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?

You are quite right that you can’t control how people identify but in previous generations when children / young people explore with their identity parents and society at large have always been allowed to discuss it without being called ableist or otherwise phobic.

People notice trends and fashions all the time and it is normal to talk about it. More recently discussion of the exploration of identity has become taboo subject. This isn’t normal and tbh the attempts to shut down discussion are more concerning than the phenomenon itself.

It is very depressing to read this. A lot of the illnesses referred to in this thread predominantly affect females. They affect quality of life rather than causing death. For these two reasons they are often dismissed. Endometriosis used to fit in this category (“a problem in the upper classes” is what I learnt in medical school). However, that has changed with the advent of successful fertility treatments. The cynical part of me believes it’s because when a woman has difficulty conceiving in vivo it also impacts on a male partner. Hence, now that we have treatments that work, and help men, it has become a “real” disorder.

The problem of discounting female disorders that impact on quality of life has only begun to be recognised in medicine. Then I see this on the feminist board 😢

I used self diagnosed pots as an example on an earlier post to reflect what some ableist posts said. Im really worried I have caused offence with specifically mentioning pots. I could have used any invisible disability in its place - hope i havent added any fuel to the fire.

This looks like an interesting read (a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Exeter by Elena Sharratt)

Exploring the emergence and disappearance of transableism
on transabled.org: Digital ethnography of a transient mental
illness

ore.exeter.ac.uk/rest/bitstreams/177145/retrieve

I'm really sorry that you are not only experiencing a really challenging health issue, but having to read a lot of ignorant comments too.

It's perfectly understandable why you wear a sunflower wristband and well done for being brave enough to use a stick.

I wish more people would listen and not just assume a person is ok because their disability is invisible.

You take care xx

Anthropologically, a noticeable trend of young people sharing a fashion and mobility aids could exist for a number of reasons. Rather than feeling isolated, young people with health conditions might be using the internet to connect with other young people who share their health conditions - along with their interests and fashions.

There are lots of disability influencers explaining how to advocate for yourself. Young people might find that this resonates with them and they feel empowered to advocate for themselves. Adopting the fashions and styles of these influencers they admire is human nature.

I supposed increased discussion/recognition of health conditions might lead some people to consider that they have similar challenges. They might seek to find ways to help them cope, a mobility aid being one such solution.

I wouldn’t think it was my place to question why a group of young girls I don’t know are using mobility aids.

You know having a stick doesn’t make a jot of difference for a PIP assessment? If you use one you are questioned on where you got it, was it prescribed, who recommended it? And of course you have to be able to evidence how the condition you have affects you. ‘I bought it on Amazon’ doesn’t cut it.

@Baggingarea
fair play to you fur coming back and saying this.
i'm a tad sensitive as i watched my little boy go from the picture of health to a shadow of his former self in months. he was investigated for epilepsy, brain tumours and all sorts of different illnesses that terrified us before we were told it was PoTS. 2 years on and we are making progress, he’s gained weight, is in school full time and getting back into his sport.
i'm not naive to people exploiting illness or responding in challenging ways to their condition but PoTS just lit a blue touch paper for me.
i appreciate your comment 🙂

Because my child dated them and told me all the details (and I met them too)?

As a person with disabilities myself who has used walking aids when needed in the past, I do understand the need for aids at a young age and to feel unjudged for needing them.

I am aware there are some young people using canes for 'other reasons' and I do find that concerning. Pretending it is not actually a trend or a thing because genuine people with issues are offended they might be misidentified doesn't help.

Excuse me?

Where did she say she pushed in? Oh... Nowhere.

Who is doing that?

It feels like there are (at least) three parallel discussions happening on this thread.

One is about a slightly unusual trend that some people are seeing of more young people, and particularly young girls/young women, using sticks than we are used to seeing and wondering whether this is a Trend (fashion statement) rather than just a trend (increase in the norm). And, if the latter, what is causing it.

The other discussion is about whether there is a trend for some people to self-diagnose some 'fashionable' conditions/hidden disabilities as part of a desire to have a more interesting identity.

And then there is a further discussion about whether those named 'fashionable' conditions - mentioned in sneery ways by some PP - are real or not. And those of us who suffer from them (not through any desire to be fashionable, but just because that's the shit hand we've been dealt) feeling demoralised when it seems like lots of posters think we're a bunch of self-absorbed fakes.

The first two are interesting discussions to have, but it is very easy for them to bleed into the third, which is ableist and unpleasant. While I'm sure lots of people did not mean to be so cruel and ableist, that is how many of the posts have come across, and that's not on.

How does one appear not to work? 🤔

These sorts of threads are always the same. OP mentions the sudden prevalence of young women and teen girls seemingly needing to use sticks to walk. Other people say they've noticed it too and it always seems to be a certain 'type' of girl from a particular social tribe. Some people mention this phenomenon in the same breath as TikTok, trans, austism and ADHD, anxiety, POTS, EDS, attention seeking and social contagion.

Loads of other women queue up to defensively say how they or their DD have walked with a stick their whole lives and it's down to CP, or something else entirely. So the OP wasn't talking about you.

Other queue up to defensively say they or their DD does have POTS or EDS and autism, and coincidentally, blue hair, but that we shouldn't judge or be ablist. We are not being ablist. No-one is saying that people with mobility issues shouldn't use sticks if they need them. But why so many all of a sudden? Where were all these girls with walking sticks ten years ago? Or even one year ago? Either there were far fewer young women with any of these disabilities and their co-morbidities ten years ago, or there were exactly the same amount but they didn't use sticks.

Other people say they've recently needed to walk with a stick due to a collapsed spine or knackered knees or some other debilitating condition but they are 45 and not autistic or non-binary and they don't have blue hair or ear defenders and they are definitely not attention seeking or putting it on. The OP wasn't talking about you.

Why can't people just talk about the 'thing' they are talking about, without other people coming along to say how that 'thing' certainly doesn't apply to them, or if it does then it's for genuine reasons and we shouldn't judge? The question of whether people with mobility problems might need to use walking sticks was never the point of the discussion.

It reminds me of reading about a man who wrote to his local village newsletter to complain about dog walkers letting their dogs foul the pavement outside his house several times a week. Several angry dog owners wrote back to say 'How very dare you? I'm a dog owner and I NEVER let my dog foul the pavement outside people's houses.'

Er...no, but somebody is, and that's who he was talking about. Not you.

Anyway. I've just got back from a morning in town. I saw three young women with walking sticks. One of them was mid thirties, totally regular looking woman out shopping with her mum, didn't fit the 'spoonie' mould discussed on this thread, so probably just had a bad knee or something else going on.

The other two were late teens and DEFINITELY fitted the mould discussed upthread, both overweight, one of them significantly so. I'd bet my house on it that they'd identify as autistic or ADHD or non binary or say they suffered from anxiety or all of the above. I think to spot two in the space of an hour and a half is pretty good evidence to suggest it's a social contagion thing.

Absolute bollocks

I should have been using a stick 20 years ago. I didn't due shame and embarrassment. Plus all the options were designed with old people in mind.

Quite a few of us have said that. I have said that more than once. But that version of events isn't as fun, is it, because you don't get to hoik your judgy pants up then

Ps it is grim to assume that someone used a stick because they are overweight. Treatments like prednisolone can make people gain a huge amount of weight.
Through my condition -myasthenia- I chat online to a lot of youngish people with it, who have been prescribed steroids and put on a lot of weight. It's hugely distressing.

And even just taking my one condition, Myasthenia, there has been a rapid increase in diagnosis in the last 10 years. Partly due to covid making symptoms worse and unmistakeable, partly due to discoveries of more antibodies, and more sensitive tears, meaning people are being diagnosed with some last resort diagnosis like CFS /fibromyalgia now get a proper diagnosis instead.

Yes lots to agree with here

I find it odd that there is such a push back against curious discussion, we should be curious, we should be exploring why social contagion takes this or that pathway. This discussion is about the presentation of illness/disability from those who are not ill or disabled.

Those of us working with a wide variety of service users/client groups have seen this, it isnt actually recent, it might seem that way to the lay person, but its been for a while and does have a cross over with ND and trans.

And Im also surprised that the question even needs to be asked about why is this part of discussion within womens rights.

To me its obvious, its about the lack of intervention, support, therapy for girls/women on the spectrum, its about not recognising that very often women in partricular with autism find an 'identity' to fill what appears to be a personality gap, to find validation and many other reasons to connect, in a way that on the surface is harmless but is actually harmful, we have seen this with the trans ideology.

On the surface, who cares if someone is walking round with a stick and they dont have an actual need for it. Who cares if I order a wheelchair or crutches to use. Who cares if I 'identify' as physically disabled when Im actually not? But it has overlaps and impacts on the person themselves, their network and wider society in terms of services, resources and access.

How do we support autistic women to understand their own personality, what it is, how to feel positive about that, what is functional for them, what is an actual personality rather than 'identifying' with this and that as a pseudo self. Where are the intensive support gropus and therapy about that?

Cassandra yes that's true, with overweight people with mobility issues we can never be sure whether the obesity is the cause of the mobility issue and too much strain on the joints, or whether a medical issue (or the treatment for it) has caused the obesity. That's a fair point.

Irrelevant. It's still a disability.

Irrelevant perhaps for this discussion, in terms of the need for mobility aids

Not irrelevant overall because disability means that you have something that disables you. A chronic condition. However if that condition has potential to be removed by making different choices, then it becomes relevant as to how the disability is seen.

We shouldnt be encouraging that disabilty caused by lifestyle actions, should never be changed. It can be changed.

Not at all. I saw it with my own eyes.

I'd love it if more people (who need to) used sticks. I would feel less self conscious. There's a few people at work who have said they should use a stick but are too embarrassed. I keep hoping my using one will help them feel able to.

No it isn't. That's just straightforward Munchausen's. By Proxy is when they claim their child is unwell and often deliberately make them unwell because they crave the attention and the drama from doctors and putting their child through loads of unnecessary tests. It might not be a child, it could also be a vulnerable, learning disabled relative or an elderly parent. Someone who cannot advocate for themselves and doesn't twig what's going on, anyway.