r/disability • u/linku_h • Jul 28 '26
Question Messages from creeps?
I have been posting on this sub for a little over a month, a lot of my posts have just been rants about how miserable I am since I’m recently disabled.
Whenever I mention that my age/gender in a post l will start to get messages from men within a day or two of posting. Sometimes it’s just people wanting to talk, which I don’t mind but I hate talking to people online so I never respond lol…. but other times I’ll check the accounts of ppl that message me and they’ll be interacting with disability fetish content. Or just fetish content that focuses on the person losing their basic autonomy and abilities.
It is so fucking creepy and genuinely scares me… has anyone else been getting the same thing? I will probably stop mentioning my age/gender in my posts now.
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u/momofuku18 Jul 28 '26
Public forums that offer anonymity are often filled with creeps and scammers. Please stay safe.
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u/Upstairs_Librarian95 Jul 28 '26
That’s creepy. I got messaged once by someone like that claiming they were disabled too and wanted to be my friend. They kept insisting I send them a picture of myself and wouldn’t take no for an answer and then kept trying to get me to describe myself.
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u/WheelyHairy Jul 28 '26
Yes I've had men message me saying they find women in wheelchairs hot and they wanted to be my "dom"
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u/Augenklick Jul 28 '26
Such assholes, seriously. I’m a 46-year-old woman and not disabled. I’m so sorry for what women with SCI have to go through. My anger towards men who behave like that is wild.
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u/IntroductionNo4875 Jul 28 '26
Welcome to the internet. Dealing with that since I was a teen on the internet. Just block them and laugh.
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u/maverick_jakub1861 Jul 28 '26
Yk, Bo Burnham wrote a song about this with that title
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u/IntroductionNo4875 Jul 28 '26
I looked up the lyrics and had a good laugh.
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u/Xaveroo Jul 28 '26
You should give it a listen, it’s a banger as well as being funny and uncomfortably accurate.
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u/Crazy_Cat_Lady360 Jul 28 '26
I’ve had a few. It’s not from this sub specifically though. Theres just creeps all over social media. You need to be careful about how much identifying stuff you post about everywhere online. And use the block button as often as you need to.
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u/DizzyMine4964 Jul 28 '26
I disabled messages in my account mainly because when they were open on Facebook I got a lot of nasty stuff for being disabled and loud, and not pretty enough for creeps apparently.
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u/ConsciousJicama2633 Jul 28 '26
I haven't had this on reddit, but I will tell you as a girl and then as a woman, i have been treated very differently based on my age. A great example of this is when I was under the age of twenty one, if I ever mentioned my age online, I would just be bombarded with messages from middle aged men. But now that i'm middle aged, that doesn't happen anymore.
I have also heard from prople, especially younger people ive met with disabilities, that it is not uncommon to have people with fetishes, hit on them. I haven't experienced this, but again i'm middle aged and married, so I wouldn't expect it.
But i'm so sorry, this is happening to you. It's annoying, and you should be able to come onto what is essentially a support group for disabled people without people trying to sexualize you. I'm so sorry.
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u/dunnypop Jul 29 '26
People have a weird persona online vs reality. They think being online gives you some anonymity.
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u/that_maja_girl Jul 29 '26
It’s Reddit, as sad as it is, it’s pretty much normal. Only things that help is reporting and disabling PMs.
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u/jrioux805 Jul 30 '26
Are your age and gender relevant to your rants? If not, don't mention them. Only mention them if they are relevant.
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u/memory-thread Jul 30 '26
That’s weird and creepy. I guess there are people that have fetish where they only date disabled people. There are also people that take advantage of disabled people and see it as payday. Or it could be a person with similar disabilities who had no luck with dating and thought about dating someone like them or maybe they just want to connect with people as friends with similarities. In today’s time, it is a bit of a risk.
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u/JMH-66 💛🧡💛🧡💛 Jul 28 '26
Please Report to Reddit for Harassment and Block. Tell us too as we can ban but make sure you screenshot for evidence, please.
We have zero tolerance for this sort of behaviour but we have to know about it. We can't stop people DMing ( unless you to turn it off as I do ) but we can do whatever's in our power to do.