Attempting to get the target off his back, Varner encouraged his fellow contestants to cast a more critical eye on Smith. He announces that Smith had been lying to the group: He's transgender, and this is information he has not shared with them. "It reveals the ability to deceive," he tells them.
As Zeke sits stunned that his gender identity has just been outed in front of his castmates - not to mention a worldwide TV audience - it's immediately clear that Varner's move has backfired. The other contestants howl him down, several becoming extremely emotional as they grapple with what he's just done to Zeke.
Horrified viewers took to social media, echoing the sentiments of those on the show
Speaking to host Probst, Varner seemed to grasp that he'd made a terrible mistake, and attempted to backtrack.
"I'm not saying, Jeff, that transgender people are deceptive," he said, to which Probst scoffed: "You're saying that by not revealing it, he's capable of deception. That's a giant leap of logic. Do you honestly not see that?"
Probst then made an executive decision: There would be no vote. There was no need. It was clear who had to leave the island.
"We don't need to vote, just grab your torch," he told Varner.
As he left the show, Varner broke down in tears as he admitted his mistake.
"Nobody on this planet should do what I did tonight - ever," he said. "And I am so sorry to anybody I offended, especially Zeke, and his family and his friends. I can't talk. I'm sorry," he said.
He tweeted a more thorough apology as the episode screened today:
After taking some time to compose himself, Smith spoke out about why he hadn't publicly spoken about being transgender.
"There are questions people ask. People want to know about your life and they want to know about this and that. It sort of overwhelms everything else that they know about you ... One of the reasons why I didn't want to lead with that is I didn't want to be, like, the trans Survivor player. I wanted to be Zeke the Survivor player."
"It's really not cool," he said of what Varner had done. "But I'm fine."
