Are Women Who Use Walking Canes Faking Disability? A UK Columnist Thinks So

By Crystal Lindell

When I was still working full-time in the corporate world, I often had to go to trade conferences where I’d spend 12-hour days walking a show floor the size of multiple football fields.

I have hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and intercostal neuralgia, so even with very strong pain medication, it was often too much for me.

I knew that using a walking aid, like a cane or even an electric scooter, would have made the whole experience easier, but I never used them. I feared rude comments and judgements from all the professional interactions I had slated during my many meetings.

Instead, I suffered through it, barely able to keep myself upright by the end of my travels.

It didn’t have to be that way. I could have used a walking stick, a cane, or a scooter. It was only the very valid fear of social judgment and stigma that kept those tools from me.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that this happened years ago, the repulsion toward young women using mobility aids is still alive and well.

Recently, Kathleen Stock wrote a disparaging column for The Times (UK) titled, "Why are Young Women Using Walking Sticks?" (You can get a pay-wall free link here).

Stock wrote about the “disproportionate number of Gen Z females” using walking sticks or canes to get around. She dismissed it as some kind of pity play by shallow young women who are trying to draw attention.  

“The message sent to onlookers is about a life spent in pain; though what kind of pain, exactly, remains unclear,” Stock wrote. “Rather than it being cruel to say this, in fact, it is cruel not to. We owe it to potentially able-bodied young people to challenge their tendencies to neuroticism and fear; to get them out into the world as functioning adults, wherever that is possible. For their sake, we need to help them ditch the props, and — quite literally — to stand on their own two feet.” 

Stock’s only proof of this is that she has supposedly seen groups of young women “leaning on a walking stick as they edge gingerly along.”  She claimed there were hundreds of TikTok videos instructing people how to live life with mobility aids.

Even taking her assertion at face value, one could be forgiven for assuming Stock may want to explore the very valid causes that could be leading more women to need mobility aids.

Causes like the mass disabling pandemic we’ve been dealing with since 2020, or the fact that climate change is making chronic illness symptoms worse. Or that our healthcare system doesn’t work very well.

But no, Stock doesn’t bother with any of that. Instead, she accuses the women of catching the dreaded virus of "social contagion."

“When you dig into their explanations, a few officially medical-sounding words tend to recur: postural tachycardia, joint hypermobility, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue,” she writes. “What these syndromes all share is a set of non-specific symptoms, versions of which are familiar to all of us: dizziness, a racing heart, exhaustion, brain fog, muscle pain. And of course, many of these are also symptoms of anxiety, the defining emotion of teenage years.”

I was personally unaware that anxiety could cause things like joint hypermobility, but umm, ok. Let’s see where she goes with this. 

Stock adds, “Could it be, then, that some are taking a cue from internet influencers, overanalyzing normal experiences and talking themselves into a disabled state?”

Why are we even still having this conversion in 2026? Imagine saying that about people who need reading glasses, hearing aids, or wheelchairs.

Even if her assertion is true – that more young women are using walking canes – who cares? It doesn’t impact anyone else at all when someone uses a cane! 

Stock seems to think that using a walking aid will “make you different, special, excused from the pressures of life, pleasingly fussed over by strangers.”

It’s such a gross statement with zero basis in reality.

One day, if she lives long enough, Stock will also need a mobility aid. Then she will immediately find out how much nonsense she was spouting.

As someone who has used various types of mobility aids like crutches and even electric scooters, I can confirm that zero people “pleasantly fuss” over you in such cases. And while you may stand out as “different,” it’s only in the worst possible way. 

Most people still hate having to see anything that reminds them of the frailty of the human body. Some will angrily make you aware of that fact as soon as they see your walking boot.

For its part, the Ehlers-Danlos Society offered a much more eloquent response than I could summon about Stocks’ drivel. They rightly point out how damaging columns like this are in major media publications.

"Every day we hear from people around the world who are challenged for using accessible parking, questioned about their need for mobility aids, told they are too young to be disabled, or have their symptoms dismissed because they do not fit assumptions about what illness or disability should look like,” the society said in a statement. “These experiences contribute to delayed diagnosis, barriers to healthcare, discrimination, and poorer quality of life.”

The bottom line is, whether you need a walking aid, wheelchair or reading glasses, you should be able to use them in peace, without sneering judgement from people like Kathleen Stock.

Why Are Doctors Reluctant to Recommend Mobility Aids?

By Crystal Lindell 

There’s a common thought process among doctors when it comes to opioid pain medications. 

They usually don’t prescribe them unless you specifically ask for them, because they don’t want to “encourage” you to use them. But also, if you do ask for opioids, then they label you as a drug seeker and assume you’re looking for “the easy way out” or to get high.

In short, most doctors try very hard to avoid giving patients opioids, unless they want to treat addiction with Suboxone – which ironically contains the opioid buprenorphine.

While I strongly disagree with every part of that thought process, in that situation doctors at least have the excuse that they have to worry about the DEA and losing their medical licenses. 

I’ve also noticed that many doctors have the same thought process when it comes to prescribing and/or recommending mobility aids like walking canes, crutches and wheelchairs. 

They don’t like to suggest them to patients because they don’t want to “encourage” their use. However, on the other end, if a patient does ask for them, doctors also bristle at that. They seem to think that mobility aids are, like opioids, “the easy way out.” 

Of course, there’s nothing easy about either opioids or mobility aids. If a patient has gotten to a point where they feel the need to use either one, chances are they are needed. 

I noticed these anti-mobility aid attitudes among doctors myself, when I had pain from a bone spur on my heel. My doctors never suggested crutches, and I had to figure out for myself that not using my foot was the only thing that seemed to help relieve the pain. I had some crutches at home from a previous injury, and using them allowed me to still function while also not putting weight on my foot. They also allowed my body to heal. 

Years ago, when my fiancé had a severe hip injury, he had to go out and buy his own cane because his doctors had not even suggested one, much less prescribed one – despite the very clear need. 

Online you’ll find multiple Reddit threads of patients expressing frustration at how doctors approach mobility aids. About a year ago in the “Mobility Aids” section of Subreddit, a poster asked, “Why are doctors so hesitant to let patients use mobility aids?”

“I use forearm crutches because I struggle to walk sometimes because of how much my pain hurts and my doctor thinks I have [an] autoimmune disorder that causes this pain which I'm getting more testing for but he goes ‘you're 19 you don't need mobility aids.’ But I have literally fallen over before. Laid in bed in agony barely able to move. Cried from how much it hurts and so much more yet they want to deny me what helps me get around?”

The post then has multiple responses from readers lamenting that they have had the same experience with doctors.

“I’ve had the same issues with doctors and just got mobility aids on my own, not through a doctor. I don't understand why doctors avoid it though because there’s been days at a time where I couldn’t leave my bed and it was hard to go anywhere or do anything on bad days [and] even on good days I still have troubles,” one poster wrote.

There is research that seems to confirm those fears.

A recent study in The Lancet found demographic, socioeconomic and social barriers impacted how much access people had to "mobility assistive products" or MAPs. They surveyed 12,080 people over age 50 in England and found that 42% had an unmet need for a mobility aid. 

Researchers found that women were more likely to have difficulty accessing mobility aids when they have a need for them. They also found that older patients who were unemployed or had a low education level had more trouble accessing MAPs.

Interestingly, having a romantic partner also increased the chances of having an unmet need for a mobility aid, whereas being single actually made patients more likely to have them. My guess is that single people are more likely to advocate for access to mobility aids, because they don’t have a partner at home to help them with daily tasks.  

Other studies have shown a prejudice toward patients with mobility aids among doctors. 

For example, a 2023 study published in the National Library of Medicine looked at physicians' attitudes about caring for disabled patients. They interviewed doctors in focus groups and found many had medical offices that presented “physical barriers to providing health care for people with disabilities, including inaccessible buildings and equipment.”

Some doctors openly admitted the lack of accessibility in their clinics. For example, one rural primary care physician said, “I know for a fact our building is not accessible.” 

If a doctor doesn’t even offer an accessible building to patients, odds are that they don’t prioritize mobility aids for the patients either. 

It seems that doctors assume that if patients start using a mobility aid, they’ll end up using it for the rest of their lives. But in my case and my fiance’s case, that’s not what happened. We both used them short term, and stopped as soon as we were healthy enough to do so. 

Regardless, who cares if people use mobility aids for the rest of their lives? Would that be such a bad thing? Being alive and independent with mobility aids is preferable to being confined at home and/or losing your independence. 

Perhaps some doctors see patients with mobility aids as a failure on their part. After all, if a patient needs them, then the doctor must not be doing enough to treat them. 

Mobility aids are exactly what the name implies – an aid that gives people more mobility, and by extension, more independence and freedom. They can greatly improve someone’s quality of life, whether they are used long or short-term. 

There’s no reason for doctors to gate-keep mobility aids, other than their own ablest bias. If they actually want to help patients, they should be suggesting them a lot more often.