Isn’t this a lovely comment?
During a talk at the Cambridge Union last month, Megan Barton-Hanson – who is bisexual and appeared on the 2018 series – said the programme needed a “whole gay season” to avoid tokenism.
Umm, teh gayers are some 2% or so of the male population, perhaps 1% of the female, and we’re to avoid tokenism by running a season of a sex show about them?
There is this which seems like a reasonable issue though:
Last month, executive producer Richard Cowles told the BBC that bringing in LGBT contestants was “not impossible and it is not something that we shy away from … but there is a logistical element which makes it difficult”.
Well, yes. There are those flavours within being gay. As far as I’m aware – not having ever seen any of it – the show’s interest is in seeing who will pair off with whom. We could employ old tropes and prejudices and think that an all male gay one would have the answer “Everybody” and an all female gay one “Nobody but there will be lots of talking about it”.
Or we could abandon such vilenesses and think in more detail. By selecting bear and twink, bull and femme, even top and bottom and so on, we’d rather be directing who paired off rather than awaiting to see. Which isn’t really the point of the show.
And then there’s the one more thought. Given the 98% of the population’s heterosexuality and the presumed vicarious experience the show offers who would be the viewing audience?
They should make it 1940s themed. Put a couple of gays in there who are incentivised to act straight. let them see if they can find t’other and have some fun, but if they get caught in flagrante its off the island.
Not just off the island, but probably treated with chemical castration and locked up for a decade or so!
I am sure there’s a joke here somewhere about the expected audience and the Turing Test….
Just rename the show Spiteful Hissy-Fit Island & you’re done.
They can have dog-fuckers island for all I care.
Talking of dogs, Megan Barton-Hanson looks like an over-inflated love doll fished out of the rejects pile at a Guangdong rubber plant.
It’s more like 5% amongst the 18-30 demographic represented on shows like Love Island.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/sexuality/bulletins/sexualidentityuk/2019#distribution-by-age
Is this a huge difference? Well it’s the difference between one-in-fifty and one-in-twenty. If you count the spinoffs, international editions, etc., Love Island has had about twenty seasons. Should a show represent the demographics of its subject, or the demographics of its audience? I’d suggest the subject, otherwise you get Black Anne Boleyn.
Bear and twink? Bull and femme? Top and bottom? Are these new sorts of quark?
Gays count at least 2x to advertisers (all that lovely disposable income not spent on kids), so there’s definitely a market for it. Lesbians not so much, alas.
If we’re playing tokens, how about Rotherham Love Island? The blokes grow tired of waiting for the women to remove their veils, so they gang up and rape some local 13 year olds instead.
“who would be the viewing audience”
That’s not the point from the perspective of the loons considering this change: it’s so that they can berate the public for being bigoted when the audience numbers crater.
It may also be a big power play on their behalf. I have seen the ITV2 audience numbers for Love Island – they’re insane. Viewership for that daily 8pm slot is _at least_ 10x the normal background level for that channel. At least. It is a MASSIVE money spinner. Anything that could undermine that will need very very senior management sign off.
Essentially the loons are directly challenging senior leadership to see if their nicey nicey rainbow coloured virtue signalling is actually real or not.
I almost think they should do it just so we can get a bit of backbone back – go woke, go broke…
Bear and twink? Bull and femme? Top and bottom? Are these new sorts of quark?
Only the last two, but the rest definitely should be 🙂
Monkey tennis?
BM,
“It’s more like 5% amongst the 18-30 demographic represented on shows like Love Island.”
I’m not sure that I would entirely trust those numbers, particularly towards the younger end. It seems that there might be a great deal of fannying about with experimentation before things settle down, so the numbers could be fluid.
Especially given they’re only just shaking off a decade of pro-gay propaganda from the state
educationindoctrination factories.There’s something terribly apposite about the verb “to fanny” used to describe sexual experimentation.
@Andrew M,
I think it’s because the women have removed their veils that the men go out and rape a 14 year old. The only reason Muslim men wear beards is because they want to look like their mothers.
“…who would be the viewing audience?”
Fag hags, mainly.
“Bear and twink? Bull and femme? Top and bottom? Are these new sorts of quark?”
(slow golf clap)
“Given the 98% of the population’s heterosexuality and the presumed vicarious experience the show offers who would be the viewing audience?”
You have led a bizarrely sheltered life. Straight men are good customers of lesbian porn, while straight women also like porn featuring gay men. I expect a Love Island with purely gay participants would be very popular.
They don’t watch those shows for the sex Charles, because it’s not shown. They watch for the cattiness.
Most people don’t have much interest in camp flouncing. And if they get non-camp men it would just be weird.
The lesbian one could have epic levels of cattiness if they picked the right girls. But it would be hard to get enough good looking, young, catty, openly gay and interested in casual sex women. That’s a tiny demographic.