YouTube star PewDiePie has fought back against yet another shaming campaign that claims he is transphobic for “misgendering” one of Dr Phil’s guests, 19-year-old trans woman Bameron. As he commented on the clip from the famous TV show during one of his reviews, he referred to the teenager as “Walmart Jeffree Star” and used masculine pronouns.
Bameron hit back at Pewds with a special video, branding him “literally a rat” and insisting that he should have known which gender pronouns to use as he had seen how she presented herself.
“PewDiePie, I know you’re not out here with 100 million subscribers, with 8000 scandals, misgendering trans people. PewDiePie, f*** you. Thank you for misgendering me on the biggest platform. I’m loving all the hate from your subscribers”, Brameron scolded the blogger.
Many seemed to share the teenager’s opinion, flooding Twitter with angry comments and calling the 30-year-old blogger a transphobe. Felix Kjellberg, which is Pewds’ real name, did not turn a blind eye to the scandal and gave Bameron and the YouTuber’s accusers another two minutes of online fame on his platform.
“This person who, to me, was so clearly a Jeffree Star wannabe or lookalike, I didn’t even think about it. She had a masculine name. It’s not that weird to think they would be referred to as he. She wasn’t mentioned as ‘she’ anywhere in the video so it’s not that weird!” he noted, adding that if they had used any pronouns he would have changed it.
He insisted that he supports the LGBT community and “would never purposefully misgender someone as a way to antagonise or troll”.
“I wouldn’t do that, the same with sexuality. That’s not okay, you shouldn’t do it either, I wouldn’t do it. But these dumb*ss anime-avatar kids on Twitter... Your brains are not fully developed, clearly. You are just making noise. You are not helping anyone”, he said, concluding “It’s the same s*** all over again. Go f*** yourself.”
PewDiePie's Controversy History
The uber-popular YouTuber with over 102 million subscribers has been embroiled in several controversies on his way to reach the Olympus of social media. One of the biggest scandals erupted in the wake of the Christchurch massacre, when the gunman, who livestreamed the attack on Facebook via a GoPro camera, minutes before opening fire referred to the popular "subscribe to PewDiePie" meme, which at the time was being used amid Pewds’ showdown with T-Series.