SLUT!

I LOVE YOUR ASS!

I WANT SEX, I WILL PAY YOU.

 

Avoiding the violent behaviour of men became a part of my daily life since I was 12 years old, both on the street and on the internet. As social media have become a vital part of our current reality, so has the aggressive harassment of women online. Whilst street sexual harassment takes place mainly in public spaces, online sexual harassment penetrates from the public into the private, especially, due to easy access via our smartphones. The result of this is that the spaces of our homes, which serve as places to hide, to escape, to be vulnerable, are no longer safe anymore…

This makes the following questions arise:

 

How can we, women, safely exist in the age of the internet?

How can we reclaim our physical and digital spaces?

How can we reunite and show our resistance?

 

Whilst the severity of the violent situation is captured in the first part of the project, the video; The possibility to fight back and to show resistance can be accessed via a game that immerses the player in the role of a fighter against the harassers themselves. The game setting helps the survivors to restore justice, whilst to the remaining audience, it shows what is it like to be in the role of a victim who has to constantly keep evading or fighting back. The game is placed in a physical blanket fort, offering the viewers a temporary feeling of safety, however, as its story continues and loops without a possibility of ending, one must not else but think: 

 

Is it really just a game?