One dater on First Dates Ireland has opened up about the physical abuse he received for being gay.
Jamie, who is now 35 revealed he was beaten up by groups of lads when he was just 16.
The restaurant manager tells his date Anthony (30) that he would ask his attackers to hit him harder to make them look stupid and because he refused to let them hurt him in the long run.
After telling Anthony that he had come out at 16, Jamie, who is Welsh and has been living in Ireland for five years, says: “It wasn’t all roses. I came out at a time when it wasn’t the done thing to do.”
He added: “I got queer-bashed quite a few times as well. Just smile and laugh, always smile and laugh. Go ‘yeah, punch me again, hit me harder. What are you proving by doing it? It has taken seven of you to punch me in the face to prove you are a bigger man than me’.”
Jamie explained that it was always groups trying to prove that they were “bigger or harder” than him or that they were “somehow more of a man” than him because they were straight.
“I used to stand there and laugh and ask them to hit me harder,” he says, “Because in my head, if I am standing there laughing at you and asking you for more, you are not hurting me, I am just making you look stupid.”
He continued: “It hurt the next morning but on a principle level and a mindset level, they achieved nothing by doing that and actually I could stand there and say: ‘you didn’t really hurt me in the grand scheme of things. If anything it made me a lot stronger about who I am as a person’.”
Watch the full clip here:
Will Jamie and Anthony hit it off? First Dates airs tonight on RTÉ2 at 9.30pm.
