His Man: An LGBTQ South Korean dating show

His Man is South Korea’s first-ever LGBTQ reality dating show. The first episode – which we stumbled across by accident – is available to watch on both IQIYI and GagaOOLaLa now. It features eight men, who are all thrown into a house together and set up on various dating scenarios to see who clicks with who. 

His Man definitely has that whole The Bachelor kind of setup going on, in that they’re all living in the same house (and some sharing the same beds, in fact), but after watching the first episode we are here to tell you that it’s nothing like The Bachelor at all. 

For starters, while we’re not totally sure yet, it doesn’t seem like they’re going to be eliminating folks. Furthermore, they’re not dressed to the nines and look like they just stepped off the cover of Playboy. All the contestants – at least on first impressions – seem to be relatively ordinary folks who are just trying to find someone to share their life with. They’re professional men who have real-life interests and know what they want from a spouse. 

All eight of the men seem like they’re down to earth. They all enter the house with an air of shyness about them and they tread lightly as they become acquainted with one another throughout the course of the first episode. They’re polite, sweet, and so far, the show has made no attempts to sexualize these contestants or make them appear depraved in any kind of way. Considering the attitude towards LGBTQ folks in South Korea, we say this is a huge win.  

The eight of them are randomly set up in sleeping situations, and then they’re sent off on their first string of dates. As dating so often goes, some make great first impressions, while others fall slightly short. 

Towards the end of the episode, after their dates are said and done, each man has to make a thirty-second phone call to another man in the house he either feels something for, or wants to spend more time with to see if something can develop. We gotta tell you, we squealed and squeaked while these calls were happening. Watching grown men reduce themselves to a bucket of nerves while they confess their feelings to almost strangers is our new brand of CUTE. We are here for it and we hope to see more of it as the show unfolds. 

A show like His Man is quite a big deal for a place like South Korea. LGBTQ rights still have a long way to go in this country, and it remains a relatively unfriendly space when it comes to our LGBTQ people. Same-sex marriage is not recognized, gay people cannot adopt, conversion therapy is still very much a thing in South Korea, and there are no legal protections against anti-LGBTQ discrimination of any kind. 

So for the country to authorize the making of something like His Man is a huge win for the LGBTQ community, especially considering the depiction of these individuals is, so far, vastly positive. While South Korea has begun to dabble in the Boys Love genre, a lot of the productions are censored or shortened for reasons we can only deduce lay in the land of homophobia somewhere. 

While not the case for all South Korean BL productions, it is not uncommon for BL series from that region to have episodes that are less than 30 minutes each. Productions are laced with homophobic tendencies and problematic storylines that do nothing to advance queer struggles in that country. 

Like with many other countries in the Asian region producing BL right now, many South Korean BL productions are just not made with the intention of advancing the queer community at all at this time. 

To be clear, His Man is not BL. It’s a reality television show with real-life men that aren’t fictional characters. When we pressed play we feared that the show would be full of harmful stereotypes that would depict these men in a depraved manner that would push the anti-LGBTQ agenda in South Korea. However, we were pleasantly surprised, at least in episode one, there were no attempts to do this at all. 

We are definitely going to continue watching and we’ll bring you a full season review once it’s finished airing. 

If you’re interested in watching His Man, you can find it on IQIYI in their paid VIP section. Two more episodes are scheduled to drop there today. If you don’t want to sign up for a paid service, you can find the first episode free on GagaOOLaLa. The next two episodes are slated to drop there on July 29, 2022. 

---

His Man is available to stream on IQIYI and GagaOOLaLa. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for all queer stuff!