liam married at first sight

We Need To Talk About The Way ‘Married At First Sight’ Portrayed Queerness Last Night

Tell us you love Punkee without telling us you love Punkee. Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. It'll mean the world.

Last night, we were introduced to four new contestants on Married At First Sight, including one groom who got plenty of airtime, country boy Liam Cooper.

This self-described “Aussie bogan” was paired up with the pink-obsessed Georgia Fairweather, but it was an incident that happened during the reception that has Married at First Sight fans unhappy with the show. 

In the set up for the wedding, Liam told viewers that he was openly bisexual, making him MAFS’ first bisexual groom and one of only a handful of queer people who have appeared on prime-time Australian reality TV. However, while queer representation on screen is important for the LGBTQIA+ community, I’m afraid that last night’s episode was far from great. It wasn’t even good — it was bad. Real bad. 

As a queer person, I felt a lot of feelings last night, and I shall do my best to summarise them. 

Liam Cooper’s Coming Out On Married At First Sight

If you’re queer, or you have queer people in your life, you’ll know that coming out doesn’t just happen once. In fact, because of our heteronormative society, queer people are almost forced to come out whenever they enter new and unfamiliar environments. And for Liam, that was on national television and in the company of a bunch of strangers.

You can watch it all unfold here:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Married At First Sight (@mafs)

Now, you don’t need me to tell you, but this coming out scene was a mess. A literal mess. From the shocked look on Georgia’s face, to the insistent questioning from the rest of the MAFS cast, this coming out experience looked traumatic — which is fucked to see in 2021. 

Coming out has historically been a traumatic experience for the LGBTQ+ community, but as our society has increasingly grown more progressive — and as we have started to normalise queerness in pop culture — it’s become a lot easier. But, not last night.

If you were to tell me that last night’s episode was filmed in the year 2004, I would have believed you — that’s how backwards it was.

Like, this was her reaction… Is this a joke?

The only response that I want to see to a person coming out is being welcomed with open arms. And we did not get that. Instead, we got Georgia telling Liam, “Honestly, I do believe that [all the] things you did before, it all led you to be here today and the person that you are…” C’mon sis, could you not have just said something along the lines of, “It doesn’t matter, who you are is who you are”. 

But even worse than Georgia’s response was the role that Bec played in the whole ordeal. Bec’s question — “What happens if they didn’t swing your way?” — was the reason Liam was outed. At this point, it seems pretty damn obvious that the producers slipped a bit of info to Bec to potentially blindside Liam and his new wife. This is especially damaging, as the concept of blindsiding someone plays into harmful tropes of queer folks being deceptive.

Oh, and Bec laughing in Liam’s face when he confirmed his bisexuality was…straight-up disgusting.

And sure, I wasn’t there and there is a chance that the MAFS cast could have been super supportive and we just didn’t see that in the edit. But, regardless of this, the MAFS producers and editors truly failed queer people with their representation of Liam’s coming out story.

The Internet’s Response

If you watched last night’s episode and thought “gosh that was weird” — don’t worry, you’re not alone. It would seem that the internet, especially Twitter, is on your side. 

This morning, Liam appeared on Today Extra to talk about how he was outed on the show. “Now looking back at it, I wish I would’ve been able to talk to Georgia — just me and her — instead of having the whole group to come out that way,” he said. “I’m a big believer in we shouldn’t have to have labels. Heterosexual people don’t have to come out, so why do anyone from the LGBTIQ community have to come out?”. Good question, Liam!

This whole saga eerily calls back to other times when a reality TV contestant’s sexuality has been exploited as a way to drum up drama, including Brooke Blurton on The Bachelor. If you cast your minds back to the Honey Badger’s season, you’ll remember the whole ordeal that was Brooke’s coming out. Brooke telling Nick Cummins that she was bisexual was heavily promoted for weeks on Channel 10, and slated as some kind of shocking revelation.

In the aftermath of last night’s MAFS, it’s clear reality TV producers still haven’t learnt their lesson. Hopefully, we can get to a point in this world when ‘coming out’ is much less of a traumatic experience and not used for a reality TV plot line.