At the conclusion of Married at First Sight’s 11th season, the show’s consistent dominance in the weekly ratings demonstrated the power of familiar tropes – with nearly 3 million viewers tuning in to the final dinner party.
The casting is a predictable stir fry: the “strong” woman with insecurities, the gym bro, the woman who is direct, the older woman who knows her worth, the man who would be better off in therapy, the ones who want to become influencers, and the ones who try too hard.
Add in with a man with misogynistic views and the recipe is complete.
This season’s toxic behaviour mainly came from Jack Dunkley. Last season it was Harrison Boon and before that it was Dean Wells.
This toxic behaviour includes gaslighting, yelling at women, isolating their partner from the other contestants they have bonded with, and deflecting questions about their behaviour within the experiment.
These men not only treated who their prospective wives but also other female contestants poorly. A peak moment from this season was when Jack told Lauren’s partner Jonathan to “Muzzle your woman.”
Alyssa Barmonde, MAFS contestant from season 10 says it is scary that these toxic traits are given a platform and men are encouraged to objectify women and spread misogyny.
Lyndall Grace, also from season 10 of the show, is in two minds about the platforming of toxic behaviours. She says that it is not necessarily normalising the toxic behaviour.
“[On one hand], it needs to be displayed to be discussed publicly.
“[At the same time] I believe that criticising their beliefs and discourse only echoes it further and the only way to truly take that power from them is to ignore them.”
The toxic behaviour of some of the men on the show has extended beyond the screen, as they have gone on to harass anyone who is aligned with feminism.
One of the people that has been targeted online is Abbie Chatfield who released two podcast episodes responding to an Instagram-rant from Harrison about her being unmarriable.
Harrison also called some of the women from his season (season 10) unmarriable.
The “idea” is that once women are between 27 and 35 they decrease in their sexual “market value,” and that women peak around 18 to 24. After that their age starts to show, and emotional trauma ruins them.
According to Harrison, the woman he was matched to on the show, Bronte Schofield, was an example of someone declining in market value.
Tahnee Cook who was another contestant on MAFS Season 10 labelled Harrison’s comments “disgusting.”
Another person who has been harassed by one of the MAFS men is writer and activist, Tarang Chawla.
Since 2021, Dean Wells has been commenting on his posts, mainly ones that are about men’s violence against women.
These comments are either victim blaming, racist, and or homophobic. As the toxic comments continued, Chawla eventually made a post directly to Dean telling him to stop.
But the barrage only continued.
In her article for The Australian Financial Review in 2019, Alecia Simmonds highlighted that consent is assumed for the course of the show and to cover a range of sexual acts.
When it comes to why someone does not want to have sex with their partner is pathologised vastly different between men and women.
“MAFS may be one of the first times where marriage acts not as refuge but as revelation; where heterosexuality appears like an object in a scientist’s laboratory,” Simmonds wrote.
This year so far men’s violence has resulted in 32 women killed (as at April 28).
This brings into question whether what we see on television is playing a part of upholding the misogynistic views that are at the root of this national emergency.
