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‘Love Is Blind’: Reality TV’s Prison For Straight People
What Insufferable Heterosexuality Can Learn From The Queers It Hurts.
There is a running question that my queer friends and I ask whenever we hear a heterosexual person do something ridiculous. Whenever a straight person claims they lost over a million to a dating scammer or that they need to put their child in an adorable “Lock up your daughters” onesie, or a million other absurd things, we turn to each other and ask:
“What are we going to do with these straight people?”
This question has become a shorthand to talk about the toxic mindset rife within heterosexual couples — and sadly, many emerging queer relationships — where they equate being in a monogamous relationship with self-worth.
It is also what immediately popped into my mind when watching the pilot of Love Is Blind — the Netflix reality show where contestants have to decide if they will marry someone they have just met based on a one-week timetable of intimate conversations. The catch is that they cannot see each other, hence the title, and can only communicate via audio. They select a partner, and then in-person, they simulate all the significant life steps of a relationship (e.g., honeymooning, moving-in together, meeting the parents, etc.), saving marriage for last.
