LAST EDITED ON 04-13-17 AT 07:41 PM (EST)

Survivor is just as guilty as Varner.

That isn't fair to the show at all.

They cast a transgender man in Millennials vs Gen X and consciously chose not to out him as their first transgender contestant. They could have tried to make a big deal about the casting. But they didn't. They were respectful of how much Zeke wanted to talk about it, and let him play the game the way he wanted.

When this situation did come up within the game, they consulted with Zeke and GLAAD afterwards to see how this episode should be portrayed. We don't know what would have happened if they consulted and Zeke said no, they might've just made an extremely awkward cut. Varner already stated he was going home that night, they could've cut together some kind of, "Well, this is obvious" thing, almost like a quit. We don't know. But we do know, the way it went down, Jeff Probst was very respectful of Zeke and the producers were conscientious afterwards with what to do with it. If the argument is that Probst forced their hand by skipping the vote, then your argument is more of a production procedure mistake (and continuity concern). Which isn't even close to being as bad a what Jeff Varner did.

There is nothing about how Survivor treated Zeke prior to this incident (see: the previous season) that suggests they designed this to be exploitative. Varner brought this into the game, not the producers.