Sweet Anita draws attention to sexual harassment of streamers

Popular streamer Sweet Anita has been active since 2018 and is known for quite a few things. For one, she is very open and educational about her mental health issues – specifically, the fact that she has Tourette’s. She actively discusses the topic, her symptoms and other issues in her streams and videos, and also clears up misunderstandings on the subject matter.

Sweet Anita runs a fairly active and packed stream schedule, with near-daily if not daily videos at various times of day. Within these streams, you can see all sorts of things – from Just Chatting videos to her playing GTA V, Apex Legends, and more.

Lately, followers have led the 30yo down a dark path of discovery, as one after another Reddit and Discord groups, packed full with disturbing content came to light. This comes nearly a year after plenty of stalking, disturbing and downright threatening demeanor by followers plagued her existence. She recently opened up to HuffPost about her experiences which seem like daily occurrence, and raises the question: Why is nobody doing anything about this for so long?

Sweet Anita

Twitch: Sweet_Anita

Sweet Anita contemplates quitting Twitch altogether

In a recent video a few days ago, she discussed something a bit less fun than gaming on Twitch – the possibility of her leaving the platform. With 1.7 million followers, she is one of the top Female streamers on the platform, however there are several issues that are making Sweet Anita consider quitting Twitch.

The most pressing issue she names are trolls – creeps who sexualize her against her will, to the point of keeping a rather disgusting Subreddit page filled with fake nudes and edited images of the streamer. As is often the case for women creating content, Sweet Anita, who certainly hasn’t shown herself in an inappropriate state of dress, had to face fans sending her images and even videos of themselves jerking off to videos or pictures of her.

That would be enough to disgust anyone if it happened only once, but for Sweet Anita, it’s a near-daily routine – and one she can’t do anything about. While obviously streamers like her have the option of blocking and reporting the sexual predators who harass her like that, that’s merely a drop of water on a hot stone – and there is absolutely nothing she can do about content shared on private Discord channels, on invite-only subreddits, and so on.

Creeps might consider this flattering, but its really just downright disturbing.

A common issue among streamers

She isn’t alone either – whether female streamers dress revealingly or not, they almost always find themselves on the receiving end of incidents like what Sweet Anita has to go through – and the only true way to put an end to it is stepping away from the public eye and thus denying the creeps additional material.

Of course, some people take it even further. The UK-based Sweet Anita had an ongoing issue with a Twitch stalker who sought her out in person, slept in front of her house, followed her to the grocery store, and even threatened to kill her multiple times. The stalker was eventually detained – after harassing her in real life for a month.

He wasn’t the only one either – threats have been made against her family, people have leaked her personal info, and more. After openly revealing her history of self-harm and other mental health struggles, Sweet Anita found herself relentlessly mocked and otherwise trolled on her stream. She clapped back incredibly impressively at the time, but it’s issues like this that she said might eventually drive Sweet Anita off Twitch entirely.

We couldn’t blame her – her and a lot of other streamers have to deal with a sad reality of harassment, sexualization and toxicity simply for the ‘crime’ of being attractive women on the Internet. The fact so many streamers face this issues is a sign of a wider problem. Discouraging this behavior between followers is also the responsibility of all the other followers of a given streamer. Protect the people you follow and admire from the toxic behavior of others.

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