’t arguing in good faith.

On the contrary, I think it's interesting that using a stick is being attacked as a lifestyle choice but when I dropped in a similar reference to gluten free diets I got jumped on (and rightly so). Like I say I am glad some people choose to avoid and others have to avoid it as it has massively increased the availability of products for my wheat allergic child. He doesnt mind other people being "gluten" free as there are far more products available now than in his toddler years

@Arran2024 I was thinking about how it's interesting you mention your daughter has epilepsy.
For centuries that was really stigmatised, seen as a mental health condition only. It still is in some parts of the world. But now we understand the physical causes better people can be treated and met with understanding

There are plenty of people who claim they need gluten free when in fact they just prefer it.

It has real downsides for those for whom it is serious.

One is that some places may treay it as a preferernce, rather than something serious.

The other is that catering to the gluten free is time consuming, and a risk, for restaurants, As a result,some are now refusing to feed those who are celiac, or those with allergies. Which is limiting.

How on earth do you get temper tantrum from a reasonable post? Do you always feel so attacked and get the vapours whenever you hear a disagreeing voice? You must be a nightmare to live with.

In the 19th century, Princess Alexandra wife of the future Edward 7th developed a limp following an illness.

Fashionable ladies started to copy the 'Alexandra limp' with walking sticks, and shoes were marketed with one heel higher than the other, so ladies could more easily affect it.

People do and wear strange things to be in fashion.

@JFDIYOLO
I hadn't heard of the Princess Alexandra fashion, but I have some recollection that there was a similar thing with Lord Byron, who was a cult figure across Europe for a while, even as far away as Russia. He had a limp, and some of the young men who admired him adopted one as well.

This ^

I'm reminded of a thread on Money Saving Expert forum a few years ago where on the Disability money matters board a Blue Badge holder was complaining about the blatant misuse of Blue Badges "by people who were not really disabled". 😆

Well if you'd bothered to read my later posts rather than reacting knee-jerk wise you might have realised you had jumped to the wrong conclusion.

You might really want to believe that I'd like "Policing other people's claim on disability" to be a thing, but I don't. And neither do I believe that disabilities have to be visible to be real.

But if all the other challenges you have in living day to day life with a disability are such that you really don't care about the possibility of non-disabled people appropriating disability as something that they experience or suffer from, then fair enough, but I think you are being incredibly naive. It doesn't adversely affect me but I'd have thought it might adversely affect you.

No.

These people aren't your allies or friends and aren't interested in helping disabled people.

Both the tories and labour recognise that welfare reform is required. Blue haired TRAs and other activists won't help disabled people getting more help from taxpayers. They'll probably succeed in reducing it.

I didn’t jump on you. I asked you a question about why you considered these two things in different ways. I couldn’t care less if you think some people who are gluten free are “lifestylers”. It doesn’t harm me one jot if you believe that my chonic illness is made up. People talk about this all the time and I am none the worse for it. So really you haven’t made any sort of a point. Nice try though.

This post is so ableist. It’s not a ‘trend’ to have any of the conditions that you have listed to disparage people who have them.

Agree with every word and thank you for saying it. There is a post pandemic public health crisis of physical and mental health going on that nobody wants to talk about.

I agree, it’s so ableist and disgusting.
So many dismissive and intrusive judgements on other people’s lives. Disabled women have done so much for feminism. Speaking personally we have both genetic and acquired disability affecting some of the young and older women in my family- and this is an extremely common situation in the population. This sneering thread makes me sad to see in FWR. I thought this was a feminist, thinking space.

Really hope none of you judging and condescending posters gives birth to a disabled child, becomes affected by a genetic condition yourself, or has a serious and permanently disabling accident and then has to encounter sneering of the kind you’re doing about other people on here. I’m frightened to think what your kind of attitudes, which I know are widespread, sadly, will be doing to the public services and everyday experience that disabled people have to rely on.

British culture is so hostile to disability. It seems to be getting worse. There are motivated people stoking culture wars about cutting PIP (which has a 0% fraud rate by the government’s own statistics, the lowest of all the benefits) just to save money, not because people don’t need it.

There is assisted dying being introduced, around which you can guarantee the goalposts will be moved in time to include being disabled with a corresponding breakdown in available support to those who rely on it and do want to live.

There’s the breakdown of the SEND education system and government parent-blaming that disabled kids are too expensive to educate, those examples all just off the top of my head. Disabled people are among the most likely to live in poverty in the UK. Disabled women are specifically subject to and vulnerable to domestic violence. All that doesn’t seem to be enough for some people on here.

Just to add I do think there is the potential for harm with those self-diagnosing themselves (and their children) with food intolerances or feeding their children a vegan diet. People who cut out groups of foods long-term without professional support can cause quite serious health problems for themselves or their children.

So it is important to talk about this. I would have no problem with this being discussed on a forum such as this one. You would probably get a few people saying stupid things and being insensitive and ignorant but on the whole I suspect posters would come to the discussion from a place of concern. I suspect that, as with this thread, there would also be a bunch of posters complaining that any discussion was coming from a place of hatred and mockery and is harmful for those afflicted with digestive issues but In my mind harm comes from not discussing these things or making people fearful of discussing them.

“It doesn't adversely affect me but I'd have thought it might adversely affect you.”

Like I said, you thought wrong.

It doesn’t adversely affect disabled people, and it would be really great if the non disabled people would stop speaking on behalf of disabled people who are quite able enough to speak for themselves.

This thread is just fake concern for disabled people so as to have another angle to berate trans people in general and any young person wanting to hold a stick.

And just to add, for the sake of actual facts, even the DWP themselves admit that PIP has the lowest fraud rate of any state benefit, so the posts about fake PIP claims can bog off too.

I think it's incredibly naive to think that having lots of young women appropriating a disability will not have a negative impact.

Maybe in the short-term it will increase physical access in some places, but as the perception grows that people are claiming to have disabilities that they do not have, trust will be lost and able-bodied people will be less tolerant and willing to make adjustments.

I bet some transexuals were happy at first with the increasing number of people identifying as trans, but it's ended up with an inevitable backlash and transwomen losing any rights they had previously been perceived as having to access women's spaces.

Maybe you should not talk on behalf of all disabled people.

I talked to my disabled husband, who is hemiplegic following a severe stroke, about this thread.

He's seen this phenomenon, through his work (in the field of mental health in the NHS) and socially. He certainly feels the inevitable dilution and fuzziness around definition of disability is harming him (and frankly pissing him off).

As I said earlier, I have Tourette's (among other disabilities). There has been a large increase in people claiming to have Tourette's. It has not negatively affected me. Not bc people believe I have it but bc they either thought I was faking before or they didn't really care but found my tics very annoying and were pissed that I was ticcing.

How much worse can it get than having a neurologist standing over me with his face a few inches from mine yelling at me to stop ticcing? That's what it was like before young people started claiming to have Tourette's. (BTW, if you are a health care provider, this is a very bad way to get someone to stop ticcing since stress increases both the likelihood of ticcing and the severity of tics. He probably knew that so I can only assume he wanted to punish me for my tics.) People were suspicious then, they're suspicious now. I don't see any difference at all.

Well, I think it’s incredibly stupid to believe lots of young women are faking disability simply because they are living young vibrant lives in which they happen to use a stability / mobility aid in the shape of a stick.

And I also think it’s incredibly prejudiced to use this perceived and totally unevidenced “trend” as another stick to beat trans people with.

The false narrative that people fake disability in significant numbers is demonstrably harmful to disabled people. Please stop inflating it.

For the record:

Problems I and disabled people I know have faced (since forever!) from the general public being arseholes about disability: numerous beyond counting

Problems I and disabled people I know have faced from young women using disability aids: zero

Young women carrying sticks will not make the general public any more arseholey than that already are about disability. Trust me - public arseholery is already a huuuuuge and very real problem.

Maybe listen for a minute instead of using disabled people as your latest oh-so-concerned pity fest to drum up hostility towards young people who choose to present themselves in ways you don’t like.

A physiotherapist suggested (counter intuitively to me) tjat I not be too quick to discard using a walking stick even if I felt it was not needed - but specifically to help in crowded situations (after a knee replacement).

(eg in the Big Tesco, people had been crowding, jostling or walking directly at me expecting me to be able to move (when I was stuck on the spot, the limb was not yet able to suddenly move or change direction except slowly). It worked well as a visual aid and felt safer just to be given a small bit extra space around people.

This is a brilliant post.

Maybe listen for a minute instead of using disabled people as your latest oh-so-concerned pity fest to drum up hostility towards young people who choose to present themselves in ways you don’t like.

I have a disability myself. Maybe you should try listening instead of assuming you are the voice of everyone.

As you and I know, there are quite a few of us on FWR who have disabilities ourselves and/or have loved ones with disabilities.

This never seems to occur to our visitors who make glib assumptions about you people before telling us we're all disgusting bigots.

If I'm out with my stick, people are usually pretty good about offering a seat. I'm not naive enough to imagine this will be improved by lots of young women using sticks when they don't need them.