(Click here for the italian version of this article)

Angela Washko is a New York City based artist, who came up with an interesting idea: researching feminism and gender issues in a gaming environment. Angela choosed World of warcraft. World of Warcraft (or shortly – WoW) is the most played massive multi-player game online with about 10 millions subscribers online (altough this figure is shrinking over time). Of course Angela didn’t conduct her research on these many people, but with the aid of the players of a specific US-based server. As an in game character, Angela simply approached other players and asked them “what is feminism”? The answer was very diverse and showed how gender bias is still operating strongly in several parts of the US, cross-culturally and cross-generationally. Angela recorded her research on video and edited a really interesting series of conversation with a blood elf named Chastity.While watching these videos, always remember about the actual persons behind the toons… also remember that most female characters are portrayed by male players. This is not the case of Chastity of course. Seeing orcs, undeads, blood elves and taurens talk about gender issues might seem very odd if you add the epic music in the background, the environment of the Horde main city (Orgrimmar) and the dragons flying in and out, but all these elements make this survey even more fascinating. I contacted Angela for a few questions on her research and on gender issues in the World of Warcraft gaming community.

- Gender studies about gaming communities rarely were as widely known as in 2012. I am thinking about the backlash of Anita Sarkeesian suffered during her kickstarter campaign to fund her research on gaming tropes. Yet I think you pushed this kind of research one step forward: researching within gaming communities and in gaming environment. How did you came up with this idea?

I came up with this idea in 2011. As an artist, I started to feel like the most interesting contributions I could have to culture come from the unique perspective I have from my formative pursuits. I started making videos and print installations from role playing console video games that I grew up playing- as a personal effort to reveal the impact of the way women were presented on the problematic relationship issues was having. This project (“Heroines with Baggage”) got me to think about my experiences I’d had as a World of Warcraft player. The gender discrimination there was not a result of the developers- but of the community playing it. I thought – well how can I deconstruct that? And then I realized – what better way than to just ask players why it had to be that way. And so after formalizing my thoughts about it, in January of 2012 I started to log on and talk to people about it. Eventually I started to record these conversations.

- Even if you studies were a form of research, I feel that your actions were a form of performance too, and a way to raise awareness. Is that the reason behind the The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft?

I use the terminology “research” as a way to include people. If I tell my guildmates and other players that I’m performing (which I do if we’re talking for hours rather than minutes), it is definitely a turn-off. It feels exploitative. The relationship is established: I’m using them. If I invite them to participate in research, it establishes that what they say is valuable (which is true in either case, but it puts them in a power position over me in a way) and benefitting something greater than my own personal ego-behind-the-avatar. It is also a way to raise awareness. I am in a privileged position as a gamer (though not nearly as competitive as I used to be!) to have access to this unique social community which employs an oddly misogynistic, homophobic, and racist language despite its diversity.

- What is the ultimate aim of this Council?

The aim of “The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft” is two-fold.

1. I want to bring comfortable conversations about the role of women in the game, the way women are discussed (usually as WOMEN and not players), and feminism into World of Warcraft. A lot of my art practice (in and out of video games) is centered around bringing visibility to negative projections of women throughout media through play. So I hope to engage players in a way that will ultimately reveal sincere belief systems and how they were formed and not purely just responses born out of trolling. I get trolled a lot. When players troll me, I respond to them as though the answer is sincere anyway, asking follow-up questions in an effort to reveal the consistency and coherence of the problematic, coded language they (and most players) have developed.

2. I want to share my gaming world with the art world. But I want to do so responsibly, dispelling the idea that all WoW players are immature 14-16 year old boys- letting them know that players are typically near 30 and educated and are opting to use this language anyway. Participating in the art world in New York City, I forget how deeply misogynistic other parts of the US are. When I return to rural Pennsylvania or visit towns like Ocean City, Maryland I am reminded that although discussions about feminism are largely understood to be valuable by my community and the people that visit galleries where I perform or exhibit, ELSEWHERE THEY ARE NOT. And World of Warcraft takes such a large cross-section of the U.S…..I get to share that there is still much progress to be made in terms of visibility and rights.

- The series of videos you posted, where you have a long conversation with a female blood elf named Chastity (I am talking about toon perception here, of course!) is quite fascinating. To your experience, what is the reaction of people not familiar with the World of Warcraft environment?

Well, I wrote an essay about it because I wanted everyone to understand the context in which they are viewing it. It’s hard to get people to read, so some of the key things to understanding WoW in general get overlooked. I still constantly get the response that “IT MUST BE A BUNCH OF 14-16 YEAR OLD STUPID KIDS.” It’s totally not. The people I’ve talked are of all ages (17-60), from different social/economic/racial/gender backgrounds. Chastity is a married, pregnant 19 year old. Xentrist, also in the video, is a college student. Players that I’ve played a lot with are professors, math teachers, marines, high school students, graphic designers, severely physically handicapped people, engineers, computer programmers etc. And they still tell you to get back into the kitchen when you ask them to talk with you about feminism.

- This particular conversation takes place in Orgrimmar, capital of the Horde faction. Did your studies extend to the Alliance faction?

My “studies” have been within the Horde faction exclusively- because that’s what I play, that’s the community I’ve always been a part of. I am more interested in participating as someone who plays as opposed to participating as someone running in to get a quick response and leave. I think the work is more meaningful when it comes from a personal place. The “Chastity” video was recorded with me playing my level 14 bank character (the character that holds all of my extra stuff). Many of my sessions have been on my higher level avatars. (More videos coming soon!)

- Have you tried this research on an RP server?

Yes- an RP-PVP server (just to make clear for non-players: RP = Role Playing. On role playing servers, what you say and what you do are consistent as you truly inhabit your character, creating their personality through conversation and action…and conversations in town should be about the fantasy created- not about things happening outside the screen). You can play on a Role Playing server or a normal server (which allows language to be open to whatever and not restricted to fantasy or developing your character…in normal mode you are just a person playing the game using an avatar). I had similar results on the RP server…but many of those servers are not strict about enforcing the social language codes. But much like the question about the Horde- I prefer to do the research on servers that I have been a part of for a while. Also, I feel like doing this project on an RP server is against what I am seeking to do – I want to address the issues of common language used in the game, and it is much more of an issue on normal servers than RP servers (generally speaking).

- As a non native english speaker I really need to ask you this: what is this obsession about sandwhiches?!? Is it the staple meal of gender oppression in the US?

Sammies, sammiches and sandwiches. It’s a meme. It’s used to put women “in their place.” Often comes along with gb2kitchen, get back into the kitchen and make me a sammich etc.

A short history on the sandwich meme here.

Many memes are well loved and live large in WoW. Somehow people are still talking about Chuck Norris there. The Leeroy Jenkins meme is a very popular one created within WoW.

- What is going to happen next?

Chastity is the first of many long-form videos I hope to release from my performative research. It has taken a long time to sort through all the performances to find which ones really resonate somehow. Sometimes the discussions go for hours and nothing really comes out of them. I am currently at a residency in Helsinki, Finland hiding in my studio watching videos of me playing World of Warcraft. I am sure other artists find this very sad. But I really have to go through them all to figure out which ones to make into videos and release like “Chastity.” I think it is important to use the long form, and allow viewers to see the complexities of the conversations – and although I hate sitting through long video art myself, I have found that this is the only way to do it justice. I also am creating text transcripts from the conversations as well.

I am performing a research discussion for a live audience at the VECTOR Festival in Toronto on Friday, February 22nd! I have done this a couple of times (Spattered Columns Gallery, Gowanus Studio Space, and Flux Factory – all in NYC). But I have a lot of processing to do with all of the documented material.

- As a man involved in criticism against patriarchal society, what are the most common misconceptions you have to face in 2012?

I think these have changed little over the last decades. Many people still have no awareness that patriarchy and male privilege are real, or that patriarchy is a social system rather than a collection of individual men. The understanding of social systems and how they work in relation to the people who participate in them is still far from the mainstream, which is why social problems are so resistant to change (and why the roots of recent financial disasters are still so poorly understood).

- Is there a specific episode that somehow called you to action?

Not really. Even as a child I was unusually sensitive to issues of injustice. And then I came of age in what were tumultuous times in the U.S.–the Civil Rights, Women’s, and anti-Vietnam-War Movements–and felt compelled to pay attention to issues of privilege and oppression as I became aware of them, beginning with men’s violence against women. To be concerned about these things has always felt natural to me, as if it is something I am here to do.

- Do you think that media professionals should receive a proper training in handling gender specific issues? Do you think they could be in position to make a difference?

Yes to both questions, but I also believe the significance of patriarchy is wider and deeper than ‘gender issues,’ which are usually thought of in terms of relations between women and men, how men treat women, women’s opportunities to do what men do, etc. These are of course important, but it is vital to also be aware of how patriarchy shapes the entire world, including the capitalist economic system, the widespread use of warfare and other forms of collective violence, and the systematic exploitation and ruination of the Earth and its non-human species. These are all manifestations of core patriarchal values, especially the masculine obsession with control, and we need to understand them as such if we are going to make a difference before it is too late.

- As a novelist, do you think there are any cliches writers should avoid in handling gender relationships?

Rather can try to list all the possibilities, I would rather suggest that writers must make it their business to understand the gendered reality we all live in and how this sets us up to participate in all kinds of problems that produce a great deal of unnecessary conflict and suffering.

- Why did you choose the Vietnam War era your second novel?

Because it was closest to what I knew. Please see also this link  for information about my first novel which tells a story of the aftermath of domestic violence. I suspect this may be of greater interest to those in your audience concerned with issues of gender.

- Have you heard about the Anita Sarkeesian project about female tropes in videogames and about the violent response she obtained from the gaming community? What do you think of it? (I owe Feminist Frequency a special debt, since they recommended your essay about patriarchal society).

I’ve known Anita for several years and am a great admirer of her work. I’m neither shocked nor surprised that she would be attacked in this way, given the long history of women being attacked for taking these kinds of risks, which is, I believe, a measure of the power of their analysis of how patriarchy and male privilege are manifested in the world.

- Do you think we can expect new generations to make a difference in the near future in gender relationships? Can we discern small cracks in the patriarchal structure?

I know the preferred response to such questions is to be cautiously hopeful if not optimistic, but I am not, because my concern is less with the more narrow focus on gender relationships than with the future of the patriarchal system as a whole and its core obsession with control that produces so much violence and destruction on so many levels and in so many forms. Patriarchy seems to be at a crisis point–to judge from the pervasiveness of economic and military crises and challenges to various forms of dominance, all of which makes for especially dangerous conditions. Every crisis, of course, is also an opportunity, but it remains to be seen what will be the response.

Cimarelli is one of these authors who did choose the path of self publishing. Even if he did send his manuscript to several publishing house for evaluation, Alessandro eventually decided to go through this ordeal (self publishing is no bed of roses) with determination and passion.

The plot is simple and linear (and I like it that way): “Marco decides to go on a vacation to Cabarete, a location in caribbeans where he plans to practice his passion: windsurf. At the beginning of his journey Marco finds extactly what he is looking for: sea, sun and adrenalin. The waves under the board make him feel alive, more than ever. Marco meets several people, but he particularly involved by Dahlia, a french girl and a turtle with a white spot on its shell, leading him in a different dimension, to a long forgotten part of his self. Every choice Marco takes during his stay in Cabarete will lead him to the right place at the right time in order to fulfill his destiny”. This novel might be looking for an english translation and distribution.

•  How did you come up with the concept for this novel?

I have always been writing during my trips. Whenever I travel I always take with me a notebook where I take note of everything that happens. During my trip in Cabarete in 2007, however, several events made me think. What I was writing during my stay became a story, over time, and even if many of the events actually happened, they are intertwined with dreams and nightmares, leading to a fantastic tale.

• Is this novel is partially biographical?

Yes. I think that’s the fun part, trying to guess what’s real and what’s not real. I would love being asked “did this really happen to you?”.

•  In your book there is recurring reference to body experiences, like the fatigue while swimming and the feel of the wind on the skin while windsurfing. What is the importance of the body in writing?

I think it is very important. If a writer manages to convey to a reader what a character is feeling from the point of view of his own body, then the reader will have a more vivid experience. If you can reach the reader’s imagination through bodily experiences, he will be more involved in the story.

• Without spoiling, is there a supernatural element in your novel?

Yes, as the title alone suggests. Dreaming is a door beyond the material world where we are used to live. In dreams you can be what you want and sometimes even see what you will be.

•  How long did it take for you to write and revise your novel?

I began writing right after my stay in Cabarete, in may 2007. Then I finished writing my novel while travelling all around Italy as an IT consultant. I completed the “Turtle’s dream” in april 2009, after almost two years. I left the manuscript for a few months and then started revising. However, something happened in june 2009, and this event blocked me both physically and mentally. One of my closest friend died during a kitesurf incident. I had been travelling with him to several spots where we could practice our sports. His loss scarred me and I didn’t want to write anymore. He was the one encouraging me to finish and try to publish my novel. Something I did not think I could do. There is something he used to say “when you’re done we drive around fairs and even if we don’t sell a copy, we can eat good food”. Then even pain dulls out over time, and in october 2011 I took the manuscript again. I was lucky enough to meet someone who helped me understand the value of my novel and helped me with a revision. Then I cut certain parts, developed other parts, corrected errors, until I had a more or less “clean” text. After five more months I decided my novel was ready.

• What was the most difficult part?

Revision is the hardest part, because it never ends. If I read the book right now I would change it further, but you need to stop at some point. This part requires a lot of will and committment. Having someone to advice you can help you too, but you need to focus on your own work and do whatever it takes to finish your book.

• Did you try to publish your novel through a House?

I have been studying the market very closely on the internet. I went to blogs and forums where users talked about their experiences with publishing houses. Then I decided to follow that same road and sent the manuscript to twelve publishing houses. I picked them out carefully, judging what kind of books they were already publishing. The possibility of sending the manuscript electronically was also a requirement. I had the first answer in less than a week. This particulat publishing house was “interested” in publishing my book if I was willing to pay 1.200 euros for 100 copies. They would take care of the revision, editing, cover and distribution. But I asked myself: how was it possible for them to properly evaluate my novel in less than a week? After month I received two more proposals, praising the qualities of my novel, but once again, they were asking for money. Of course, they were offering several interesting services, but I did not feel like it investing that kind of money. I think that if a publishing house really believes in what I write, then they should take the risk of publishing it, it’s their job.

• How did you decide for self publishing?

After these experiences I was more and more interested in self publishing. One of my friends already published on two different sites, ilmiolibro.it and lulu.com, so I studied both sites and considered the costs. The first one with a single 100 euros installment gives you the chance to distribution through LaFeltrinelli, one of the most important library franchises in Italy (but potential readers would have to special order the book as it was off shelf). The second service provides free distribution through Amazon.com. I thought the two offers would give my novel a wider visibility. The only problem is that you have to take care of the promotional part of the process, through a careful use of social marketing. Meanwhile I have sent the manuscript to 25 Publishing houses, as I am not ruling out this possibility yet.

• Did you receive any “indecent proposals” from any publishing houses?

A publishing house asked me 2.300 euros for 500 copies. I would get the money back if managed to sell them all. I had a share of the earnings equal to a 6% for the first 500 copies, raising a 12% for every copy after the 500th. Another house asked for 900 euros for 100 copies. I “only had to pay” for unsold copies.

• What advice would you give to someone considering self publishing?

I only want to say that you need a lot of patience and hard work. Most of all, you need a lot of time to take care of every aspect because the promotion is very complicated. There are some expenses too, it’s not completely free as you might think. On the other hand you have total control of your work, you can change everything at any time. If you really believe in your work and you are in for the intricacies of social marketing, then you are headed in the right direction.

Another interesting piece of news you might like to know about this novel is that Martin Lastrapes and his brother Greg are currently working on an adaptation of Inside the Outside (and they are using Scrivener too, my favourite writing tool!). In Greg’s blog you will find a few articles about this adaptation’s process (Part I, Part II and Part III), and I think that these articles make for a very interesting read, especially from a writer’s point of view. I would really love to see this novel on screen, and I have the gut feeling that this is going to happen someday (no, I am not jinxing it, I don’t believe in jinxes!). Now, on with the interview.

• At first glance we could say that Inside the Outside is a novel about cannibalism. But I feel there is a lot more than that. Can we say it’s actually a novel about how our knowledge is formed from birth and about human relationships?

Yes, that was definitely my intention. I’m very fascinated with how people grow up to be who they are, what forces around them shape and form their thoughts and beliefs about the world. The story of Timber Marlow and the Divinity was meant to work as something of a metaphor for this idea.

• Apart form the obvious research about the Inland Empire, did your novel involve other, more specific research?

I did a lot of research, yes. Primarily, my research was focussed on sustainable communities, which are communities of people who live off the grid, unattached from mainstream society. I needed the Divinity to be as isolated and private as possible, so I read many books and articles to help build this imaginary community in such a way that readers would believe it could plausibly exist.

• What do you think is today’s perception of the human body?

In America, I think the human body is seen primarily as a commodity. Whether it’s celebrities who offer their image for film and print or laborers who offer their physical efforts, the human body is seen as something to be bought and sold. On an unconscious level, I think many people feel a lack of control, like their bodies (and, in essence, their lives) don’t really belong to them. I suspect this would go a long way towards explaining the overwhelming popularity of tattoos and body piercings.

• Sometimes in your book you anticipate certain twists, often even in the chapter’s title. This is a very interesting choice, can you elaborate on that?

I love chapter titles and I think a good title can help tell the story. In my case, I used certain chapter titles to create anticipation or tension, so that, before the reader even gets to the first sentence, they are already invested.

• What are your favourite horror movies/books?

Believe it or not, I don’t read a lot of traditional horror novels. I have, however, read many, many Stephen King novels. The Shining is probably my favorite. There are many authors I love who write (what I would call) dark fiction, such as Chuck Palahniuk and Cormac McCarthy; Fight Club and The Road are amongst my very favorite books. As for films, I was obsessed with Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. As a teenager I discovered the Hellraiser films, which I loved. I think Wes Craven’s Scream series is just wonderful and while I don’t think No Country for Old Men is a horror film, it terrified me as much as any traditional horror movie ever has.

• Do you have a writing routine, something helping you to keep on schedule?

No, but I should. I give myself the general goal of writing something (anything!) every day, but I don’t have a particular routine that I go by. Sometimes, however, I can go days or weeks without writing anything. Even when this happens, I am always thinking about writing; specifically, whatever project I’m working on.

• How is self-publishing working out for you?

It’s working out great. I love being in control of every aspect of my books, from the cover art to the story editing. It is a lot of work, but it’s very gratifying.

• Do you think there is ever going to be an italian translation?

I certainly hope so!