Twitch streamer Trainwrecks’ latest ban over sexist comments spurs community conversation

Trainwrecks is a notorious Twitch streamer who, for anyone outside of his core fanbase, is best known for going on a long-winded, misogynistic rant about female Twitch streamers earlier this year. Though Trainwrecks later apologized, members of the community have since documented instances of repeated offenses, especially as they pertain to sexist comments.

Now, Trainwrecks is seemingly banned again for making sexist comments, and the community is pointing to multiple recurring grievances and questioning what happens next.

His latest infraction, and the event that seemingly led to his ban, happened over a round of Overwatch. Someone clipped a segment of Pokelawl’s stream, which featured Trainwrecks ranting about women playing support players in games, and uploaded it to one of Reddit’s most popular Twitch servers, Livestreamfail.

“Hey Ashley, can you please fucking heal?” Trainwrecks can be heard saying in the clip below. “We get it, you want to fucking act like you’re equal and all that bullshit. What the fuck, dude? Women and men are already equal. Some women have this chip on their shoulder where they have to prove that they’re equal, so they play DPS on purpose and throw games.”

The people he’s playing with can be heard in the background laughing, reiterating phrases like, “What the fuck, dude?” Although Pokimane eventually took the clip down, it circulated on Reddit, prompting Trainwrecks to issue a statement.

“I 100 percent apologize for saying it this way,” Trainwrecks said in the clip below. “First of all, we don’t know if it was a guy or a girl. Pretty much, what I meant was, there are certain people ... I do believe men and women are equal, in video games and everywhere. I main healer and tank myself, so I don’t think healing is a girl’s job. There are some people that are triggered — I see it all over the place on Twitter — they’re triggered that people think women should only play healer, so they purposely don’t play what their main was for the last three seasons just to prove that they’re not carrying people.”

Although Trainwrecks apologized for his comments in that specific situation, sources have shared recent clips with Polygon (embedded here) that show it’s an ongoing behavioral pattern.

In one recent livestream conversation, Trainwrecks aggressively yells at TradeChat, a popular female Facebook streamer. The two get in an argument after TradeChat expressed her frustration and anger over Trainwrecks talking about Twitch Chat’s disappointment with her being on the show.

Trainwrecks spends the next 15 minutes fighting with TradeChat, while other streamers participating in the broadcast — including Destiny, TriHex, Andy Milonakis and Asmongold — try to deescalate the situation. Trainwrecks uses words like “disgusting” and “shameless” to describe TradeChat, causing other streamers like Destiny to ask Trainwrecks to calm down.

Another Overwatch clip that spread around Reddit finds Trainwrecks asking a woman to follow him and a friend on Twitter. When she says no, it leads to an insult about her appearance.

“What do you mean ‘no’?” he asks in the clip below. “Are you one of those girls with a cute voice but bigger body?”

The question leads the woman in question to immediately respond with a “what the fuck?” adding, “You don’t say that.”

Examples of Trainwrecks’ behavior continue to circulate all over Twitch and YouTube to Reddit.

Trainwrecks has responded to the most recent ban on Twitter, affirming to his followers that despite his past bans, this isn’t a permanent goodbye.

“I’ll release more details later, however, I’m going to use this time to reflect on how I can be better, and come back stronger than ever,” he tweeted.

His ban and his consistent behavior have led to many within the community questioning how Twitch’s bans work. It’s the exact same situation Trainwrecks found himself in earlier this year when he received a suspension for his misogynistic rant.

Twitch’s community guidelines state that any kind of hateful conduct, which the company defines as “content or activity that promotes, encourages, or facilitates discrimination, denigration, objectification, harassment, or violence” based on a number of factors including “sex, gender or gender identity” is prohibited. The guidelines also state that it has a “zero-tolerance violation and all accounts associated with such activity will receive an indefinite suspension.”

Indefinite bans are rare, and it’s unclear when or how they’re handed out. Polygon has reached out to Twitch for more information on the situation and clarification over indefinite bans, though the company usually doesn’t comment on individual cases.

Correction: An earlier version of this story referenced Pokimane instead of Pokelawls. The story has been updated to reflect this correction