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Survivor ‘villain’ fired from job

Jeff Varner fired from his real estate job following the outing of a fellow Survivor contestant.

Survivor contestant Jeff Varner, who clumsily outed a fellow contestant as transgender last week, has now been fired from his job as a real estate agent in North Carolina.

The News & Record newspaper of Greensboro reported he was let go from his job at Allen Tate Real Estate because he was “in the middle of a news story that we don’t want anything to do with.”

Varner notoriously outed fellow contestant Zeke Smith as transgender in a desperate bid to avoid being voted out of tribal council triggering a heated response from both his cast mates and viewers, criticising him through social media.

The openly-gay Varner has since apologised for making “the worst decision of my life.”

“Zeke Smith, and transgender people like him, are not deceiving anyone by being their authentic selves, and it is dangerous and unacceptable to out a transgender person,” said Nick Adams, director of GLAAD’s Transgender Media Program. “It is heartening, however, to see the strong support for Zeke from the other people in his tribe. Moments like this prove that when people from all walks of life get to know a transgender person, they accept us for who we are.”

Source: Variety

5 Responses

  1. That’s America for you….hire and fire for any reason…..I bet there will be some sort of get out clause buried in the small print of his 5000 page job contract. we all know what its like when you just use a piece of US software……still despite what he did, I would guess no one wants to read headlines about Mr Varner being pushed over the edge, there has to be a limit to his ‘punishment’. Zeke seems to be in a good place now and has been balanced about what happened, time to end Varner’s ongoing punishment.

  2. He should not have been fired. All he did was ask “why have you not told them you are trans” that has got nothing to do with survivor. If Zeke can forgive him for asking a question then why can’t anyone else

  3. It’s fair enough I reckon. They don’t want to be associated with a negative news story. Reminds me of the story of the lady who posted something racist on twitter, caught an airplane and when she left the flight, she was the #1 trending topic on twitter and was fired from her job.

  4. I do like that last line from Nick Adams. This whole episode has finally prompted me to watch Transparent – an excellent look at a man finally coming to terms with being a woman.

  5. It does seem a bit rough. I wonder if he told them about what he knew would have been a massive story prior to starting his new role. If he did well what they did really is unprofessional on their pat.

    If he didnt make them aware well thats really unprofessional on his part and he has no one else to blame except for himself…

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