Column:

Sexist pigs on The Gauntlet

By Dan Friesen

Published Feb. 26, 2008

Well, it turns out that I’m a sexist. I always thought that I was just making jokes, but what I didn’t realize was that the jokes I wrote had violent and sexist undertones that were victimizing people. I didn’t realize that the actions and words I thought were harmless and just for giggles are actually signs of just how deeply entrenched I am in this society’s chauvinist ways.

I thought I was just doing my thing the best way I knew how, but it turns out I’m a sexist. But I’m not the only one. This season on The Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Gauntlet III, the males on the “veterans” team have been being some serious sexist pigs.

The show all boils down to a final challenge at the end of the season that will decide which team will get to divide $300,000, and as such, there is a strategic advantage to lose weak players along the way. Naturally enough, it was only a matter of time before the men start talking about “trimming the fat,” which ironically is a reference to throwing challenges to get rid of the women, not to get rid of the seriously overweight Eric, as one might expect. These men think that they are just following a good strategy, claiming that they consistently have to carry the women through the challenges, and that if they have to do so in the last challenge, they’ll never be able to win the cash. What they don’t realize is that what they’re actually doing is reinforcing and strengthening the cultural prejudices against women: that they’re weaker than men, not as smart as men and don’t have the same drive in competition that men do.

This points to a very serious problem with our society, this cultural imbalance among the genders. However, I think that there is a secondary, greater problem in this little insolated society that seems to be getting swept under the carpet by everyone except me.

The cast of the show is split into two groups: the veterans (those who have participated in two or more challenges) and the rookies (those who have not).

In the 2006 season of the challenge, Fresh Meat, the producers for the first time included in the cast people who had never appeared on the Real World or Road Rules. These people were specially cast for the Fresh Meat season. Right off the bat, I am morally opposed to this. It’s the fucking “Real World/Road Rules Challenge.” It’s right in the name. It’s not the Overly Combative Alcoholics Who Want To Be On MTV Challenge (although, if they ever consider a name change, that might be the most accurate option); you’re not supposed to be on it if you haven’t been on the Real World or Road Rules.

But that’s only the beginning of my gripe here. This season, six out of the sixteen members of the “veteran” team are people who made their first appearance on the Fresh Meat season. I cry foul!

The Real World/Road Rules Challenge is supposed to be essentially a retirement plan for former cast members of the two shows, being as most of them will behave on the shows in such ways as to make them virtually unemployable in the future. There is a tacit agreement that we will continue to watch them long after their fifteen minutes should have been up, and they will stay in shape (so they’ll be fun to look at), drink way more than they should and promise to never get therapy. Being able to just jump right into this retirement plan is no more fair than if you got to draw from a 401(k) plan that you never put any money into, and you in fact never even had a job.

The only thing that allows me to sleep at night is the fact that the greatest and most dominant cast member of all, the bean town prince CT, took the appropriate, conventional path. And he will be doing challenges for decades to come. And he’s not sexist at all.