That's the only thing that made it tolerable. Probst too - as much of a dudebro as he usually is, he's really good in a crisis. Stayed mostly out of it except to step up to point out when the guy's explanations were BS, and to make sure he wasn't minimizing.

That was AMAZING. I was impressed with how instantly everyone leapt to Zeke's defense. I found the whole thing ended up blog quite moving. But also, fuck Varner--that was low.

I wasn't watching.. I've found this season kind of annoying. But I read about it.

And the guy who outed Zeke says he's an ally. That is just horrible.

Sounds like he just stepped up to be the next one voted off the island.

He was voted off, that's actually why he outed Zeke. Varner was on the bottom and everyone had decided to vote him out. Zeke went to Varner and told him he was going to be voted out. Zeke did this because he felt it was the right thing to do.

So in some kind of desperation (I guess) Varner decided to out Zeke and I guess pepole would think Zeke was deceptive and vote him out instead

Zeke wrote this [link] about what happened

I haven't been a dedicated Survivor watcher in a long time but I happened to catch this live last night and I was gobsmacked! I've never seen anything like it. What was Varner thinking? And Zeke was far more composed than I could have ever been.

I just hope they spoke with Zeke about how this storyline would be handled this season. What a horrific thing to experience. I mean, I get that Survivor would never pass up airing something like this because, hello! Money. But there's more than money at stake here. This is someone's life.

They didn't even vote. Jeff was all "I think we're all agreed on who's going home?" and off he went.

I said to my sister halfway through that I really hoped they had Zeke's okay to broadcast, and I'm assuming that's the case from his perspective later at Tribal and afterwards.

I went looking, because I wanted to be sure my guess was right and it appears the producers worked extensively with Zeke (and a consultant from GLAAD, apparently), to make sure he was comfortable with the episode.

But I really, highly recommend reading his own words. On Survivor, life, being trans, forgiveness and some other stuff: [link]

Really exceptional piece.

Oh, good. I'm glad that they were respectful of Zeke and his perspective. What a thing to have gone through. The piece he wrote was lovely.