Double Shot at Love; or America’s Crazy Love Affair with Bisexualism

Caveat: I have not yet seen a single episode of MTV’s new hit reality show "A Double Shot at Love."  The few times I flipped past Tila Tequila’s Shot at Love were enough for me.

So.  This is not a new topic, but WTF is up with America and bisexual women?  MTV has a brand new reality show for all of us who were missing "I Love Money" and hadn’t really gotten into "Charm School."  On Double Shot, two identical, bisexual twins will vie for the affections of twelve lesbians and twelve straight men to find their one (two) true loves.  Tila Tequila, MySpacelebrity extraordinaire, ramped up the bisexual-reality-TV-show genre last year when she (albeit minus her identical twin) tried twice to find the love of her life on MTV, and sadly failed.

Now we have the "Ikki Twins," as they’ve been dubbed": Rikki and Vikki Mongeon.  According to the review on Slate, the twins spent the first episode pretending to be one person, canoodling with the lesbians and straight guys and waiting to shock them with the realization that HOLY TWINS, there were two of them.

The elephant in the room, of course, is the possibility that the twins will make out on national television, which brings me to the crux of the post.  America’s homophobia combines awkwardly with its misogyny to create an exception for women making out.  Essentially, while LGBT people are marginalized by society, women making out (I do not use the term lesbian or bisexual here for a reason) are tolerated for the supposed turn-on factor that they provide for some straight men. 

As a bisexual woman, I applaud women like Tila Tequila and the Ikkis for being comfortable enough in their sexuality to go on MTV. But at the same time, I cannot help but realize the following truths:

1) Besides on Bravo,and L-word, etc, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans relationships are hardly tolerated on TV except for their token value.

2) There will never be a "Shot at Love With Jose Quervo" because male bisexualism isn’t tolerated in American society.

3) If the Ikkis do make out on MTV, there will not be a constructive discussion of incest in the mainstream media. 

4) Tila and Ikkis are not creating a safe space for bisexual women – indeed they are heightening the expectation that bisexual women are promiscuous and easily and readily objectified. 

Again, while I appreciate the strides that bi-visability can take through a show like Shot at Love and the dialogues that will take place around it, I also mourn the continuing emphasis on the sexuality of women, bisexual or not.