This week, the world is celebrating women for the 100th International Women’s Day tomorrow. Last night, Married at First Sight, Australia’s most popular TV show which airs at that prime time family spot of 7.30pm, stuck up the figurative rude finger to the whole idea of #PressForProgress, the 2018 theme of IWD, during its boys’ night.
When the cameras showed one of the MAFS men – no prizes for guessing who – enthusiastically proffering up his onscreen wife to be “banged” by his fellow male contestants, family viewing hit a new low.
Thankfully many viewers lying on their couches across the 1.53 million Australian homes this show is beamed into four nights a week, were quick to slam, dubbing Dean Wells, ‘disrespectful’ and ‘disgusting’ on social media.
Last night’s offensive MAFS episode
In last night’s episode the men of MAFS caught up for an alcohol-soaked “boys’ night” of posturing and posing. The conversation, alas inevitably, took a misogynistic turn when Troy Delmege slurred the half-question, “If you could have any girl at the start, like swapping…”
Without missing a beat, the show’s proud male chauvinist with the wandering eye, Dean, admitted he always fancied Justin Fischer’s wife Carly Bowyer. “Judging solely on looks, I don’t know her as a person.” Classy.
Then, in his most degrading comment yet (and there have been a few) about his onscreen wife Tracey Jewel, Dean offered her up for sex to the other five men in the room.
“If someone said they wanted to bang Tracey, please I’d be into it,” he announced. Gross!
Seemingly the only decent man in the room, Patrick Miller, called out the vile behaviour saying to the camera, “It’s just disrespectful. The guys shouldn’t be thinking about those sort of things.”
Patrick is right. Men shouldn’t be thinking they own a woman’s right to consent. Men shouldn’t be thinking that a ‘go for it’ from the boys is the green-light to initiate sex with a woman. And young men and women watching at home shouldn’t be thinking this sort of behaviour is okay, or even expected when men gather around an esky for a boys’ night.
Boys will be boys is not an excuse to be a misogynistic jerk on national TV.
And the misogynist thinks he’s the victim?
In a promo clip for tonight’s episode, it appears the comments have come back to the show’s female contestants and they are not-happy, Jan.
Dean does his best to play the victim, and in doing so rolls out the tired old adage; boys-will-be-boys.
“I thought we had some interesting chats. That’s what a bros night is all about,” Dean says to his fellow male castmates. “Everything should be left in that room and that’s the end of it.”
Unfortunately for Dean, that logic doesn’t quite work, since the conversation in “that room” was fed into the living rooms of over a million Australians.
On social media, Dean offered a limp apology to “offended” women, only after he pointed a pathetic they-made-me-do-it finger that the show’s producers.
WATCH the promo for tonight’s diabolical episode. Article continues after video…
Dean’s attempt at an apology.
Dean makes it so easy for us to paint him as the villain, however, some responsibility must be placed on the other five men in the room, who instead of stamping out the gross conversation, jeered along while fantasising about their own wife-swapping adventures.
“Tracey’s attractive but I’m more attracted to girls like Ash,” Justin said at one point during the boys’ night.
It seems there is something inherently wrong with the idea of ‘boys’ night’. Naming it a ‘boys’ night doesn’t give grown men licence to shed all responsibility of being a decent and respectful adult.
Let’s hope that homes around the country used last night’s reprehensible behaviour by men who not only should know better but now have a great big public persona, as a conversation starting point about how not to act.
