Cherie was left upset with the response to her tweet. Photo / Twitter
A New Zealand woman, who is an amputee, was shocked when she was inundated with inappropriate comments after she posted a photo of herself online in response to a joke.
Cherie, who now lives in Melbourne, had no idea her harmless tweet would go viral when she got in on a Twitter thread.
The thread asked people to state their age and something they can't do.
Cherie posted that she was 27 and couldn't cross her legs.
One man responded, "Lmaooo why?".
Cherie responded with this picture:
She received thousands of likes and retweets, but Cherie was horrified when she came across inappropriate comments from men — including one who said she would be easy to rape.
"The internet can be a disgusting place," she said.
Cherie received several comments from men saying she could take their third leg or they would still have sex with her despite her disability.
While she's fully clothed, one man said she should have expected such a reaction posting "something sexy or half-naked".
Another wrote:
Face: 10/10
Chest: 9/10
Legs: 1/2
One man even said it was less effort to rape her because she couldn't do much with one leg.
Another man wrote: "Imagine the angles."
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Despite the barrage of horrible comments, Cherie managed to take the responses in her stride.
Having had her leg amputated when she was six because of osteosarcoma, sadly she said she was used to this kind of behaviour.
"I think I'm just disappointed that I couldn't make a lighthearted joke without it turning into a barrage of men commenting whether or not they'd have sex with me," she told news.com.au.
"That some think it's a compliment that they would still be interested in me even though I'm disabled, as though that should be some kind of deal-breaker.
"And that I would even get comments saying how it would be easy to rape me because of my disability."
Cherie said she was not naive and knew the internet was full of people and trolls who will say all kinds of things.
"I guess just the sheer volume that I received was surprising, usually you may expect a few, but not hundreds," she said.
"And most of these weren't hiding behind faceless troll accounts. They'd have very obvious identities and be very comfortable with tagging their other friends, and me, in what they were saying.
"None of this is new, I've had comments like these all my life. And not just on the internet. Men on the streets have come up to me and said all of these things before.
"But just because I'm used to it, and don't get upset about it, doesn't mean I understand it."
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