Sexist harassment in Valorant is sadly nothing new, and unfortunately, we have another incident of harassing women in Valorant. Cloud9 White player Melanie “Mel” Capone streamed a session of playing Valorant in the early hours of December 15 with people she appears not to know personally. One of the players, Erra from Team Meraki, suddenly asks her on stream, “Hey do you wanna f**k?”
why do idiots think it's ok to act like this
especially when they know they're on stream in front of 470+ people xD pic.twitter.com/LkCbx4Vj2g
— C9 meL (@mel_anji) December 15, 2020
You can tell from Mel’s slow reaction that she’s either stunned at what she heard, isn’t sure what she heard, or both. She simply responds with, “What?” Suddenly, the other players recognize her voice and start pointing out that she is Mel. When Mel asks Erra once again to clarify what he said, he quickly claims that he asked her, “Do you suck?”
Mel is now audibly confused as to what Erra has asked her. She asks him why he would ask her that and no one else in the game. He doesn’t answer; instead, he doubles down on his clarification. He asks her to answer his question as to whether she is bad or not. The video cuts out when he attempts to explain he’s asking her because of her Radiant rank.
Listen to the video yourself and make your own judgment. The first time I listened to it, I missed Erra’s original question. So while I thought it was awful he was asking her if she sucked, I thought she was making a bigger deal than necessary over what she thought he said. When the video looped back around, however, I did a double-take at my computer screen upon hearing what Erra actually said. She wasn’t making out his question to be something it was not. He clearly asks her if she wants to f**k.
Mel has isolated the clip to make it even clearer what he said.
rule of thumb: don’t say things you wouldn’t say if i was face to face with you in real life pls
clip + VOD in case people say i took it out of context 🙄https://t.co/2Xbsk8y73O
— C9 meL (@mel_anji) December 15, 2020
Make no mistake — even if it was a Freudian slip, the fact that Erra asks only her in the group if she sucks is still a form of sexist harassment. If it wasn’t a Freudian slip, and he changed his story when he was caught, that’s even worse.
Either way, this behavior cost Erra his spot on Team Meraki.
Due to recent interactions with @mel_anji we are kicking Erra off the team. He will no longer be associated with TMK.
— Team Meraki (@TeamMeraki4) December 15, 2020
Hopefully, Erra will learn from his mistake. Maybe this will deter others from such bad online behavior. I am ever the optimist.
