Is bisexual erasure alive and well on Netflix’s hit series Love Is Blind? According to Madison Errichiello, a participant from the show’s recent eighth season, conversations she had about being bisexual never made it to air.
Errichiello was seen dating in “the pods” — where contestants get to know one another before potentially pairing off — but did not end up in a relationship. She opened up about her experience as a bisexual woman on the reality dating series on a recent episode of the podcast Off the Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe.
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Asked by one of the co-hosts whether she knew anyone else in the cast, who were all from Minneapolis, prior to filming, Errichiello said that she had actually matched with a fellow contestant, a woman, on the dating app Hinge about a year prior to taking part in the reality experiment.
“Are you openly bisexual?” podcast guest host Kat Campbell asks Errichiello, who responds that she is.
“And they didn’t show that in the pods?” host Bristowe asks.
“No,” Errichiello says.
“Did you talk about it in the pods?” Bristowe follows up.
“I did,” Errichiello says.
While it seems that we missed out on Errichiello talking about her bisexuality on the show, the series does have a history of portraying bisexuality in a controversial light. During season 8, contestant Brittany Dodson told her castmate, Devin Buckley, who she was dating at the time, that she had previously dated women. After Dodson shared this information, Buckley said he had to “think” about their future together.
“I could read between the lines for him not to even say anything, ‘I just need to think about it,’ and even when I came back, there was no words that he really could say,” she later told Entertainment Weekly. “In that moment you had the opportunity to be more supportive and comforting, and silence really does speak volumes sometimes.”
At the season 8 reunion, which aired on March 9, Virginia Miller, who met, dated, and got engaged to Buckley on the show and said no to him at the altar, seemed to indicate that her support for the LGBTQ+ community and abortion rights constituted a difference in values that ultimately led to Miller ending the relationship.
“Devin told me a lot about his core values, something he did not want to talk about on camera,” she said at the time. “I will be really clear about mine. I 100% support the LGBTQ community. I also believe that women should have the decision to choose if they want to have an abortion or not.”
In past seasons, Love Is Blind has included moments of negative reactions to a partner coming out as bisexual, as well. In the series’ first season, a couple — Carlton Morton and Diamond Jack — ended their relationship in a heated argument after Morton told Jack about his bisexuality.
Jack later told People that she “had questions” because she’d “never been with a bisexual man.”
“I don’t really know that community that well, but I respect the community,” she said. “I love the community. I just had questions.”
While Love Is Blind might not include many substantive or nuanced representations of bisexuality, Perfect Match, another reality dating show from the streamer, has been praised for its bisexual inclusion.
