Minecraft, Misogyny, Racism, and Community Design; Lessons My 10yo Daughter is Teaching Her Dad and Learning Herself

It started simply enough. My daughter asked me to download Minecraft Pocket Edition for the iPod we’d bought her for Christmas.

Within a week, she, her younger sister, and I were all addicted.

For a while there, Minecrafting replaced our ritual of reading together before bed. And although we’ve returned to our nightly habits of reading over time, still, the joys of collaborative mining continues undiminished.

But Minecraft PE is like a gateway drug, and soon enough, my ten year old was begging for Minecraft PC. I blame Mr. Stampy Cat for that. Although his videos are based on Minecraft for xBox, he and his friends, iBallisticSquid and Amy Lee, unlocked whole new possibilities of imaginative play for the girls. Soon enough they, like many of their friends, were watching Minecraft YouTube videos like we watched Gilligan’s Island and the Brady Bunch.

This led us to the world of Minecraft skins, and a long search for the perfect female avatar, beautiful yet strong.

Then we were introduced to the public servers where my daughter could play Minecraft with a world of anonymous others. All of a sudden we were talking candidly about online safety, how it was important not to reveal too much about yourself, not to trust too easily. Soon enough I found myself explaining the meaning of certain profanities teenage gamers are wont to pepper throughout their online banter.

The Hive was the first server my daughter started playing, and however virtual, it felt menacing like the real world to me.

First there was the misogyny. Early on she was taunted for chatting—“Oh look, the female speaks.” This opened another conversation between us about the long history of misogynistic attempts to silence women, deny them a voice, and how important it is to have the confidence to speak your mind. (Happily her mother is a great model for this.)

Although there were players who teamed up with one another, still, there was a coldness to the community that left my daughter feeling anxious despite her desire to play with others, and me feeling unsettled, despite my desire to help her navigate the new world online.

Then she noticed something that bothered her. She did not see any African American skins on any avatars. This prompted her to search Minecraft Skindex, a site of downloadable Minecraft skins, for a girl avatar with dark skin. After a bit of searching, she found a handful in the thousands of those available, and she promptly downloaded the Nyan Cat Girl and set it as her own.

Nyan Cat Girl

Immediately upon her return to the Hive, a player called her out, saying “this server is not for Negroes.” And although another player quickly came to her defense with: “this server is not for racist a**holes,” the exchange was difficult for her to process.

All in a moment, she was made to feel how her appearance impacts the way the world experiences her and transforms her experiences of the world.

Words, even in a virtual context, have affective power.

And these brought my daughter to tears.

But they did not deter her from playing nor from remaining in her chosen skin.

They did, however, cause her to begin looking for other servers. What she found, quite by luck, was the Gaymercraft Server. Her experience on it was different.

Here she found a group of friendly players who complimented her on her avatar. Here people welcomed one another when they joined the game. Here people collaborated, shared, and played together.

Her excitement was palpable. She said she felt like she’d found a home.

As we explained to her that this server was created as a safe place for the LGBTQ+ community and their friends to play Minecraft, we all came to a new realization about the importance of such places of safety, of the need for a free space of experimentation in which each of us is permitted to try on new skins, play different roles, and learn something about ourselves and the worlds we inhabit and create together.

The server has strict rules against profanity and it encourages collaboration. It has administrators and moderators who are present and friendly and generous. It is a beautiful rainbow world in which differences are celebrated and where my daughter has found kindred players willing to build with her, create, and share.

As we navigate a way through the brave new online world together, Minecraft has built a new trust between us. And it has taught us something too about how to cultivate habits of resilience and openness that enable us to build more supportive and beautiful worlds.