Has a woman named Cassidy Boon really penned a letter to the maker of Minecraft claiming the popular block building game is sexist?
Many visitors of ThePortlyGazelle were left outraged by the ramblings of 20 year old self-identified feminist named Cassidy Boon this week who claimed the popular block building game was sexist against women.
The open letter, published in November 2015 claims that Minecraft – created by Markus Persson, a.k.a. Notch – is a sexist game because its central theme is about building, which – according to Cassidy – is a masculine trade that rejects women, which apparently is the intention of the game.
The letter goes on to claim that the aesthetics of the game have been designed to be repulsive to women given the “gritty ugly sprites”, pixilation and lack of nice clothing within the game. Cassidy also berates the central character of the game – a “blockheaded” male. You can read an excerpt from her letter below –
Minecraft is incredibly sexist. There, I said it. I don’t think you’re surprised either, because you KNOW deep down, and have from the very moment you sat down at the computer that Minecraft was going to be a game that excludes half of the population. Maybe you’ve tried to suppress this fact, or maybe you’ve tried to tell yourself that you didn’t do it deliberately, or maybe, as I suspect is reality, you simply don’t care. Let me tell you exactly how Minecraft is misogynist.
Minecraft does, from the outset, strive to appeal to traditional masculinity. The simple act of building is a millennia old gender-coded act that has caused men since the beginning of time to take it upon themselves to build buildings and other stuff. Historically, women who’ve been eager to build their own Basilicas, Pyramids or Big Bens have been told that building is “a man’s domain”, that they’re too delicate to get their hands dirty with brick and mortar.
But before we all reach to our keyboards to express our disbelief at such a nonsense notion, Cassidy Boon is a satirist and her articles really shouldn’t be taken seriously. Like most examples of satire, Cassidy is exaggerating a concept to ridiculous extremes as to create a parody of that concept – in this case that concept is feminism.
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Most of Cassidy’s past articles have used this same theme, including an article earlier in 2015 that went viral across social media that asserted she was in the process of suing a man for rape when he attempted to save her from drowning. In that instance she implored her readers to use the hashtag #SaveRape to support her “cause”. Whilst many readers got the joke, many didn’t, and needless to say Cassidy – described by many as an Internet troll – was inundated with some rather angry comments.
In this case, she is asking her readers to use the hashtag #Misogycraft.
So does Markus “Notch” Persson have anything to be worried about? No. No he does not.