Sunday, June 5, 2016

Event 2: Angela Washko

Event 2: Angela Washko, Women in World of War Craft


Angela Washko (In bright pink)


Last week, I visited a lecture in the UCLA Game Lab with Angela Washko. She is a research based artist, who has a passion for the video game, World of War Craft and received a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art from the University of California, San Diego. She was involved in video games at a young age and after 22 years she became a professional and decided to pursue more and begin her research on feminism in the gaming world. Not only has she started a movement for women's rights in World of Warcraft but all over the gaming world and virtual world. As a feminist, Angela felt that she needed to change something in the gaming world and started a movement for women and a forum for those that actually play the game and for those who don't to discuss feminism. She began to discover the amount of sexist language and gender stereotypes that occurred with player dialogue and continued to learn more so she could make this issue more aware.




World of War Craft Study

After realizing how racists and sexists WoW was, she began to start investigating more and asking question to players in the game. She started to create unfiltered spaces for gamers to start conversations about gender and why women are treated so poorly. Some conversations she would tell gammers that she was researching about the sexualization on female players and why women are treated so poorly. In her research she was surprised by the amount of female avatar players in the game were actually played by men due to them wanting to see a female body on screen than a man.



Roosh Exhibit of his books video clips

One of her most interesting and frustrating pieces was her research on Daryush Valizadeh also known as Roosh V. Roosh is a seductive artists who has self-published 15 sex and travel guides that offer advice to men on how to pick up and have sex with women in specific countries. She began her research by reaching out to women who have had sex with Roosh and finally after email communication with him, she got to do a video interview with the man himself. She had to act very neutralized towards Roosh and make sure to just sound curious about his work which had accusations of misogyny. He was the type of man the most women hate and had manipulating ideas over women and promoting rape. Wasnko explained how she had to perform calmness while interviewing him and listening to him control women and that being socially acceptable in society.



Resources
1. Drolson, Karly. Angela Wasnko Event, UCLA Game Lab, Broad Art Center. 25. May. 2016.
2 Roosh V. Misogynist Gathering "Does Not Have Permission and Never Will", Says Glasgow City Council." CommonSpace. The National, 1 Feb. 2016.
3 Washko, Angela. "Why Talk Feminism in World of Warcraft? | Creative Time Reports." Creative Time Reports. 20 Nov. 2014.


Images
http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/roosh-interview-installed_web-hyperallergic.jpg
http://visarts.ucsd.edu/sites/default/files/imagecache/image4all/AngelaWashko-WorldOfWarcraft_2.jpg



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