Two important milestones in the history of female leadership occurred in 2016 , the nomination of Hillary Clinton as the first female major-party presidential candidate in the United States and the appointment of Lady Sylvanas Windrunner to the position of Warchief of the Horde in Azeroth , the fictional land which is the setting for the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game ( MMORPG ) World of Warcraft ( WoW ). Both women had long histories of being in positions of power in their respective universes and equally long histories of being demonized , almost functioning as what rhetorical theorist Richard Weaver has called “ terms of repulsion ” ( 1953 , 223 ). This article focuses on rhetorical analysis of how the interactions between these two women and various male leaders , especially Garrosh Hellscream ( WoW ) and Donald Trump ( U . S .), exemplify gendered and racialized models of authority and of rhetorical devices used for political legitimation . Such comparisons illuminate the political responses to female leadership in Azeroth and the United States , exemplified by the relationship between the Trump movement and Gamergate , including attitudes , demographics , and the omnipresence of Breitbart as an enabling mouthpiece ( see Brehm 2013 for sexism in WoW ; Todd 2015 on Gamergate ; and Lees 2016 on the parallels between the rise of Trump and Gamergate ). The theoretical approach of the article is grounded in the historical tradition of rhetoric as contextualized analysis of persuasive speech , and thus focuses on analyzing speech ( and occasionally gesture ) as performed by United States politicians and NPCs ( non-player characters ) in the World of Warcraft .
Leadership in World of Warcraft
The land of Azeroth , the imaginary planet on which World of Warcraft is set , is divided between two major factions , the Alliance and the Horde ( see Moberly 2010 for an analysis of WoW
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