Hasan Piker, leftist commentator and popular Twitch streamer, markets himself as a champion of women’s rights, even selling merchandise condemning patriarchy and oppression. However, his actions, both subtle and overt, tell a different story. Through a pattern of behavior spanning years, Piker has shown contempt for women’s safety and opinions while building his brand as the face of online progressivism.
A
2018 Cosmopolitan interview exposed the gap between Piker’s image and reality. While showcasing his anti-racist t-shirt listing
RACISM BIGOTRY PATRIARCHY WHITE SUPREMACY INEQUALITY OPPRESSION INTOLERANCE INJUSTICE crossed out in red, Piker displayed explicit fan messages to the reporter writing the article on him, including nudes and other sexual content. “I don’t know if any of these are nudes so don’t judge me,” Piker said, before methodically opening sexual content. He narrated the messages: “That was, like, actually her blowing someone . . . That’s butt stuff. Cool.” The next day, according to the journalist, Piker joked about his career ending because of the article. By February 2018, he had tweeted explicit sexual suggestions to conservative pundits.
This behavior, sharing intimate images without consent, constitutes
revenge porn, which is illegal in many developed countries. The fact that these images were sent to Piker unsolicited does not grant him permission to share or display them to others, as each viewing represents a fresh violation of the subjects’ privacy and dignity. Although some of Piker’s fans claim he has a “right” to do whatever he wants with unsolicited images, this argument fails both legally and ethically. Receiving an intimate photo does not grant the recipient permission to distribute it. The law recognizes that sharing (which includes showing) such images without consent causes harm, regardless of how they were initially sent. Piker’s casual displaying of these images to a reporter, narrating their contents while scrolling through them, shows a complete disregard for the basic right to privacy of the women who sent them. His joke about career consequences suggests he knew the gravity of his actions but dismissed it.
Two years later, in July 2020, during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, Piker called police, under the guise of a wellness check, on his ex-girlfriend Janice Griffith for not responding to his messages. He lived twelve minutes away. Her best friend warned him not to make the call. “I wasn’t suicidal, I did not imply I would take my own life or even harm myself,” Griffith
wrote on X. She explained that when she dealt with actual overdoses in the past, she had called 911 for the overdose “after ACTUALLY exhausting all other options,” which Piker did not do. When Griffith
tried to discuss the incident privately with Piker, he ignored her attempts at communication for a month. She later stated she couldn’t escape his online presence due to their shared audience in leftist spaces. When confronted about this incident on Twitch by a viewer, Piker
admitted that he knew he was putting Griffith in danger by calling the police, but did it anyway. He could give no real
reason for why he actually made the call.
In 2021, controversy arose again over Piker’s visit to a German brothel. He
posted videos from a strip club and, on an episode of the
Leftovers podcast,
framed his brothel experience as pro-sex work advocacy. Although Piker, defending himself, claimed that the establishment had only ever faced simple tax evasion charges, investigators had previously
conducted a sting operation on the brothel for sex trafficking. The brothel had connections to organized crime and
appeared in a case that convicted a child sex trafficker. Though the brothel was cleared of tax evasion, Piker has nevertheless
continuously downplayed his use of the brothel’s services.
Since 2021, Piker’s statements have revealed deeper problems with his view of women. In 2024, Piker
compared White women taking the surnames of their Asian husbands to the use of the N-word in interracial porn. His comments about actor Blake Lively, in which he repeatedly attempted to downplay and justify the sexual harassment she experienced from fellow actor and director Justin Baldoni,
sparked outrage. Unfortunately, anyone who criticizes Piker’s misogynistic actions and words is attacked by his fans as a fake leftist, a liberal, a conservative, a neo-Nazi, or worse, they are accused of being fans of his former friend and fellow political commentator, streamer, and (alleged) revenge porn enthusiast,
Destiny.
Case in point, in 2022, Piker
faced accusations of weaponizing his large following of predominantly White male viewers to harass critics, particularly women of color. When a Black woman,
@itsyagurlltt, criticized White leftist commentators for using racial slurs against
Candace Owens, a conservative social media figure, and otherwise attempting to decide when racism is acceptable, Piker dismissed her as a “radlib” defending “White supremacy.” His followers then flooded her comments with insults and snowflake emojis and mass-reported her content. This incident came amid a pattern of Piker engaging in misogyny and misogynoir (simply Google search “
Hasan Piker misogynoir” for various examples), with multiple women, particularly women of color, having called out his
dismissive and hostile responses to their critiques of his content and behavior. (Reminder also that Piker has at least twice used “
shitskin” as an insult, which is a
racist slur. Although, on one occasion,
he said that it was an accident.)
Piker’s
history of rape denial and rape apologia is extensive and disturbing as well. In 2024, he
drew criticism from US Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat, for dismissing the
sexual assaults that occurred during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, stating “it doesn’t matter if rape happened.” Notably, Piker shares this tendency toward selective rape denial with one of his prominent fans, fellow Twitch streamer DenimsTV. Denims
recently recorded herself smirking and chuckling at an Israeli victim’s account of rape before proceeding to question and deny the validity of the victim’s claims. Also in 2024, Piker
declared that, from a “utilitarian perspective,” it is better for rich women to be raped than poor women. These are not the words of a pro-feminist man who cares about and respects women.
As we move into 2025, it must be stated: Hasan Piker’s progressive façade cannot hide his actions anymore. He weaponized police against a woman during 2020’s racial justice protests targeting the very same institution. He displayed private sexual content to a journalist. He diminishes sexual assault when he dislikes the victims. He weaponizes his community of primarily angry White men against women of color for speaking out against him as he attempts to talk over them on racism.
Piker’s common response to criticism proves the problem with him. Namely, how he attacks challengers with disingenuous arguments while cynically using social justice rhetoric and Palestinian suffering as shields against accountability, if he directly engages with critique of himself at all. This pattern runs deeper than missteps or poor judgment. It reveals someone who built power by preaching feminism while consistently undermining women’s dignity, perspectives, safety, and autonomy.
