Trans streamer Clara “Keffals” Sorrenti made a name for herself on Twitch as an outspoken advocate on LGBTQ+ issues in late February of this year after Texas Governor George Abbott directed the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate the parents of trans kids for child abuse. Now Sorrenti says she’s been banned for a month for trying, during a recent livestream, to show past examples of the hateful abuse she receives.
“My account got mass reported before I even started and I am banned from Twitch,” she tweeted on July 18. “I’ll do the stream on YouTube instead. You can’t fucking stop me.” On Thursday she announced that Twitch had rejected her appeal, and the ban would stay in place for 28 days. “Twitch banned one of their biggest transgender streamers from their website for openly talking about the abuse they receive,” she wrote. “I do not understand how they managed to fuck up so badly.
Sorrenti and Twitch did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to Sorrenti, the Twitch ban was for “repeated hateful slurs or symbols.” She said the slurs existed in a thumbnail for the livestream, and depicted past comments made about her. Before the channel was suspended, the planned Twitch stream was seemingly going to be about how controversial political streamer Steven “Destiny” Bonnell was allegedly weaponizing his own fans and users on the hate forum Kiwi Farms to heap harassment on her. She is now re-editing that stream to appear on YouTube.
As the Washington Post reported, Sorrenti has risen in popularity on Twitch by covering and debunking a new wave of right-wing attacks on transgender people and the queer community in general. Skewering everything from the “Don’t Say Gay” school bill in Florida to conspiracies that the Uvalde, Texas school shooter was trans, Sorrenti has panned conservatives and centrists and picked fights with everyone from J.K. Rowling to the r/Conservative subreddit. And of course, other political streamers like Bonnell.
“I don’t think civility politics works when I’m engaging with people who don’t even view me as human,” she told the Washington Post earlier this year.
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Bonnell has been banned multiple times from Twitch, and was thrown off the platform for good earlier this year after trying to “debate” white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who had in turn been banned indefinitely back in 2019. At the time, Bonnell also speculated that his indefinite ban might have also been related to his transphobic views against trans women competing in sports.
