Why is it always "chronic illness girlies 🥰" or "all the girls with cute mobility aids 😍" and "badass women battling chronic illness ✌️"? Why is so much of online chronic illness community and advocacy reliant on fitting into the feminine ideals? And I'm not even talking about stuff like chronic illness talks whilst doing makeup or how to have cute fem outfits that work around disability aids and devices. Those are both good things to exist! I mean the constant referring to people with chronic illnesses as women and girls and girlies and babes and so on and so forth. There's an underlying assumption in a lot of chronic illness spaces that everyone will be women. Plus so many of the popular chronic illness influencers will dress up pretty and talk in a really high voice (all in the exact same specific way honestly that I get is an attempt to make yourself more palatable to able-bodied people but is also slightly scary when you realise everyone does it). And not going to lie, 90% of the time they're white Americans (because white western women are viewed as the most feminine and the best at performing womanhood). There are people that don't fit into this stereotype but they're much smaller creators and there's far fewer of them and they're often not believed *by other disabled people*. I just want to engage in community without being told I can't be there because I'm not a woman. And I know at least some of it is because women are less likely to be believed by doctors so will go untreated for longer and have complications or stacking conditions. But surely in the year of someone's Lord 2026 we know that not only women face these issues, right?
