Netflix’s near-endless supply of vacuous reality dating shows has sparked debate, with one of the contestants on Love is Blind airing some seriously concerning comments that many believed are ableist or even spouting eugenics.
Love is Blind’s Nancy Rodriguez had a conversation with fellow contestant, Bartise Bowden, about her job as a speech pathologist who works with disabled and special needs children, with her saying her desire to have children is met by her fear of having a child with a birth defect.
Rodriguez was speaking on her desire to have children sooner rather than later in order to avoid any birth defects, and controversially remade if she knew her child would end up with a disability she would “try again and hope that the second time, it’s better, then I would go that route”.
Commenting so freely around potentially aborting a special needs child has been viewed as an ableist by viewers, if not pro-eugenics. Rodriguez cited how sad she felt helping the children, with her seeing them as so heavily disadvantaged, but audiences have seen it in a much more negative light.
A petition was launched after the episodes aired, with nearly 2000 signatures calling for her statements to be removed from Netflix. Started by Allyson Kelly, she’s called on Netflix to also issue an apology for airing the statements, declaring “Netflix has the power to not air material like this”.
The eugenics argument is a hard one to easily navigate, but the lives of disabled people are still fairly consistently under scrutiny, and most certainly not helped by reality TV show contestants spouting harmful rhetoric. More skeptical would be why anyone would take a reality TV show contestant’s opinions seriously in the slightest. The contestants are not paid healthcare professionals working on complex issues such as disability, why should anyone take them seriously?
With a platform as large as Netflix’s though, the lack of moderation or content warning around such a topic is concerning. Love is Blind is hardly a show which has ever displayed much diversity in its cast, with none of the cast known to have any disability to date, nor have they ever knowingly featured queer people.
It’s especially worth noting from Rodriguez’s comments is disabled people still live lives as meaningful as anyone else, and discussion over disabled lives really shouldn’t be discussed by able-bodied people.
Love is Blind is currently available to stream on Netflix.
