Twitch influencer Jessica Fernandez issued an apology Tuesday after she went viral for posting a video about a “feral” man at the gym who she claimed was staring at her “like a piece of meat.”
Jessica Fernandez, a video game and lifestyle content creator with nearly 56,000 followers on Twitch and 10,000 subscribers on YouTube, posted the video, which has since been deleted, shows Fernandez lifting weights and complaining about a man standing behind her.
“This guy kept making me extremely uncomfortable at the gym,” she wrote.
“Stupid f–king piece of s–t behind me,” said Fernandez into a microphone. “I hate this. I hate this. I hate when there’s weirdos.”
“This is why I’ll end up crying on stream [because] I feel so grossed out at times with the amount of sexualisation I experience. Hopefully this spreads awareness for girls who experience this type of treatment at the gym.”
Fernandez then zooms in on the alleged “creep” who can be seen nearby and later offers to help her attach a plate to the barbell she’s using.
The video also features several captions including “What if I just ripped his pp out of its socket so he can never reproduce again” and “natural selection better take these weirdos out.”
After intense backlash from the internet, Fernandez published an apology on TwitLonger — calling the video “the most serious thing I have ever posted.”
“First of all, I want to apologize sincerely to the man at the gym where this all started. He didn’t do anything wrong to me and I blew our interaction out of proportion,” wrote Fernandez. “I know many people think that I’m only apologizing because I got called out from the video I posted and this is half right.”
Fellow fitness influencer Joey Swoll called out the streamer, saying that she “needs to do better.”
“Women are harassed in gyms and it needs to stop, but you are not one of them. An act of kindness or a glance does not make you a victim.” reads the caption of Swoll’s video.
Swoll suggests in the video that the man was simply trying to help Fernandez because he thought she was struggling with the weight and pointed out that she was in front of him and had her camera facing him.
“First and foremost, as I’ve said before, there is a big difference between staring at somebody and simply looking or glancing at them,” said Swoll.
“So why did this man look at you? Well, you’re in front of him, off to the side. You’re in his peripheral. You’re also taking a video with your camera pointed directly at him, and you’re talking to yourself. He’s probably watching you wondering, ‘What is she doing?’ Know I would.”
Fernandez reveals in her apology that she has been a victim of sexual assault and sexual harassment and that both events have left her “extremely” damaged.
