Love Island's Katie Salmon discusses facing biphobia after leaving the villa

Katie Salmon and Sophie Gradon became the first same-sex couple to appear on the reality show in 2016

Love Island’s Katie Salmon has discussed the backlash that she faced from the LGBT+ community following her relationship with Sophie Gradon on the show.

In 2016, Salmon and Gradon became the first and only same-sex couple to appear on the reality dating programme.

As their romance flourished in the villa, Salmon wondered how her family would respond to her becoming romantically involved with a woman.

While she felt uncertainty about whether her family and friends would approve, she didn’t anticipate the criticism that she received from some members of the LGBT+ community after leaving the show.

According to Salmon, a number of people doubted the authenticity of the relationship, claiming that it was simply a ploy for media attention.

“I felt like they all doubted [that I was bi], were criticising me,” Salmon tells the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme.

“I was really upset to be honest that they’d not supported me - my own community who had probably felt those [same] nervous feelings of coming out.”

Over the weekend Bi Visibility Day took place to celebrate the bisexual community on a global scale.

Many people who identify as bi often feel ignored or neglected due to their sexual identity, as George Alabaster, digital officer at LGBT+ charity Stonewall, explains.

“Bi people are often the forgotten part of the LGBT+ community,” he writes.

“Our experiences are commonly assumed to be the same as lesbian and gay experiences, and our identities are frequently made invisible or dismissed as something that doesn’t exist, by people both inside and outside of this community.

“We face a number of negative stereotypes, the primary ones being that we’re greedy, manipulative, incapable of monogamy and unable to make our minds up - the last of which is the same as saying who we are isn’t real.”

He continues, explaining that some straight men frequently believe that bi women are merely pretending to be attracted to other women in order to attract male attention.

Salmon experienced this exact scenario after leaving Love Island, as she explains.

“They see it as a sexual thing. They think it’s entertainment for them,” she says in regard to the way in which straight men sometimes perceive her sexual identity.

“They’ll be like, ‘Oh, you like women as well, you like threesomes.’”

Last year, a study conducted by American University in Washington found that bisexual people are likely to experience more discrimination than other members of the LGBT+ community due to the stigmatisation that they face both from members of the LGBT+ community and people who identify as heterosexual.