Esports caster Semmler under fire for \u2018transphobic\u2019 comments on ESL Impact post Auguste \u201cSemmler\u201d Massonnat has come under fire on social media for posting comments that the community has called transphobic on an ESL Impact post. ESL Impact, a CS2 women\u2019s league, put out a post on December 3 highlighting its best players from the Season 4 regular season. Lucy \u2019empathy\u2019 Verkaik, a transwoman was the highest-rated player from the season. Semmler, a multi-esports caster best known for his work in Counter-Strike, pounced on the post, saying \u201cIn this case, I think it would be best if we lacked empathy. Didn\u2019t take long, did it?\u201d Now, the esports community, other broadcast professionals, and players have again called him out for the post. Esports community calls Semmler \u2018transphobic\u2019 One day after this comment, another X (formerly Twitter) user commented on his original post with a photo of comments that empathy received on social media after Semmler\u2019s original post. Semmler doubled down on those comments, saying \u201cGood. The men competing in this female league should feel deeply ashamed for taking opportunities away from the women striving to compete in it. Considering the backlash one gets when commenting on this topic, it isn\u2019t surprising to see no pushback from the women in the league.\u201d empathy responded to Semmler\u2019s post by talking about her experience competing as a trans person in esports. \u201cI come out and everyone makes fun of me every game, my ex-teammates block me and call me slurs, I can\u2019t play without random people throwing and making fun of me. I play ESL Impact and I\u2019m the enemy and \u2018I should be ashamed and kill myself\u2019 for it. It doesn\u2019t matter what I do the problem is I\u2019m ugly and trans. Like genuinely what do people want me to do? Maybe if \u2018mixed teams\u2019 wouldn\u2019t call me a \u201cf****t\u201d when I ask to play with them things would be different,\u201d she said. Former Cloud9 White Valorant player, and now full-time streamer, Annie \u2018Annie\u2019 Roberts also commented on Semmler\u2019s post claiming the caster doesn\u2019t care about women\u2019s leagues in the first place. \u201cEsport Transphobes love to parrot this idea as if they ever cared about women\u2019s esports. They don\u2019t, they just hate trans people more,\u201d she said. Other esports casters and broadcast professionals have also commented on Semmler\u2019s post. Jennifer \u2018LemonKiwi\u2019 Pichette, a multi-esports caster, said she would be cleaning up her follow list and that \u201cTransphobia does not belong in esports.\u201d Frankie Ward, a long-time Counter-Strike interviewer and presenter, said in a post that Semmler is feigning concern for the league over the wrong issues. \u201cEvery so often someone who doesn\u2019t care about ESL Impact decides to use feigned concern to make trans women feel unwelcome rather than actually focusing on the important issues like regional slots and the removal of Katowice from the Impact calendar,\u201d she said. This is not the first time the caster has been accused of being transphobic and he has pushed forward the idea that transwomen are stealing spots in women\u2019s esports leagues about a year ago. While industry professionals have called out the caster, he still has fans who support his position on the issue and his comments on transwomen in women\u2019s esports events. The esports caster has not worked on a Counter-Strike broadcast in some time according to his Liqupedia page with the 2021 Blast Premier Fall Finals as his last gig listed. He is currently a member of the podcast network Last Free Nation and appears on their streams and shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Esports caster Semmler under fire for \u2018transphobic\u2019 comments on ESL Impact post Auguste \u201cSemmler\u201d Massonnat has come under fire on social media for posting comments that the community has called transphobic on an ESL Impact post. ESL Impact, a CS2 women\u2019s league, put out a post on December 3 highlighting its best players from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}