SoaR Gaming have released one of their content creators over transphobic comments made in 2018.
SoaR Gaming have ended their partnership with popular youtuber ‘TheRealKenzo’ over transphobic comments. Kenzo made the comments in a Discord channel in relation to an Overwatch tournament.
Most of the publicly available comments Kenzo made were directed towards ‘EeveeA’, an Overwatch content creator who identifies as transgender. The comments were spread across March 2017 to August 2018.
Due to recent events, we have decided to release @TheFakeKenzo from SoaR.
— SoaR (@SoaRGaming) August 29, 2019
Twitter user ‘LonelyKarma2405’ compiled multiple statements made by Kenzo, including messages about EeveeA.
“I don’t believe that lesbians or bi exist, it’s all a conspiracy from the illuminati,” said one message.
“How come we never see transgender people being lesbian? Like a man transgendering to a woman, then still like women. That’s why I don’t believe in the whole “put in the wrong body” type of thing, since there’s no people that’s put in the wrong body but still like the opposite sex.”
“You heard what they said. Black people can’t be racist and females can’t be sexist,” one message said.
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One of the other people in the Discord tried to warn Kenzo about his comments in the Twitch chat, saying that “we are getting [you a] bad reputation now.” Kenzo replied with “I don’t care about these extreme feminists, [I’m] just watching because my friend is playing in one of the teams.”
— lonelykarma (@LonelyKarma2405) August 29, 2019
Kenzo released a statement after SoaR announced his removal from the organization.
“About a year ago I acted and thought in ways that’s not okay and I regret being like that,” he said. “I talked to EeveeA and I have a wider knowledge of what I did wrong. I can’t take back what I said, but I can change of who I am today and improve. And I hope people will give me time.”
About a year ago I acted and thought in ways that's not okay and I regret being like that. I talked to EeveeA and I have a wider knowledge of what I did wrong.I can't take back what I said, but I can change of who I am today and improve. And I hope people will give me time.
— TheRealKenzo (@TheFakeKenzo) August 29, 2019
At the time of writing, Kenzo has 447,000 YouTube subscribers and 8,000 Twitter followers. He is a prominent Overwatch and Paladins content creator, grabbing hundreds of thousands of views on every video he makes.