This behind-the-scenes story of a queer dating show is unbelievably awful

Reality TV is known for being not so fun behind the scenes, but this storytime about an unaired dating show might take the cake.

On TikTok, lesbian podcaster Jules Rach shared the story of a dating show she filmed last December. 

“I’m not going to say what the name of the show is,” Rach said. “The show has not premiered yet, and I sort of pray that it doesn’t.”

After being contacted to be on the show over social media, Rach was told she had to bring two ex-partners to the show with her, where she’d compete for the love of a bachelorette.

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“I was told that this was a queer dating show,” Rach said, explaining that she was just looking for a good, gay time with no expectation of real romance. But that wasn’t what she found: “We get there, and immediately I’m sort of noticing the other contestants around the hotel the night before. And I’m like, ‘These people seem straight.’”

Rach’s fears were confirmed the next day, when her episode of the show was filmed.

“We realized that it was not a queer show,” she said. “One of the game rounds was queer, but the rest of it was straight. And it became very clear very quickly that they were not equipped to have queer and trans people on the set at all, and it was really disappointing.”

For example, the show’s hosts (two comedians that Rach didn’t name) repeatedly misgendered Rach’s exes.

“Both of the exes that I brought with me are trans, nonbinary people, and we were never asked our pronouns,” Rach said. “The filming started and my exes were being misgendered over and over.”

When Rach stepped in to correct them and provide the correct pronouns, the hosts “freaked out.”

“They’re like, ‘Sorry, we’re gonna be honest, we’re never gonna get that right,’” Rach said. “I was just so frustrated, because the casting director that I had multiple rounds of interviews with was a lesbian who was very on it about asking the pronouns of the people that I was bringing and my pronouns.”

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That wasn’t the only nightmarish part of the day. For starters, Rach and her ex-partners were heavily pressured to drink and encouraged to fight with one another, two things Rach wasn’t interested in doing.

Rach also said their exes were given a prompt to compare their performance in bed to an animal. Theoretically, a funny question for a dating show — but then the host gave their own answer.

“The host goes, ‘For example, I would consider myself a dolphin because I’ve never asked for consent.’”

In the year of our lord 2024, do people still think jokes about assaulting people are funny? Rach and her exes certainly didn’t, but the rest of the folks on set were apparently laughing it up.

“I just know that if this show comes out, it’s going to be me looking like a huge b*tch, because I’ll be honest, I wasn’t laughing at the jokes,” Rach admitted. “The jokes were bad and transphobic.”

After filming the rest of the episode (in which Rach was the bachelorette’s second choice, by the way), she headed home and hoped the show would never see the light of day. But if this mysterious dating show ever does make it to air, Rach hopes we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.

“If you ever see me on TV looking like a huge b*tch, it was warranted,” she said.