Am I accidentally catfishing you? Do I even have a choice?

As a 23-year-old part-time cripple, online dating feels to me like playing the late '90s computer game Minesweeper — stressful, a little bit exhilarating, but mostly, I have no idea what is going on.

The popularity of online dating and, specifically, geo-locating dating apps have revolutionized dating culture for millennials.

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Online dating can be great for the disabled community, especially for people like me, who face the dead of winter in the heart of Canada. The streets in Winnipeg are cleared occasionally, the sidewalks are cleared close to never and Handi-Transit is approximately non-existent, making it next to impossible to meaningfully interact with the outside world.

So, digesting the state of dating and temperature, I begin to swipe through Tinder.

I launch the app, the little fire emoji warming my cold, crippled heart, and I examine my current profile.

When I decide to upload photos, it takes me a long while to choose which ones to use. I use a cane to help me walk and worry if I choose a photo that displays my cane, people might immediately swipe left. Just as troubling, though, is the idea that someone might swipe right because they may fetishize my disability or even worse, my cane may signal that I may be easier to sexually assault.

Could they become violent?

But what if I use photos that don't show my cane?

Will my date feel tricked or be angry when I show up with it? Will they leave? Could they become violent?

Would this qualify as catfishing?

The truth is, no matter which photo I post, I will definitely be catfishing — luring someone into a relationship with a fictional online persona. There is not a space for me to exist as myself without worry — about honesty, about authenticity, about safety, but mostly, about sexual violence.

This dilemma isn't bound to Tinder.

Because of the strict beauty standards imposed by our patriarchal society — and complicated by capitalism — there are few spaces anywhere in our society for women, trans folks, gender fluent and nonbinary people with disabilities to exist freely and exactly as we are, especially when we are confined exclusively to our images.

This is true for all marginalized groups, and especially people who live within the intersections of them. (I, for example, am also mad — a term people who have experienced or resisted psychiatry are reclaiming.)

The intensive erasure of people with disabilities in the media is a continual form of violence against us, as our bodies are only seen as medical and never beautiful. Our love, our lust, our desire is undermined, invalidated or ignored completely. We are reduced to our diagnosis — merely pill bottles and inspiration porn.

We desire love, relationships, intimacy

I love dating. I think it is endearing to learn so much about someone based around the understanding that you think they are cute. I have loved being in relationships, going on dates, flirting, blushing and kissing.

The struggle, however, lies in the desexualization of people with disabilities, as we are instantly understood as friends, as people to learn from and people to tokenize. While I have found success and swooning and love previously, it is also liberating to be immediately understood as someone capable of intimacy.

We desire love, relationships and intimacy like able-bodied and sane people, so we search for it, just with more weary eyes than most.

I end up picking mostly headshots for my Tinder account; that way I cannot be accused of lying. People get to see my smile, and I look a little bit mysterious. 

For my profile, I have contemplated disclosing that I am a cripple and mad, but I have stopped myself, knowing full well that it can terrify potential matches or attract devotees — people who fetishize people with disabilities.

I sacrifice the part of myself that I am most identified as, I remove my activism, my body and my understanding of myself from this online equation, and I rely on listing non-political traits like my favourite snack foods to find potential suitors. 

I will always be catfishing someone, because people with disabilities/disabled people will always be a shock to people who are temporarily able-bodied, because we have never before been seen as desirable or desiring. It is not the bro with the catfish between his stinky hands' fault for not understanding me as desirable, but rather the 1,000 years of erasure, of invisibility, of the patriarchy's able-bodied portrayal of beauty.

Ghosts are hard to rape

When is it finally safe to reveal the parts of myself that they will not find beautiful or attractive? When do I slip it into conversation that I am not beautiful to them? Is it when we are talking about their passion for hiking? Or is it better when they're explaining their love for concerts held in venues I can't access?

Too often, my cane's fear of rejection gets the best of me and I leave the messages unanswered and ghost them.

Sometimes I never hear from them again. Other times they lash out, angry about being ignored, like the guy who sent me seven texts in a row that read, "What the f--k, you're f--king ghosting me?"

Ghosts are harder to rape than catfishes, I think to myself. 

Dating is hard for everyone; online dating is exhausting for everyone. The difference for people in marginalized groups is they have to deal with the exhaustion of online dating compounded with the experience of systems of oppression that make it infinitely more difficult.

Break down beauty standards

It's hard to go into situations knowing that you are more likely to be assaulted than not.

More privileged people need to begin breaking down their understanding of beauty, of sexuality and of attraction, and this begins with breaking down current beauty standards.

People with disabilities and disabled people need to be more visible in the media. Our bodies need to be shown outside of hospital beds and psychiatric wards.

We want — and should be allowed — to date, to be sexual, to love and to be loved.

Cripple love is revolutionary. Mad love is revolutionary.

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