LuluLuvely, Pokimane & more Twitch streamers call out men sexualizing them on Reddit
Twitch: LuluLuvelyPopular Twitch streamer LuluLuvely has called out the gross Reddit forums that make demeaning and inappropriate comments, images and videos about her, as well as other female streamers, saying it makes her uncomfortable.
Although all streamers, big and small, can often face bullying and harassment, female streamers are often targeted in particular, as streaming remains a male-dominated space – especially when looking at the most popular broadcasters.
Lulu, primarily an Apex Legends streamer, has struggled with hate and harassment in the past, even forcing her to take breaks from streaming entirely.
Now, she has called out just one of the ways that viewers, mostly men, will target female streamers by spreading inappropriate sexualized posts about them on Reddit. Many other female streamers confirmed that they were aware of the same happening to them.
LuluLuvely calls out gross Reddit posts
On April 21, LuluLuvely posted a series of quotes, indicative of what women are often advised to avoid such targeted harassment, such as “Just wear normal clothes and men won’t overly sexualize you,” and, “If you cover up on stream they will treat you better.”
Accompanying the post were four screenshots, showing Reddit posts about Lulu with images and titles like “she has some a*s” and “if anyone wants to jerk/talk about lulu dm me.”
“Just wear normal clothes and men won’t overly sexualize you”
“If you cover up on stream they will treat you better”
“Just don’t act a certain way and the men will respect you online”
The men- pic.twitter.com/1QER7pv1Nn
— Lulu (@LuluLuvely) April 21, 2022
Lulu explained, “This used to not bother me but recently it’s really been weighing on me. I just feel so uncomfortable on stream knowing that there are men doing this while watching.
“And I’m so tired of purposely wearing baggy clothes only to still have men clip me walking out of the room.”
Her post prompted responses from many other female streamers.
QTCinderella highlighted that Reddit will rarely, if ever, remove these subreddits, despite requests.
Nope 🙃 we’ve tried multiple times to get them taken down but apparently they don’t break any rules
— Lulu (@LuluLuvely) April 21, 2022
Twitch streamer Adept also highlighted the plague of fake images or videos which are fabricated to look like female streamers, and the effect this harassment had on her own life too.
They literally photoshop nudes of girl streamers and share them amongst each other and Reddit still says nothings wrong 🤡
The worst part is it makes you not want to even express your sexuality on your own time because of it too, at least that’s how it was for me— adept. (@adeptthebest) April 21, 2022
Imane ‘Pokimane’ Anys – the most-followed female streamer on Twitch – called the issue “rampant” on Reddit, and that they are ignored by moderators on the site.
this issue is so rampant on reddit, and it’s really frustrating that they refuse to listen to the very people that are being sexualized in gross threads/subreddits.
— pokimane (@pokimanelol) April 21, 2022
Reddit does have rules in its content policy about targeted harassment and mentions directly posting sexual media about individuals, but it’s not clear how or if these rules are directly breached by the content made about female streamers.
In fact, “Rule 1” of the content policy states “Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people.”
It is also difficult for Twitch itself to do anything in this scenario, as the content is made separate from Twitch services.