Mick Hartley

James Esses watches Channel 4's Naked Attraction so we don't have to:

This reality show has been known to push gender ideology before, and has platformed some of the most bizarre human beings this country has to offer. In a recent episode, a ‘non-binary’ student who calls himself ‘Six’ revealed that his darkest fantasy is to ‘one day have sex with an alien’.

However, the first episode of series 11, which was broadcast three weeks ago, has truly taken the biscuit. In it, we meet 54-year-old Sarah Tayler, who is in search of a partner. The catch is that ‘Sarah’ was previously on the show four years ago. Not as ‘Sarah’, but as ‘David’. For you see, Tayler is a man who has ‘transitioned’. No longer is he a straight male – he is now a ‘pansexual female’.

From the beginning of the episode, we are informed that ‘David has died’ (in reference to him taking on his new identity). It soon becomes clear that Tayler has a desire to grab attention. We are told that he ‘wants to get naked on TV and show everyone’. He also tells us that he ‘didn’t realise how good tits are’, and that ‘David made no noise when it came to having an orgasm but now I’m a screamer’.

The episode goes to great lengths to convince us that Tayler really has become a woman. ‘I have all the right bits in all the right places’, he says, stressing that this is his ‘real body’. Contestants are offered the chance to ‘take the new model for a test drive’.

That this is anything but natural becomes painfully clear when Tayler describes the two hours he must spend every day using an ‘oversized dildo’ to ‘stretch out’ his new ‘vagina’. In one of the crassest statements I have ever had the misfortune of hearing, Tayler tells us that: ‘I specified that I wanted a penny slot machine, but it came out more like the Grand Canyon.’

The audience is expected to believe that it is possible for a man to become a woman. The show does not add a voice of balance, reason or challenge. At one point, [host Anna] Richardson tells Tayler: ‘There are so many firsts for you as a woman – I love that!’

When he was on the show four years ago as ‘David’, Tayler ended up getting rejected by the woman he took on a date. But as ‘Sarah’, he had much more success. Fresh from his date in the new episode, Tayler announces to the audience that thanks to a ‘silicon strap-on… I’m pleased to say I’m not a virgin anymore’.

What a time to be alive…