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Visibility Matters: MTV Sells Out Gays and Lesbians for Ratings

Visibility Matters is a monthly column by AfterEllen.com Founder Sarah Warn about larger trends affecting lesbian/bi women in entertainment and the media.

In the early ’90s, many Americans still believed AIDS was a “gay disease” inflicted on deviants who deserved to die.

So when MTV’s reality show The Real World launched its third season in 1992 with a group that included Pedro Zemora, a likeable HIV-positive gay man, the series provided more than just good entertainment. It humanized gay men at a time when the gay community was fighting for their dignity and their lives, and the company was lauded for it by the gay and lesbian community.

And rightfully so. MTV provided groundbreaking visibility for gays and lesbians at a time when we desperately needed it, and they continued to do so through the ’90s.

Fast forward to 2008, and gays and lesbians are in another major battle for basic civil rights, after millions of Americans voted to take away our right to marry and raise children on Nov. 4.

Gay men and lesbians around the country are using every tool possible – marching in the streets, filing lawsuits, blogging, writing, pleading and cajoling – to convince Americans that our relationships are important and deserving of the same respect as heterosexual relationships. That the right to marry someone of the same gender does not logically lead to wanting to marry siblings, or goats.

And in the midst of this epic battle, what does MTV do? They announce the launch of a reality dating show starring two bisexual, incestuous twins.

A Double Shot at Love with the Ikki Twins, which debuts next year, subs in Rikki and Vikki Ikki for Tila Tequila, who starred in the first two seasons of the bisexual dating show, then called A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila.

Tila as the face of bisexuality was bad enough, as I wrote about in March, but this pair makes you want to take Tila home to give Grandma a lap dance.

Identical twins Rikki and Vikki are models who started off working at Hooters and have graduated to being Playboy Cyber Girls who list their interests and hobbies in a Fast & Sexy magazine as “Boys, dancing, drawing, cheerleading, cars, party’n.”

They also share the same bed, claim to be bisexual (despite only mentioning boyfriends in all previous interviews I could find), and boast on their official website that they’re “the world’s hottest twins.” If you’re still not disturbed enough, read this interview with them in which they talk about how excited their father is about them being Playmates.

Or this news report about Double Shot pondering whether viewers will be “grossed out by the incestuous undertones” or “fascinated with the ‘hotness’ of it?”

As I wrote about earlier this month, lesbian visibility in TV and film is neglible, and bisexual women, while finally getting some exposure on widely watched television shows, are still usually portrayed as promiscuous, psychotic, untrustworthy, or homicidal (or all of the above).

And since straight people don’t usually differentiate between lesbians and bisexual women – as Shonda Rhimes so brilliantly illustrated in her statement about Brooke Smith’s firing on Grey’s Anatomy – that means lesbians and bisexual women are universally portrayed as crazy, lying, murdering sluts.

And now, thanks to MTV, we sleep with our sisters, too.

When these are the only images of us Americans are fed by our entertainment industry, is it any wonder that California voters took away our right to marry, and Arkansas voters our right to raise children? I don’t want Catherine Trammell, Aileen Wuornos, or the Ikki twins influencing children, either!

You could argue that virtually everyone looks bad on MTV’s reality shows these days: straight people, young people, black people, etc. But there are other (much better) representations of these groups abundantly available elsewhere in American entertainment to balance out these negative portrayals.

That is not true of gay men, lesbians, bisexual men and women, and transgender people. We are virtually invisible in mainstream entertainment today, save for the occasional short-term storyline on shows like All My Children and Bones, or on ABC’s Brothers & Sisters.

Imagine if black Americans were still denied many of their basic civil rights and there were no black characters anywhere on TV except Flavor of Love, and that should give you an idea of how harmful a show like Double Shot at Love is to public perception of lesbian and bisexual women.

Perhaps they think because Logo is a sister company (and the owner of this website), they are free to exploit lesbian and bisexual women now. They don’t have to make responsible programming decisions, because their parent company, MTV Networks/Viacom, launched a gay channel, and funds the largest lesbian website on the internet. MTV Networks also publicly denounced Proposition 8, provides domestic partner benefits, and is generally considered a good place to work if you’re gay.

But this isn’t about the parent company, it’s about the MTV channel, and which programming they choose to air. Millions more people watch MTV than Logo (which is unrated, but as a digital cable channel, it’s by definition less widely available than MTV), and far more straight people watch MTV than Logo.

So the content of the shows MTV produces has a much greater impact on mainstream perceptions of LGBT people.

TV networks don’t have to glorify gay people or put us on a pedestal, and a little sensationalism is practically required to get ratings these days. But is it too much to ask that their programming doesn’t actively contribute to the world’s overwhelming efforts to belittle and dehumanize us (or any other minority group)? Especially while claiming at the same time to support us?

The quality of MTV’s shows has been in a slow decline for awhile now, so the fact that they’re putting on a show that would make even Bunim and Murray blush is no surprise.

But bisexual kissing sisters? That’s a new low, even for MTV, and in light of our struggle for basic civil rights, airing a show like this is more than simply irresponsible.

It’s reprehensible, and downright shameful.

Instead of helping to fight bigotry and discrimination through entertainment, as they once did, MTV is now helping promote it, and they’re profiting from it.

Not through direct revenue (I doubt any non-adult advertiser will touch this with a ten-foot pole), but through ratings, since Tila Tequila was one of their highest-rated shows in recent history. They’re trying to use this show to build the kind of buzz they hope will make MTV a water-cooler brand again.

Never mind that the ratings bump comes at the expense of the gay community.

There are other group that benefit from Double Shot: The Mormon Church and other religious institutions who financed much of the anti-gay marriage movement in California this year, using propaganda that promoted fear, stereotypes, and ignorance to strip of us our civil rights.

The churches can save their money now – MTV’s doing their dirty work for them.

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