Former Rooster Teeth employee details homo and transphobic culture at the company
On Saturday, former Rooster Teeth employee and part of Achievement Hunter Kdin Jenzen posted a TwitLonger detailing her experience working for the now infamous production company. According to Jenzen, Rooster Teeth employees engaged in homophobic and transphobic behavior towards her and others during her time with the company.
“I’ve been waiting to say anything directly for a long time on this subject in hopes that something – anything – would change and get better, but it’s obvious that this is just ‘how it is there.’ So it’s time for me to finally say something about Rooster Teeth,” Jenzen wrote in her TwitLonger post.
Jenzen went on to detail her history with the company. She was hired as a contract content creator and editor in February of 2013, and was brought on officially full time in November of that year. During the time of her contracting, Jenzen said she was not paid at all, and the situation was never rectified once she was hired full time. Beyond that, Jenzen detailed the way she was treated by coworkers at Rooster Teeth, including the use of homophobic slurs.
“Within a few weeks of working at Rooster Teeth I was given a nickname, that nickname was a slur. Every day I came into work I was called “F*gg*t” – but they could not use that name in content so when anyone was recording I was called ‘Fugz’ instead. For any fans who used that nickname for me for years, that’s what you were calling me. I couldn’t say anything about it, I had reported the use of that nickname for years to HR, and nothing was ever done about it and the videos that use that nickname for me are still up,” Jenzen wrote.
According to Jenzen, the culture of crunch, mockery, and abuse continued through the years, and things worsened for her when she came out as transgender in 2016.
“In 2016 I came out as trans and many people at the company publicly voiced their support on social media. Inside the company however, things got worse,” Jenzen wrote. “People had no idea how to deal with a trans woman, so I was interacted with even less and only trotted out every so often to show off ‘We Hire LGBTQIA+ People!'”
Jenzen said that she reported what was going on to HR and management multiple times, but saw it amount to nothing. Upon taking her concerns to one of the “founding fathers” of Rooster Teeth, she said she was told she was just “too nice to work at Rooster Teeth,” and that she should quit. As an out transgender woman living in Texas in 2018, Jenzen said that was a terrifying suggestion. This was allegedly on top of struggling to get the costs of her transition covered by the company’s insurance, despite them saying these procedures would be completely covered.
According to Jenzen, Rooster Teeth created Business Resource Groups (BRGs) to help with representation issues within the company. Jenzen helped to lead the Queer BRG, but by mid-2021 says she was told that RT had “done enough for the queer community.”
“Which hurt to hear as I felt like we had barely accomplished anything and were still struggling to have accurate representation on screen as most of our PRIDE stream events featured mostly Cis/Het talent still,” Jenzen wrote.
Jenzen said that her and other marginalized employees’ concerns were swept under the rug and they were told that “the company is going through a lot right now just leave it alone.” Jenzen left Rooster Teeth in 2022 “because, despite thinking I could make positive change in the company, they proved that I couldn’t every step of the way.”
Rooster Teeth posted a tweet with its statement about these allegations (and presumably other controversies the company has been embroiled in, like Ryan Haywood and Adam Kovic being fired over inappropriate photos that were leaked) on Sunday.
“As an almost 20-year-old company that started in the earliest days of online video and grew rapidly alongside the rise of internet culture, we have faced inevitable mistakes and interpersonal challenges,” the statement reads. “2020 was a year of broad societal change that brought past conduct to our attention. Many individuals at Rooster Teeth acknowledged personal responsibility for their actions both internally and externally. We as a company took that moment to seize the opportunity to respond and improve.”
“Over the last two years, we’ve spoken about the challenges with the community, pledged to do things better, and implemented internal actions to advance structural improvement. Specifically, we began by bringing in new leadership to drive this internal work. This led to engaging a DEI consultant, a management firm specializing in cultural growth and workplace change, outside HR support, and external management training consultants. In addition, we engaged an outside compensation tool in 2020 to review our internal pay bands and completed our initial pay parity review in 2021. As our organization continues to evolve, this will be an ongoing exercise and continual effort.”
“Our dedication to change has included the valuable input of many team members across the company, Kdin being one, and we’re grateful for their collaboration. We have held ourselves accountable, and everyone in the organization has committed to establishing the Rooster Teeth Way — a comprehensive and aspirational set of values and behaviors anchored by our purpose and vision — carefully crafted with the input of the entire company. These values are reinforced by workshops and management training, employee business resource groups (BRGs), increased channels for feedback, both direct and anonymous, and immediate action when warranted.”
The latter half of the statement goes on to reinforce that Rooster Teeth will not comment publicly on these disputes, “out of respect for all parties.”
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