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Survivor glossing over its sexual harassment controversy isn’t just astonishing, it’s downright insulting


https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/survivor-island-idols-sexual-harassment-1203411590/

Watching this week's episode, "you’d never know that the show’s currently muscling its way through one of the biggest, ugliest controversies of its 20-year run," says Caroline Framke, noting that the CBS reality show seemed to quickly move on from last week's Dan Spilo inappropriate touching controversy. It was, says Framke, "a baffling display of the show’s inability to grasp the gravity of what happened on its watch." Framke adds: "On Survivor and in the 'real world' alike, talking about and addressing sexual harassment is vital, but it’s far from 'the most important thing.' It’s the bare minimum, and it’s frankly ridiculous that (Jeff) Probst and the producers expect accolades for doing it. The most important thing would be acknowledging the truth of the situation, and better yet, actually doing something about it. Botching this so badly is a wildly disappointing black mark on a show that has made a lot of noise in recent years about being progressive, and no amount of ignoring it in the weeks to come will change that."

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I'm a woman and this is such crap. If his behavior was really inappropriate, then he should have been removed from the show - period - end of story. But no, they had to leave the whole thing in as a story line and then end up with a ridiculous tribal council where nobody agreed that Dan had done anything wrong.
And quite frankly I'm tired of women crying harassment when some man touches their shoulder. Talk about empowering women - how about them saying " I don't like that and if you continue your balls will end up where your tonsils are." Now that would be a strong, empowered woman, but no they take the typical weak female approach and cry about it and expect someone else to solve their problem. Sheesh.
I'm so tired of being preached to when all I want is to be entertained.

And just to be clear - I am in NO way dismissing real sexual harassment - especially when it occurs in the workplace with a subordinate being harassed by a superior. But for heaven's sake - this is a TV show with other contestants and a film crew constantly around. Is it even reasonable to suggest that anything inappropriate happened?

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Even worse was the enablement of Dan by Missy and Elizabeth and the two of them throwing Janet under the bus.

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They made something from nothing to add drama to the show. It's quite disgusting. Unfortunately, someone feeling uncomfortable doesn't exactly equate to someone else having done something wrong. Sometimes it's miscommunication, or lack thereof, and nothing more. They replay one scene over and over if him putting his arm over her while they both were sleeping, which is obviously innocent enough, but nothing else was showed because there was nothing more to show. This is social justice posturing for ratings, and I've decided this is my last season because of it. The light it cast on that poor man, just to gain ratings, is inexcusable.

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I was fairly surprised they let this dude stay.. even if nothing happened the entire thing made the episodes kind of awkward. Now.. after some two weeks.. Dan is gone from the island.

Pfffftttt should've evicted him at that very tribal ?!?

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I'm really having a hard time believing anything i'm seeing presented to me about this. And just now I read that the reunion won't even be live, it's going to be pre-recorded for more control.

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Probably my last Survivor. It has become so scripted and preachy. And this has to be the most boring season ever with terrible players. If they do one more puzzle............

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I'm with you. I truly believe they are destroying this man for ratings. How hard would it be to convince a crew member to be offended by some innocent pat on the back or something? I also think they did it to appease the metoo crowd that was bitching about him staying. He'll, we don't even know what happened, and the ambiguity makes it even more scandalous. It's funny how little Jeff made of the girls making up things he did, just for strategy. I hope Dan sues the shit out of them. The reality is, sometimes someone can be offended, even if nobody did anything wrong.

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oh i'm 100% with you on the last survivor. this season sucks overall.

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Is it possible they are exploiting a situation just for ratings? Did you see anything he did that warranted his removal?

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I didn't see anything on the show that I thought was out of line and if anything happened off camera, then it should have been dealt with right then and there without making a story line out of it. All all I saw was him touching a couple of the women on the shoulder and one night when everyone was asleep him arm went over one of them. Really??? How many times has that happened over the past 19 years???? All that this kind of crap does is trivialize real sexual harassment/abuse.

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Yeah, it's a little disgusting actually.

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Let's all forget the fact that Jeff used to hang out with the contestants and has slept with more than one of them before they stopped letting him "hang" out with them. Pre-Lisa

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