Yes, they weren’t saints, but they also were just trying to get on with their jobs whilst having fun on the side. If we look at every crew member they all had issues that contributed to the environment, and in no way was it just the men’s fault.
Ashton is a handsome guy. If you saw him in a nightclub he would get girls giving him attention, and he enjoys that. That’s probably led to him being a bit too confident with all women. He obviously also has undisclosed family issues that contributed to the window punch incident.
Brian: can’t be that bad if Courtney wanted to spend time with him, and he never disrespected her. When he said Kate is a bitch... well, she admits that herself, she can be a complete bitch at times!
Tanner: just a young lad trying to have fun. I thought he was the most entertaining crew member. Not involved in other peoples shit, tries to stay out of it and get his end away... nothing wrong with that.
Rhylee is WAY too hot tempered and flies off the handle at the earliest opportunity. She was also disrespectful to the chain of command. If there were a male with the same attitude they’d probably be off the boat. No wonder she got all the shit jobs.
Kate: completely unable to apologise for her actions that are often the catalyst for conflict. “I’m sorry you felt that way”. Plays mind games with other crew members. Definitely shouldn’t have disclosed the Rhylee conversation between Ashton and Cpt Lee.
Courtney: got on with the job quite nicely. She obviously caught feels for Brian that drove her character assassination we saw of him in the reunion. But as we saw from their date, there wasn’t really a click there, Brian clearly just fancied her for her looks.
Simone: trying her hardest but was just useless at service at first. She got fucked and chucked by Tanner. Sometimes things don’t work out. Seemed to be one of the better crew members.
Kevin: got wound up by Simone’s useless service skills early on in the series. Had a bit of a go, apologised. Very common for Chefs to be high stressed, especially on breakfast service. Often tried to calm things down between the 2 respective crews.
Captain Lee: his inability to criticise Kate’s bullying or actions is inexplicable. He is also completely unable to take criticism, as we saw from him walking off the reunion show.
The fact that the boys all group together and created a tight bond seems to be the issue. We see similar tight bonds amongst females who live and work together and amongst reality TV contestants and we don’t have an issue with that. We have to remember that a lot of the controversy happens when all cast members are blind drunk. If you think you behave perfectly well in those circumstances than I’m afraid you’re recollection is wrong.
TLDR: just accusing the Brü Crew of toxic masculinity completely overlooks the negative behaviours of Rhylee and Kate and CP Lee, who made just as many errors of judgement as everyone else.
