I decided to join Tinder for the same reason lots of women do: I didn’t want the commitment of a serious relationship, and I was curious about what kind of men were out there. I thought, at the very least, it would be fun. Nothing could have prepared me for the barrage of offensive, ignorant, hurtful men I encountered.

Maybe I went into my Tinder experience a little too optimistic and confident. I have a career, a good education, an outgoing personality, and I love to travel. But I definitely wasn’t the average woman on the swiping app: At the age of five, a car accident injured my spinal cord and paralyzed me from the hips down, and I’ve been in a wheelchair ever since. My Tinder photos generally concealed my chair, since I knew it might leave me vulnerable to ignorant comments. And honestly, I preferred not to mention my disability or make it obvious from the start, because to me and those who know me well, it’s largely inconsequential to who I am. Thanks to my fairly resilient nature, I otherwise live a normal life, and have moved myself across the country twice.

Since my matches didn’t know about my wheelchair, I knew I’d have to explicitly tell them at some point, so I tried a few different tactics. Sometimes, I would tell them after a few minutes of messaging; other times, I would wait a week or so, until I was sure the guy was someone I would go out with. I eventually tried making it obvious in my profile picture. But none of these strategies made a difference: The end result, more often than not, was terrible.

Even if I had great messaging chemistry with a guy, I would instantly go from being the “sexy redhead” he’s planning to go out with to the “girl in a wheelchair" — and that chair would define me.

During the small amount of time that my photos included my wheelchair, I got some pretty typical dumb reactions: “Will you give me a ride…in your vag?” “So I assume you’re not looking to fuck.” After about 10 more comments like that, I took down the photos of me in my chair.