The Brazilian streamer Gabriela Cattuzzo was recently dropped from Razer and announced "she is stepping away from social media after her personal information was posted online". Here's a summary of what happened:
Cattuzzo posted a picture of her riding a mechanical bull on Twitter, to which a guy replied "you can ride me as much as you want". Then, she replied to him "There's always an asshole to talk shit and sexualize women, even when the woman is making a joke, right? That's why men are trash." She later added that "non-shitty men are the exception". She then began to be harrassed online, including on a notoriously misogynistic and racist Brazilian chan, Dogolachan (whose founder was arrested last year for racism and death threats). An old video of her being rude to a viewer surfaced, and she apologized for it.
A few days later, Razer Brazil posted a statement on Twitter, where they affirmed that they wouldn't be renewing her contract when it expires next week, and where they first wrote the now infamous sentence "We have been since the beginning, as gamers, confronted with all types of preconceptions and stereotypes, and we will continue to fight so that this type of situation won't repeat itself." Cattuzzo apologized for reacting aggressively, but not for defending herself.
I've been following this story quite closely, so now I'm going to say what I've been seeing:
Some people dug in and found out that Razer Brazil's PR department is 100% comprised of men. Razer's statement has been receiving a shocking amount of backlash, with some of the most relevant gaming personalities in the country saying they will boycott the brand going forward. A lot of people have also been pointing out the hypocrisy by Razer's part, since they always act feminist in public events but fire a woman for responding to harassment, when men have said other equally questionable things in the past and came out unscathed.
And as always, there's the "#NotAllMen" crowd too. But those seem to not be as loud this time.
What do you think? Did Razer do the right thing?
