I'm sorry... I know its not my place, since I'm not a woman... But I cannot take this serious _at all._ Just because Alex has slim arms doesn't make Minecraft sexist, and I think you're overthinking it (and yes, I will get into reasons why). They wanted to give the player more customization options, and the default player (Steve) looked blatantly male (he literally has a beard), so they decided to kill two birds with one stone. They added a more "feminine" default skin with slim arms... But just because Alex has slim arms doesn't mean its _because_ she's a "girl." Alex was actually based on Jeb (one of Minecraft's developers, who is very slim and has orange hair). Notice they also chose the name "Alex" which can be both a boy _and_ girls name (unlike Steve which is once again clearly a boys name). Also, in the skin settings, they do not title it as "male" and "female," they call it "wide" and "slim." To disprove this further, they also recently added 7 new default skins (which were designed to be taken as either male _or_ female), and added both "wide" and "slim" variants for ALL of them (this includes Steve and Alex)... And on top of all that, some of the more "feminine" ones still have wide arms (the best example being Ari, who has a lot of similarities to Alex in clothing and appearance, but has wide arms in all the promotional art and trailers). Kai also has wide arms by default, but is wearing a dress (according to Bedrock's character customization) so either they're a woman, or they're a guy who doesn't care about gender norms. Either way I don't see how that can be sexist. (and I use the words "feminine" and "masculine" in quotation marks because both men and women can have stereotypically/traditionally feminine or masculine traits regardless of gender). You make a lot of good points regarding designed identity, I just don't think they apply to Minecraft specifically.
1. Women can have facial hair 2. Why isnt kai being non binary also an option? I dont see why if they dont have pronouns youre giving them such. Seems a bit like queer erasure.
Isn't Alex supposed to be the true gender neutral option? Their design is more feminine than Steve's, but could still pass as a boy. Alex was actually based on Jeb, and even the name "Alex" is gender neutral. So maybe the 3 pixel wide arm felt more natural to implement for the new default skin, not for a girl, but for a person. When looking at the new default skins, there are actually feminine looking wide models and masculine looking skinny models. I couldn't actually find their canon genders, and the new fan favorite "Efe", who is quite feminine and has the thin model, is regarded as male by many. So maybe all of this shows that other than Steve (who was designed be Notch back in 2009 without consdering inclusivity, ant stuck around for being a classic), none of the default skins are "supposed to" have genders, and the arm thincness is just another degree of customizability.
yeah i was also gonna bring this up, though i guess the developers' intention didn't really do much to affect much of the public who just automatically cast alex as the female counterpart to steve they did say that they wanted another default skin option that was less mascule-looking than steve, but i don't think they ever explicitly said "yeah, this one's the girl" hell, even in one of minecraft's recent shorts (titled WHO ARE YOU ON YOUR FIRST DAY?) they assign alex a variety of different voices, not just a feminine one
I think one of the default skin is non binary too with They/them pronom too ? I mean the weirdest part to me in this is that nothing in Minecraft have gender except the player and Player skin, that's litterally one of Mojang game design rule
Its not a "boy" and "girl" body its slim and a wide, if you want proof go into the launcher and look at kai and ari. They added these bodys for more options while creating a character
the creators have privately said that they specifically added/ changed it to slim and wide to for the west audience, specifically western shareholders who are too fragile to understand basic concepts like gender
hi, it's me. the cinemasins guy from an alternate timeline, here to mark the sins of this video: 0:00 minecraft parkour in the background footage trope 3:42 great, now we're making art styles sexist 4:09 the disrespect on stardew valley is insane 4:54 this is sexist 5:09 subtle foreshadowing. 5:35 Alex is based off of one of the founders of Oxeye Game Studio, Jens Bergensten. 5:35 that's not an official skin 5:35 Alex's skin fits on the classic model, and Steve's on the slim model. 6:05 the american tennis player? 7:18 after Notch left Mojang 7:20 ,*slim model 7:33 fun fact, this design is based off of one of the founders of Oxeye Game Studio, Jens Bergensten. 8:01 no it does not, the player despite being 24 pixels tall is still shorter than 16 pixels of blocks. this is mixels. 8:16 they broke their rules way earlier ago, think dropped items. they're smaller than blocks! when you hold them they can grow in size! held blocks shrink down too but retain the same amount of pixels! mixels. 8:19 last comment 8:19 they did not make the slim model just to make Alex, they made the model so players had more choice of body types when making their skins 8:26 all pixel artists would like to disagree with you 8:47 the amount of Notch disrespect in this video disappoints me 8:59 correction: "There's a slim model and a classic model." 9:02 ,*slim model 9:10 that's how those skin creators want to perceive the models, but not everyone shares the same perspective 9:15 not every guy plays a male character, not every gal plays a female character 9:19 ,*slim model 9:28 Alex is genderless, there's plenty of long haired dudes... have you heard of this one guy who works at Mojang? 10:05 the previous and this skin type may have very well fit on either model. 10:09 dresses were originally for men 10:22 that's what the nuclear scientists thought during the 1930s too 11:19 ,*slim model 11:24 this is not a new concept? 11:36 this is assumptive of all players, there are many players who do not think this way. like me. 11:49 i feel like you would also be offended if everyone was turned into a villager 11:53 that's based off of your perception 11:56 ,*alex skin ,*slim model 12:06 we don't know if those are jeans. 12:08 we're 85% of the way into this video and still haven't talked about any of the other skins available besides Alex and Steve. No Ari, no Kai, no Noor, Sunny, Zuri, Efe... not even Makena. 12:16 just went from "well they probably didn't realize it" straight to "they probably knew" 12:20 capitalism alert!!! 12:23 not in this day and age, modern marketing is evolving past the harmful gender representations. 12:29 cliffhangers are cringe 12:33 that's all we've been doing for the past 7 minutes? is there something i'm missing? 12:39 what is this? the 1910s??? 12:40 "In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person as an object or a thing. It is part of dehumanization, the act of disavowing the humanity of others." - Objectification - Wikipedia 12:54 Alex Skin != Slim Model 12:54 Alex is still gender neutral. 13:05 would you rather the modders do it instead? have you seen the god damn curves on those things? talk about breaking math. 13:12 to therapy. 13:26 you do not provide evidence to back this up, i have played Hypixel for quite a while (9 years) and have never seen this situation ONCE 13:45 don't you disgrace his legacy with your $13 video 13:49 F for Fnotwellresearched 13:53 i thought we were past clickbait that's 49 or 50 sins and i need to go and drink pineapple juice to drown my sorrows i am open to criticism
@@MinerGritz and was added as the female counterpart to Steve, as Mojang said to Wired Magazine in 2015 (which I cited in the video). What’s your point?
@@PrinceOfCloudCity Alex is not female, you may project feminine attributes to it but that's your own perspective. Additionally, the point of the default skins isn't for you to be stuck with them forever. It's to have a template to make your own skins off of. You aren't forced to choose out of only 9 skins.
You might be liable for plagiarism as well. While you may have submitted the proper citation work for your assignment, you did not attach the same citations to this video's description. It would be wise to take care of that.
I think the problem with this video is that you are treating your subjective opinions as objective fact. I can certainly see how the way the Alex model is designed bothers you. But you than claim that this represents an actual issue as opposed to being merely a result of your own personal preferences. In our lives, there are a great many trivial things that bother us, and they almost always stem purely from our own subjective views; that is, in fact, what an "opinion" is. Just because someone doesn't like the color red doesn't make it an objectively "bad" color, and just because someone likes a particular ice cream flavor doesn't mean it is the "best" flavor for everyone. In your argument that the design of the Alex model is sexist, you have certainly shown how it is sexist to you (i.e. it personally causes you sex based discomfort). You have also shown exactly how and why this is the case. However, different people have different thought processes and what you find distasteful, others heartily approve of. The arguments for why the Alex model are not sexist are just as persuasive as the arguments for why it is sexist. Ultimately, the entire issue comes down to personal preferences. It's an opinion, it's not related to "true" and "false", but to "like" and "dislike". You dislike the Alex model, and you have reasons for why you dislike it, but to argue that it is objectively sexist is to equate your own personal opinions with reality.
I enjoyed the explanation of designed identity, but I disagree with using minecraft as an example, alex's body type is not refered with any gender connotation, just slim, and all the default skins have slim and wide variations, and alex's appearance was also based on jeb. Good video tho, the comments gave me a good chuckle, ppl can get so mad about nothing lol
I think I understand the sentiment a bit, but I think you lost me a bit when you started claiming the slim mode is gendered because it was introduced with Alex. YOU CAN USE THE STEVE DEFAULT FOR FEMALE SKINS STILL, NOTHING HAS CHANGED! You can still put a dress on the default body and you can put armor on the slim. My skin is a slim sailor boy, but I can make the skin slim or default as much as a want. You do not have to be limited, you are the only one putting this limit on yourself I wanted to be intellectually open to such an odd claim to me on paper, but there are so many logical leaps that I just can’t agree with.
Considering that the Alex skin was based on a guy (Jeb, one of the lead developers) this argument doesn't really hold that much weight (at least not so far as intentions go). Also there are so many better examples of sexism in videogames you could have looked at, which don't involve reaching so hard to find something to say.
Or Jens if we wanna go by actual name, and yeah he does look pretty skinny and ginger (also leaving this here I used to headcannon alex as a guy cause Alex is a more commonly used male name where I'm from)
@@ntinakos21roriginal39 Jens actually based Alex off of himself, because he didn't really understand how to design a female counterpart to Steve! (source unverified)
I have played this game since Beta 1.3 and never noticed that there are two different playermodels you can put skins on. I feel like there is multiple explanations for this: It is possible that the developers wanted to add a female skin to the game, felt like the arms looked too "masculine" and then made changes to the character model. It is also possible that they felt like the arms on the original player model looked a little wide _regardless_ of skin and then added the new model with a new skin to go along with it, where the skin happened to be interpreted as female. Maybe this was also done to give people making custom skins more options. I didn't expect to comment on someone's uni assignments on RUclips of all places. We don't get to do that in engineering much xD
Why does this comment section have the idea that this person just hates minecraft, and this video is JUST about minecraft. It's in the thumbnail. Designed identity. Designed identity is what this video is actually about, not "grr sexist minecraft! get them cancelled!"
I think most comments, especially the top comments, are actually pretty respectful and not just like "grr why u say minecraft bad" And yes, most of them are about the minecraft part of the video, but none of them from what I've seen discredit what's been said in the rest of the video ! They probably agree with it, and only disagree on the minecraft part at least that's what I'm getting from it, personally
If ninecraft was sexsist then alex would have a smaller inventory bc women arnt as strong as men. Also games are not targeted at white people and idk why u would think that. @PrinceOfCloudCity
Also minecraft added Alex to include to be more diverse u said it urself. There is no difference between Alex and steave oh no some slight graphical bug
@@PrinceOfCloudCityexcept she also has a poneytail not sure how u could miss it since u had to be looking at the skin so long to notice a 1 pixel difference 13:11
@AussieMulletboi Even tho Alex has a simple pony tail, doesn't mean it's exclusively feminine thing, any body of any gender can have ponytails both in real life and in minecraft. In real life you just need some long hair to tie into a ponytail doesn't matter the gender really, even jeb has a simple yet long ponytail, In minecraft it's allot easier because you don't have to wait for your hair to grow the length you want it to be at, in minecraft there are quite a bit of pony tail designs in the bedrock edition in the skin customization menu and In Java you can make custom original various pony tail designs with various third party apparel or websites compatible with Java edition.
Since 2022 (version 1.19) all of the nine default skins have a "wide" version and a "slim" version. I grew up watching a lot of Grian's building tutorials. His Minecraft skin uses the 3-pixel model and I never found it weird that I guy would use the "girl" model. I never noticed people in servers or forums bullying other players for choosing the slim model or the wide model, but I also stuck to communities that had rules against any sort of bullying.
Interesting I never considered the slim and wide character options to be gendered. Also at 13:16 you mentioned kids bullying each other for using the wrong skin model which is messed up. Having Alex as the thin model and Steve as the wide model at the start may have unintentionally reinforced the gender stereotypes that people already had. Also the fact Jeb took inspiration from his own appearance is something I think people bullying each other for "using the wrong skins" should take note of. Edit: I forgot to mention 1.19 that is great they gave the option for all the default skins to have a wide and slim version. A bit ironic that one update later in 1.19.1 they broke GDPR law.
Wow, okay excellent video, your point at 3:30 made me immediately think of Animal Crossing, or Stardew Valley and initially it was simply because you mentioned cute and fluffy, but as soon as you mentioned their orientation around "feminine household tasks", i immediately realised that those games are very focussed on taking care of your house or something and I have no problem with those games, but I will never be able to see them without designed identity in mind. Also, your quote on Notch, given his most recent... activities, in comments he's made, things like that. Initially, sure, his comment could come across as "it's a game for everyone" but now it just makes me think of sexism in general. And with genderless Steve, I can't be the only one who really wanted his beard to be a smile. The point about bullying for using the "wrong" gender model, as well, really stuck with me. I'm not even sure of my identity, but when I was younger, I always, even with custom skins, used the "slim" model, mainly for custom skins but even when playing Steve, I just identified more with it I suppose, but I did get called out on it a lot, and it always made me acutely more aware of that difference. (Maybe it's obvious but I wrote this comment throughout the video but like this was amazing, good luck on your grade!)
Notch, like any human being, is flawed and has a wide spectrum of (changing) beliefs. Just because he's said things that we might disagree with and that got him into hot water, doesn't mean we should disregard everything he says as having no merit. Not to mention, the last time I looked into the whole Notch controversy, it seemed pretty overblown and misrepresented to me. He struck me as a person who mostly wanted to be accepting, but was rooted in some prejudices from his upbringing, and so said some half-baked problematic thoughts that went viral on social media and inaccurately painted him as being defined by those few comments, while ignoring anything to the contrary. I highly recommend watching the video "Notch - What We All Got Wrong" on RUclips, it's pretty enlightening on the topic.
I'm actually majoring in media ethics with the goal of getting my masters and teaching certification to teach other people media ethics! But thank you, that's very kind.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity I am sorry for the confusion my original comment was actually a backhanded insult to the video as game journalists are stereotyped as people who find politics the the stupidest of situations (such as finding sexism in the removal of a arm pixel). However I have decided to be actually constructive now so I will speak a few points on why I think this topic is kinda dumb. 1. out of all the controversial Minecraft skins to pick from Alex is probably the least egregious change (ex. Athletic Steve) 2. the addition of the slim body type could add diversity given that not all people who you would like a Minecraft skin of are the same bulky 6'5" beef machine that Steve is, and customization is a good thing, I know I have quite a few male skins that use the slim type and not because the characters are feminine but because I feel the arms of the wide type just looks dumb. 3. I believe that if Alex never had the slim type there would be essentially nothing to differentiate Alex from Steve leaving Alex to be forgotten (Alex was not the 1st different skin after all) and I think in the complicated trolley problem about adding the slim type for Alex or not, I think that the slim type gave Alex at least a little more memorability and I think that that memorability brought in more little girls who want a character to represent them in Minecraft than the inclusivity would if Alex were to be forgotten. 4. I think the best point you made here was about the kids in the huge servers being assholes about slim vs wide skins on different characters, however, children would have still been assholes (especially to women) if the slim type was never a thing (perhaps it would be laughing at how bulky all of the female skins are by default), unfortunately the child-asshole level is a constant no matter what is happening or what has happened in the past. but I guess I am a straight white Caucasian male so I guess my opinion on things like discrimination re less valuable in the public's eyes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ p.s. congrats on the (almost) masters or whatever I know it's an accomplishment even if it is a master's degree in videogame politics.
In terms of basic biology.... male humans tend to have a wider shoulders and taller body on average. And thats probably why the COMMUNITY decided to make alex model a female.
I never really see the arm size as something gendered, most of the skins ive used are male ( im a dude ) but i always use the dainty model because i like being skinny, its just different body types. no hate, we just have different views on it. still love the video, very informative
This is a class project so it's understandable that you would play up academic language, but in future non class-project videos you should tone it down a bit. A lot of people nowadays are primed to the idea of a "triggered internet feminist" and are ready to turn their brains off and start feeling oppositional if you sound too smart. You probably know that already though. I loved it though. Great video, I agree completely 👍
I’m starting a podcast next year with specifically watered-down non-academic language to try to educate people without having men send death threats to my DMs lol, I’m glad we all watched Hank Green’s video on populism
I didn’t know what designed identity was before this, it makes so much sense! You’ve inspired me to learn more about it. Very interesting video. It’s also interesting how hostile some people can get in the comments, at least your title worked.
me, a man, using the thin skin, because i am skinny, and tall, tall and skinny, or rather, have no muscles to speak of, just like jens, jeb if you want, the man the alex skin is based on, as you know, men can have long hair too, as do i, actually, also, alex is a gender neutral name, in case you didnt know that...still hope you got a good grade
your title worked its magic! i never thought that sexism could be so simply intertwined with really small things like that. it's also hilarious how the biggest yappers who had the dumbest shit to say are the ones who didn't even watch the whole video. they can't fathom an experience outside of their own! really amazing job!
@PrinceOfCloudCity I simply point that out because I was 2 minutes into the video when I thought to myself why does it matter if Minecraft were supposedly sexist, pointing it out certainty doesn't add to the positivity in the world. Now I get you're a content creator and making videos makes you money so do whatever, it's your channel, my simple little existence here on RUclips is just to consume content, anyways...
@@Ao5pXB Pointing it out is actually extremely important. We can not grow if we do not know what mistakes we need to grow from, even if those mistakes might seem small. Being incorrect or doing something harmful is a part of the normal human experience - it's about making sure what we do next comes from a place of us trying to be better. I point this out with Minecraft so that next time someone thinks about doing something like this, perhaps they think twice and make the space more inclusive for all genders without creating an "othering" divide.
The comments are a very interesting part of this (yeah, the title clearly worked). Yes, it might be true that you always use the slim skin (I do, as a guy), but it's hard to argue that they aren't designed with gender in mind when Steve, the only character with a beard, has a wide model and Alex, the character with a gender neutral name and long hair. I think the new characters added recently do something to redress this but it's far too late to change the perception of wide for the 'male' skin and slim for the 'female' skin, and we shouldn't pretend that bias doesn't exist.
Exactly. Alex was added as the developers solution to making a female model - they said so themselves and I quoted them in the video - and this can not be ignored. Intention matters.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity I agree with this, and I think the video should have focused on this more ; rather than "minecraft is sexist", why not "minecraft was sexist" ?
i quite agree with capitalism that genders thing [i have a lot of criticizes for this video too so maybe keep reading?] but we have also generic masculinity which is gender neutral, which the sexist part was that we added feminine terms to languages which you can research before that everything was gender neutral i as a trans nb disagree that CoD is a boyish game and i also agree "misogyny" which i prefer to call sexism isnt just in andrew tate or violent way i actually think misogyny is a sexist term because it refers to an state that female individuals are mistreated by mostly patriarchy but imo the truth is sexism isnt just "men < women" or "men > women" its array of stereotypes and stuff like that, which is why i really hate word misogyny and patriarchy making me feel its going to be used by TERFs like JK Rowling i personally have been researching a lot about sexism a lot and stuff like that though i appreciate your effort for making this video, its really binary gendered and twitter bluehaired wokeshit tbh (not trying to be offensive rather being straight forward) and the title as it was intended was very catchy as you mentioned and you could have said it in 2mins without even mentioning Chess
Great video essay! This was very informative and you made amazing points, I appreciate that you specify that this is an example of casual misogyny and that it likely wasn’t intentional on the game devs’ parts and we shouldn’t blame individual creators for this. Btw the way, the title did indeed turn the comment section into a meta component of this essay. It’s obvious from reading most of the comments that they’re knee jerk reactions to the title and that they didn’t even give this video the light of day because they think, “feminism bad” and, “it’s not that deep.”
Yes, minecraft is genderless, but when it comes to multiplayer and gender expression, I think it's a good thing that minecraft added smaller arms it stops becoming genderless once you add multiplayer and by extension the real world into it, and even regardless of gender, having smaller arms is good for expression in general, more customisation means more expression. I think you are stretching the effect of a single pixel a little bit, the slim model is not tiny and puny, it's still tall and just as strong as the original one. It's purely visual
Just watched the whole video, I completely disagree. The different body types can be for anything and they don't have to represent gender, you could make a "male" skin with skinny arms and a "female" skin with thick arms. If you wanted to blame Minecraft for some kind of misogyny it would have been so easy just to use the misogynist tweets that Notch has sent but you had to talk about some obscure detail that isn't really even related to gender. And this somehow makes it "sexist"
Your title certainly caught my attention. I have been playing Minecraft for over 10 years and never felt like the game was sexist. I remember the update with the Alex skin and the option for slimmer arms. For some time I used the slimmer arms, depending on what skin I wanted to use. I didn't think that was inherently something for a female skin, I just saw it as an extra feature to customize with. You can maybe say statically that a female has a higher chance of having slimmer arms, however, as far as I am concerned everyone can have any type of body. Call me surprised, I didn't know that choosing the slimmer version or not is a reason to bully other people. Over the years, I have been part of several communities, and I have not seen to my memory, that another player has been bullied for their skin. Perhaps I think too simply about it, I just think it is childish to bully someone over their preference of using a slimmer or wider skin.
I use slim arms on my skin (until a bedrock bug made it annoying on imported skins lol) because it fits the character a lot more, and they're supposed to be a war vet!
You should not think of these models as the steve model and the alex model, steve and alex are characters, steve happens to use the larger model and alex happens to use the slimmer model, I as a boy always use the slimmer model as I prefer the look of it, the same can be said of dream and grian, its very simply a different model, not a girl model, a different model
I think mojang has started doing a better job at trying to avoid this bias, I'm specifically thinking about all the new default skins added in 2022, where by default there are 4 skins using the slim player model, two more feminine, one more masculine, and one more androgynous, and 5 using the wide player model, one looking more feminine, one looking more masculine, and three looking more androgynous. and even then there haven't been any confirmed gender identites put on these characters, they've been added as a way for players to find whatever identifies with them the most and allowing their gameplay to show off who they are. I do think this video is an important reminder of the bias we so often forget about in every piece of media
lol the end reveal about it being a graded project. Anyway, because of the purposefully inflammatory title, I clicked on this expecting it to be overblown and to disagree with pretty much everything, but on the contrary, I agreed with most of what you said. And honestly, I actually had the same negative feeling about the addition of the Alex model when it first happened, though I didn't take the time to flesh it out this fully of course. But I do have a counter-argument to when you were saying that there is no "woke virus" ruining video games. I agree it's not what the alt-right claim, and definitely not to the same extreme, but I think there's a seed of truth to their protestations. In fact, I think this video actually perfectly exemplifies what the real "woke virus" is. The real "woke" agenda that is increasingly being pushed in media, and often drastically reduces its quality, is exactly this. It's when corporations see a media culture that has a typically male designed identity, and then they forcibly and disingenuously try to address it by inserting "diversity" or "social commentary". The Alex skin/model was an attempt by the company to address Minecraft's lack of diversity. It was done exclusively for that reason, to try to appear more diverse and seem socially conscious. But because it was done in that manner, it results in actually being innately sexist, and worse than what it had been. Yes, most games are still made with a male designed identity, even the ones that the right disparage as being "woke". But that's because the real "woke agenda" is nothing more than thoughtless and disingenuous corporate pandering, which is bound to be deeply problematic with its real messaging. The right isn't wrong to be upset by the way this is transforming media. They just lack the insight (and are often too discriminatory) to see why it's problematic, and instead they attack groups of people.
Nearly this entire comment section is so anti-intellectual it hurts, how does someone literally SHOW you examples of the divide and sexism a mere pixel can cause and you still just revert to "lol, ur just yapping, stupid feminist." You guys can't even argue against their points, all you can do is just scream sensitive, yapping, or what have you till you're red in the face.
@noname-rt3cv yeah I have. I'm currently looking through hundreds of comments mocking anything this person has said. in fact their are a lot less comments praising OP's research and observations compared to the ones mocking them.
As a female Minecraft player, I found this to be a very interesting watch even if I didn't agree with all the points made in it. I'm not sure I'd call the game, Minecraft sexist in itself, though some Minecraft players can be. That is a problem not only in Minecraft but sadly with the gaming community as a whole. As for the slim models, I also found it a bit odd how they made the arms slimmer on the more feminine player model, Alex when they were first released. I understand wanting to add more customization options but I think it would've made more sense to me to just keep the default arm width for both Steve and Alex. I sometimes like to create Minecraft skins and I personally prefer using the wider armed model when playing as and creating skins regardless of the skin's gender or presentation. I don't know why exactly but perhaps I just enjoy the added pixel length to add more detail to my skins. :P
i still dont understand how minecraft is sexist, its just slim arm? I mean all skins have slim and wide? In my whole life i never seen anybody bully if somebody chose slim or wide type in mc. I just got to the end of the video its for a class. It all makes sense now, hope you get a good grade.
(I think my first comment got deleted automatically because of a certain word) As a sociology student, thank you for this video. There is little awareness of the implicit nature of misogyny in public discourse. Partly because people often take the term too literally, as opposed to a system of power relations, attitudes, and prejudices that reaffirm traditional gender roles, positioning women in a subordinated stratum. And as you mentioned in the video - the casualness of it all is the most dangerous part, this lack of awareness is precisely what perpetuates this mechanism to this day.
wasnt alex based on jeb? and it was the community that said alex was a girl? same thing with the bullying thing, ive only ever seen the two models refered to as the "slim" and "wide" models not the "alex" and "steve" models so the bullying would be more on the community even if alex is a girl. (do correct me if im wrong here, as im just speaking from what ive personally seen/heard.) for the example you put of them being gendered with your own skin, i took that more as armor being bulkier than a dress, rather than masculine vs feminine like you displayed it as. i have a skin thats an axolotl, i used the slim model for it because i thought it would look better, not for any gendered reasons, and same deal with dragon skins ive made in the past, i used the wide because i thought it looked better. i may be missing somethings, since ive never really seen gender as personally important so i doubt problems around it would weigh on me as much as it would with others. (also whats with the shoe/bootless alex image you used? lmao)
3:54 that idea has allways been weird and creepy to me. Why is the "ideal" woman allways so infantilized on media? It is so disgusting, and if you notice it, you see it everywhere
...why? Who cares? I'm gonna play what I want. Minecraft is fun. Isn't that the whole point? If a game had a much more story-focused aspect (like anything other than Minecraft), I can understand being upset that it could be sexist, but MINECRAFT? Who cares? Isn't the name Alex used by males and females? Anybody should be able to have fun killing a dragon and not have to worry about if the game is sexist.
No one is telling you what you can and can't play. I play Minecraft all the time. But I also study media ethics and you can be critical while also being a fan. In fact, I would argue critical thinking is key for being a fan of a game in the first place.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity Agreed. Sorry about my rant there. Your title set me off, and i don't know why. Again, sorry. What's funny is i am exactly the target audience you described, so i'm just gonna stop talking.
I loved the video. There's also the sounds villagers, illagers and witches make. They're supposed to be genderless but it's very obvious they're not. I still headcanon all of them as women ✌
its a sound...in a game...about blocks. there isnt some "SeCrEtE StrAiGht mAlE AgeNdA" its a game about blocks and they chose that for the sound. look at cows and ANY animal in the game. they are all male and female. they can all breed and 2 cows can give milk and then breed, why? i dunno cause its a block game about creativity and not how the game is sexist over a singular pixel.
If you check out Minecraft Dungeons, all of the characters use the 3 pixel arms. Seeing that Alex's design was based on Jens(a slim man), the intention may not have been to create a "female model". It's an added layer of customization. I think the 3 pixel arms are a better design because the arms are distinct from the legs. I always choose the 3 pixel arms Side note: Your video is well made. I get the impression that you genuinely care about this topic. Keep going
My assignment was on a time limit otherwise I would have brought up Dungeons AND Storymode, which both change the body models again! And they have more characters besides Alex and Steve, which is something I would love to talk about sometime. Thank you for the kind words!
This is one of those moments where the word "sexism" carries such heavy connotations that it can be hard to bring people into the nuance of it, because I totally hear your point. Similar to talks about transphobia or homophobia, how the words are SUPER weighted and so it can be hard to talk to cishet people about microaggressions or things that are small but still "othering". I would consider this sexism BECAUSE of the tie to gender stereotypes - but it's so small that it can fly under the radar to most, and it obviously upsets people to bring it up (see other comments lol)
Also transfem, and I also like Alex. I do feel the genderedness of the slim and wide models but only with my own character. Mostly when using a more Human looking/gendered skin. But not with other players. Didn’t even account for my older brother using the slim model gender wise until this video. The skin is a masculine one.
Hi, Vincent! I see you're subscribed to some very cool feminist creators like The Cozy Creative and Quinton Reviews. Maybe, if you're so offended by "wokeness", you should look inwards at the wokeness you carry every day! Thank you for your view.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity why do you check people's pages and watch who they're subscribed to and then make assumptions based on that I think it's a little bit creepy
Of course people are gonna think and doubt with updates / changes. But if we're talking about 'awareness' it should not lead to us for even thinking Minecraft is sexist. You're mostly judging biology and Minecraft isn't even that great of an example. COD / Barbie/pony games are. Games are most of the times great when they remove themself of the movements or politics because developers kind of already know it's gonna be a black hole. In the scale of it all kind makes you victimize yourself, especially about your talk from 12:39 and you talk about your own assumptions instead of what is meant. Overanalyzing that 1 pixel is ofc more important than Alex being a gender neutral name, and since I'm focusing: You tend to rather judge with your own facts, foundings and thoughts instead of researching intention and reasons that could made this whole article go somewhere else, yet it didn't. I've heard many analogies, theories and 'monologue discussions' this one added something new and interesting, but it still kind of dramafies it in the wrong way..
4:45 these ideas are so goofy.They problem wont solve itself if you make games designed only for "girls" it wont solve the problem like at all you are only creating the same thing you are complaining about.Instead people should make gender neutral games just like minecraft which isint sexist, just design for smaller audiances.
This video finally explains exactly why I felt “othered” the moment they announced a tiny girl alternative. As a young girl, it was so LOUD how I was already unwelcome in the spaces I occupied, so being separated in such a minor yet telling way was heartbreaking for my little brain to comprehend. A lot of the people disagreeing have benefited from the addition in some way, excited that they were able to “other” more people, or born masc people who are excited to be feminine, and that’s great, but that doesn’t excuse the quiet damage the initial change caused for so much of the player base. Of course good can come from a bad thing, but so much more bad came from it than good. It’s embarrassing to see how excited people are to exclude others, it really punctuated this videos thesis.
ok that's fair I still disagree with a few points, I think more good came from it than bad personally, but apart from that you have a very valid feeling that can't be disputed in my opinion
I always viewed Alex as non-binary from the start. It felt like they added a skin that could be male could be female. This matters to me because it never makes me look at the arms of a minecraft skin and let's me think girl/boy but just frail adsmall vs. strong and wide. And this comes from sb who in this moment can't think of any other video game character that exuded a strong ambience of nonbinary identity
It’s cool you saw her like that! As a trans person, I totally understand how us as non-cis people use identification and projection onto characters to feel seen and heard. It’s also important to remember though that our personal perceptions don’t change the core intent - which sadly, here, was the act of “othering” cis women.
I think a lot of comments are missing the point, saying things like “its just one pixel” or “it’s not that important” It’s the fact one pixel can have such an impact on our thinking and actions. It is so easy for us to fall into divisive gendered thinking. We should always strive to be more self aware of our thoughts and actions.
it doesn't have an impact on anyone's actions??? Just cuz a couple of people got offended that there is a skin type with arms 1 pixel thinner than the default one doesn't mean the entire playerbase cares about it. Look at Grian, he has a male skin, is very masculine and uses the thinner skin type.
The pixel doesn't have anything to do with gender, I have always thought of it as just having more options for making a skin. I feel like she just made this video so she could get this title and thus views and comments.
Minecraft is a sandbox game... You can LITERALLY be anything, make a custom skin. Make a skin of YOU, its LITERALLY a sandbox. Of all the games "made for men" this is one of them that women play very often on. 8:20 Not everyone wants to be super buff? Once again its a sandbox game, if you wanted you can make an alex skin WITH the classic skin type. 8:56 Correction, there is a "slim" body type and a "classic/wide" body type. ALSO if you go on skinmc and look at trending skins. MOST of them are either: 3 pixel women skins OR 3 pixel men skins (with santa hats) Also for the rest of the video let me just say this "There are large variations of size among humans but in all populations, _men are larger on average than women._ " 12:00 This picture... LITERALLY IS A 4 PIXEL ALEX SKIN- Anyway I hope you got an A+ since this is actually well made. ... BUT WHY WAS THAT THE TITLE-
@@AntiSkeppyClone it was the title on purpose because the comments are proving my points about misogyny in gaming in real time lmao. The comment section is a part of the research essay. And it worked very well apparently, because a man found my Instagram from this video and sent me a death threat so
@@PrinceOfCloudCitythat fuckin sucks, I’m sorry to hear that and who ever did that sucks. I still think the video is a little rough when I come to your points though. When you said at the end it was for a research project for school it made more sense because the connections between the book and the game in your script felt somewhat forced and only focused on that one source. My advice to you is when making an argumentative essay you need to have opposing sources to help make your point stronger when you dismantle them. It makes your arguments feel less dynamic and convincing which I’m sure your professor will point out Also the research felt really shallow. Just a quick google search and you can see more example of female default skins that use the wider build like the Ari skin and men like Sunny have the slim model. I feel like if you want to argue that even though these exist the fact the Alex and Steve are different and they are they poster characters it still pushes this idea, then yeah better argument, but again when you hyper focus on one point you miss the chance to make you argument dynamic like this Anyway hope you get a good grade regardless and fuck that guy who threaten you
wow… this speaks a LOT ! i mean, what you said is inevitably true… and as a person suffering from dysphoria it does even more to me… like… i mean, i already realized this pixel and it always shocked me, like how a block game can add gender stereotypes is horrifying… even when i was younger, i initially took the « one pixel less body type » without a care in the world, but when i realized how sexist it just blew my mind… (now i just use a red and gray faceless and genderless skin with the thin body type, but i’m showing how i do not care about the meaning of it even though being transfem, mostly because i always played with three pixel arms as a habit and it won’t change… but i mostly see it as a « weapon » to fight against this mojang decision by wearing it with mods installed, and in older versions, which makes it bug. it could sound meaningless but it litteraly shows how mojang did a bad job at it and i am not quitting this habit.) (i know i’ve gotten a little far with this, but anyway… i know that when i explain things it feels none sense and i might get missunderstood in this comment. but i had to say that you are goddamn right)
idk, i much prefer the slim model and always have since it's release, even when playing hypixel or (java) hive most people i see use it, whether their skin is supposed to represent a male or female character, and it's been like this for a few years now generally the skins I see on the old, wider model are non-human i make skins and for most designs i would use the slim model
My gender is somewhere between non-binary and female, sometimes I feel more female and sometimes I feel more non-binary. And wearing a slim skin literally makes me feel dysphoric despite being born a woman and being small in size, it doesn’t matter which way my gender swings. And I’ve read a lot of comments that I can only assume are written by men trying to argue how wrong you are, despite you saying that this is literally for a class assignment. My personal stance is that the addition of the slim skin is kinda sexist, but not as sexist as people seem to be arguing in the comments. I also don’t believe Mojang is even the main problem, the community is, they are the ones who make the custom skins. Mojang may have been the ones to add the slim skin, but the community are the ones who twisted something well intentioned but perhaps slightly sexist into a barrier of femininity is represented by the slim skin and masculinity is represented by the wide skin. Before any men comment on this, if you want to DISCUSS my take with me, go ahead. But if you are just going to just ARGUE with me, I’m going to make this as clear as I can. I was born and raised a woman. If you still think you know more sexism than me, you are sexist. (Those who have studied sexism probably know more than me, but those that try and argue rather than discuss are not real researchers and therefore their opinion is invalid)
this comment is proof that genuine left wing extremist ideology and parody of left wing extremist ideology is often nearly indistinguishable. Same thing with this video honestly, I cant tell if its rage bait or genuine.
I think saying "it's the community" is a little reductive. The devs are (in part) responsible for the community and they should be considering how everyone will react to their decisions.
it is, a singular pixel. its not that deep. taking 1 pixel from a skin isn't sexist, its removing a pixel from a skin and nothing more. and if u want a woman skin that isn't slim just use Steve body type. it isn't that hard. and if people are getting offended by a pixel I am scared for us as a species. they added it as a extra layer of creativity. if you look at the actual gameplay animals villagers and anything in the game doesn't have a gender. all cows give milk and all cows can breed with one and other. it is just extra creativity for skins. there is no agenda there is not sexism. its a pixel get over it.
1:46 How the heck did you figure that out?? Even if we restrict ourselves to only the most popular games for some reason, the results will be heavily skewed towards genres that have more playable characters. So hero shooters, fighting games, and gacha games. In what world do 'able-bodied cishet white men' come out the majority here? For many characters the answers to questions like race or sexuality will be "N/A". And what about customizable characters, are they just not being counted at all? 2:12 I like to think video games are made for everyone. Restricting yourself to only ones with main characters that are exactly like you in every way is just weird. 5:34 I don't think of Alex as necessarily a girl, and I'm sure lots of other people do too. The only thing I associate with the Alex skin is "Oh, this person is new and hasn't made their own skin yet." Heck, Steve is much more of a boy than Alex is a girl. 7:39 The skin's one pixel thinner, so therefore... Alex is female? That's a strange assumption to make about people, much less a genderless Minecraft skin. The thinner arm model exists to give the players more options when making skins--if you only associate thinner arms with femininity that's your problem. There's a version of Steve with thin arms and a version of Alex with thick arms, and both can be switched to right this instant on the Minecraft launcher. 11:05 "Probably might not be"? What kind of weasel words are these..? It sounds like downplaying your own downplaying. 12:23 No they aren't? I'll use my niche interest in linguistics to offer one counterexample. Linguists can confidently reconstruct the lexicon and grammars of ancient proto-languages by comparing their descendant tongues. English, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and plenty others go back to one called Proto Indo-European (circa 3500-4000 BCE). By looking at what words these ancient speakers had we can tell a lot about their culture; one thing being a clear patriarchy evident in the language. The word for 'husband' was literally 'master of the house', the root meaning 'wed' also meant 'lead away' (suggesting women would've left to join another family), and 'father' comes from a root meaning 'to protect'. This was all fundamental vocabulary, and it would've been entrenched way before anything even like capitalism was known to these people. (Let's go, my linguistics nerdiness was useful for once!)
I want to know why you are assuming that *I* have assigned Alex as female for having one pixel less when it is the developers, who added Alex, who I quoted in the video, that are explicitly saying that Alex was added as a female alternative to Steve? They gave Alex the gender AND took away the pixel.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity You keep saying that the devs are explicitly saying that added was added as a female alternative which... no ? Even the thing you quoted only says "Steve doesn't represent the diversity of our player base" how is that explicitly saying that alex is a female alternative ?
I don't want to stirr up drama here, I'm sure the comment section is gonna be a war zone as is. But we can all acknowledge that there are biological differences between male and female bodies. Regardless of what gender identity you combine them with. And I hold the believe that you should be proud of those differences, regardless of which biological body you own. We as humans can celebrate those differences if we choose to do so. They all have different advantages and disadvantages. And continueing this train of thought, it is just a fact of our reality that biological men have broader shoulders on average. That is one of those differences, and it's the one they decided to put in the game. Full stop. Literally no strings attached. Any additional notions of "weakness", "delicateness", "expected to not take up space" are projected on to it by you with an explicit but unwarranted negative connotation. One can easily turn these around and make statements like "Men are expected to be always strong, crude and take up too much space." with the exact same negative connotation. You are in this sense no better than the kids you overheard in minecraft servers making fun of people using the "wrong" skin for their model. It's just projecting stereotypes onto something that is inherintly just normal.
I am a trans man. I am married to a trans man. All my friends are transgender. I’ve seen biological gender changed, rearranged, turned on its head and made all brand new - these features that you mention are deeply trivial. And even outside of that, I know cis women taller and broader than my own cis man father. I know cis woman beefier and wider than my uncles and cousins will ever be. To argue that it’s natural for women to look like Alex instead of Steve is kind of exactly the energy I’m trying combat with this video.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity Obviously you can find many individual exception where cis men are smaller and more slim than specific cis women. Thats why I was explicitly talking about averages. Because for hundreds of million humans this will simply not be the case. And I think being able to embrace those difference, which are anything but trivial, and finding strength in them is very important. The same thing goes for beefy women or scrawny men. It goes both ways and really has nothing to do with gender entirely. I hope you realize that being able to transform your own body to the point of completely reversing your biological gender in certain aspects comes from a place of massive privilege. For the majority of people on this planet, this is simply not an option they have the means or the access to.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity It is on true that on average men are indeed larger and stronger than women. It's not saying there's never deviations from this. It's just on average
@@PrinceOfCloudCity but doesn't testosterone develop bigger muscles than estrogen generally speaking ? I agree there definitely are big women and small men out there but I'd say the average man could beat the average woman in an arms wrestle
I would like to explain why this argument doesnt really work. Since 2022, we have gotten 7 more default character skins. Some female, some male. There are female characters with wide arms, and male characters with skinny arms. So the whole "they made female skins dantier" is kind of invalid. To give you credit, there was a long period of time where alex was the only female skin, and there was definitely some division there. But with the addition of these new characters, you get to see that its not a matter of gender, but a matter of body type that suits the character design itself. Gender may have been the original reason the skinny body type was made, but its not representative of female characters specifically, and definitely not required for them either.
I feel like this is digging a little too deep into something that probably doesn't really matter that much? the "good games" are such because of the fact that they have a number of elements to them that declare them as "good games". The other games you compared to them are brand named (Like the Hello Kitty ones, which is intended for a young audience, and as such won't be as developed as Stardew) or are just made in a way that's not as enticing. I am not cishet, yet I still enjoy the games that you would deem as "cishet games". There are some design choices that I myself don't really like, but the games I play don't really put a crazy emphasis on it if it's even there because the game is about the gameplay, which is what I'm actually playing for. I enjoy OTXO because it's pretty fast paced. I enjoy ULTRAKILL because it's fast paced with a lot of tech. I enjoy Rain World because it has a lot of tech to it. It really is just a matter of personal preference as to what games you play. Games aren't really sexist unless they have an actual underlying tone of it. Some simple design choices such as a slimmer character frame doesn't really say that whatsoever. Not to mention, once custom skins became a thing, the intent was that Steve would be replaced for your own skin and, as such, all the default skins were never intended to be widely used, which also makes the argument rather obsolete. I feel like gender doesn't really play a role in gaming. The reason some fields may be less desirable for someone is either preference, or the people who already are there. Gender doesn't really have an inherent impact on it whatsoever. Someone will enjoy playing cozy games that they can just relax and farm with, while someone else will want to go on a power trip, it's all a matter of taste. While gender may have some role to it, it's not really the developers choice of audience, as triple A just makes something that has already been proven to make sales, and indie will either try to make something fun for them (these are always a blast to find) or something that'll hopefully sell well (it almost always fails). i'm pretty sure the inherent "boys field" of gaming comes from the fact that when gaming first became prominent, women weren't really respected enough to be "allowed in the field", which is stupid since it was women who were working on the first computers. Okay, I've probably detracted from my argument with the rambling, but point it that gaming isn't necessarily gendered like you claim it to be. It's all a matter of taste, you just need to find the flavour you enjoy the most. The "good games" are declared as such because they were made well and are actually deserving of the title, or are just widely known enough that plenty of people play and enjoy it to grant it the title by the general gaming space. Gender doesn't have anything to do with the actual good games, because a good game is good because of the core content itself, not these pretty obsolete "I'm looking too much into this thing that doesn't matter" details. Side note: good luck with the grade
Hello Kitty Island Adventure actually won Best App Game of the Year at the 2023 Game Awards and is moving onto the Switch because of its huge boom in popularity with people ages 18-30. So actually it is a very good game that gets an unfair gender bias, like you just displayed in your comment.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity I understand how you could miss my argument with this part, my whole comment was a rather confusing mess. So let me make myself clear, what I meant with that part is that whenever a company makes a brand of media, if they try to branch it out into other forms, they often do it very poorly, and will end up just making another game with a skin of their IP. They also often end up losing the thing that made their IP so appealing in that initial market as well, resulting in an even less appealing end product. You can see this in franchises like Bakugan or Beyblade, where they made video games that happened to fall off rather quick due to the main appeal being the novelty of it being a video game. They didn't translate their franchise over very well, and the games they had made trying to branch out suffered because of it. Pacman did this as well with a show that was ultimately pretty meh. The original games are classic, albeit a bit too simple to be of much value today other than the novelty of it, but they didn't have a proper framework to make the show off of, and it ended up suffering because of it. I assumed that, because Hello Kitty became so widely known for it's show, it would have followed the same fate as these other companies that tried to adapt into a game format. Maybe Hello Kitty was just the perfect franchise to translate into a cozy game like Animal Crossing, or maybe they just got lucky with how it played out, I don't know. I made the assumption because of the record list of many larger franchises failing as much as they did, and accounting for the fact I never even heard of this anywhere at all, I assumed it had a very similar fate. Gender had nothing to do with the assumption, which I had tried to imply with "The other games you compared to them are brand named". Another thing that had me assume this is that the franchise was initially marketed towards a young demographic, which happens to not work out too well for the longevity of that IP, as the initial audience grows up and pays attention to the more mature and fleshed out content of other pieces of media, and the newer audience that it would appeal to are more interested in something much newer. This part I implied with "which is intended for a young audience, and as such won't be as developed as Stardew". Again, I don't blame you for missing these, as I wasn't very clear with presenting my argument, but I never had any gender bias in my argument at all. Please do not project on me because we disagree.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity where did darkprism ever display an unfair gender bias towards the hello kitty game ? all they said is it's directed at a younger audience
What I’m failing to see is why it’s wrong to add a female character to any game. Minecraft isn’t the right example for what you’re going for, but seriously, I think women would be happy to have female options? I mean I get feminists get mad when anything boy is even referenced, but come on, Minecraft was made WAY before feminism was so huge and was made by two dudes. The fact that they did add diversity just shows how they are NOT sexist.
Ok so, I believe a lot of issues, e.g. kids bullying each other over gendered models, come from perception of gender that got tacked onto the size of the model rather than the reverse. I do not believe a slimmer body implies weakness, it does imply bio women are smaller, which can be argued for, but I do not believe it implies weakness or inferiority. Simply having different body sizes is great, but the fact that the burden of gender, and therefore societal opinions, happened to come with it, has caused classic misogony to carry over. Still, glad to see people learning to debate. I believe a possible solution would be to add more body sizes and assign different "core characters" to said body sizes, maing a man short, a woman tall, ect. to undo any intentional gendered design by Mojang. Ay problems from thereon out would be due to players projecting. (If it's relevant, Biological man, agender)
An actual productive and engaging comment on RUclips is rare to find and I am grateful for yours. I also 100% agree about the different body models, especially now that Minecraft has a core cast thanks to Minecraft Story Mode. There's a lot of fun stuff that can be done with avatar meshes in the blocky style and Mojang should lean into it more.
While definitely not a complete fix on Bedrock you can choose from 4 different heights. The default, two short ones and a tall model. Tho that starts bringing character creator which is a different system to skins.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity minecraft bedrock edition has all kinds of different player models and sizes, but they don't want to change anything but the arms in java edition so the hitbox stays the same (arms have no hitbox)
I get where you're going with this. There's plenty of different brands that added a "female version" of things that felt very uncomfortable and that I personally could not support. However, I feel Minecraft wasn't intending for the sexism. Yeah they chose to be the Alex design, but they don't advertise the model as the Alex model. At least not anymore. Now the models are wide and thin. And at least in pocket edition and possibly other bedrock games, you can also choose the height of the character. I use these combinations to make plenty of varying body type of male or neutral characters because that's what I prefer to play as. I have an extremely tall orc with thin arms who has more androgynous feel, but I picture him as male. A tiny gremlin with Viking braid and muscles for days with the wide option and I pictured them with neutral terminology preferred. I have a thin arm, armed, average height, male character, who looks ready to just lounge on the couch with his dark green skin dappled light from the window that he uses as light to read a book. I even have a literal sentient Haybale/scarecrow who, despite his size in fact he's made of hay looks like he's ready to fight whatever monsters come into his fields and will definitely win. Whether the models were initially intended to be used as female or male designs is no longer the case. Fans have taken it to be whether or not you want a character to have thinner or thicker arms. If you want another example of this, I will go into you to an old let's play hard-core series I was watching of Fwips (hopefully I've spelled that name right.)there is a point in one of his series is where he actually debates whether he should go with the thin model or the wide model. he even states that he prefers the thin model with his current player skin. His player skin being a bushy beard redhead in a hoodie. He wasn't seeing it as gendered, but as a choice in variation. Hopefully my talk to text message makes sense. I also hope this message doesn't discourage you from continuing to Delvin to topics like this because there are plenty of examples of Companies making questionably to outright sexist design choices. Wishing you the best in your grades.
Just because Alex's Arms are slim doesn't directly mean that Alex is a girl. Like, I'm a twink irl and as thin as a pretzel stick, that doesn't make me a girl. I actually don't identify with any gender really, despite being physically masculine. Oh yeah also the billions of minecraft skins made every day that can be seen as a girl, even then those skins use normal arms instead of the slim ones but whateves..
Alex is promoted as the original "girl" in Minecraft. They debuted the model WITH Alex. I'm not the one assigning the slim body to the girl avatar - that was literally Mojang, as stated in the video.
I mean fair enough, but the option in the character creator is "narrow" not "girl". Why'd you respond to me though? I have a similar argument to everyone else?.
@ I can’t respond to everyone because I have over 200 comments so responding to one person hopefully responds to everyone by proxy. If you didn’t want me to respond then why did you comment?
@@PrinceOfCloudCity so what about what mineblox just said, what do you have to say about the fact that alex has never been called a girl once by mojang and that the skin name is "slim" (or "narrow") and not "girl" ? 🎤
Yeah, I always thought it was weird that Alex's arms were thinner. I think I used to play as Alex sometimes, but I didn't like the arms being thinner. It just looked wrong to me because the square end shape of Steve's model seemed more in line with minecraft's art style to me. Maybe minecraft should just add a version of Alex with the thicker arms, and Steve with thinner ones, so that players have a bit more choice
Tbh as a trans girl, i still disagree tbh, also i didn even notice tbh till you mentioned, my perspective however is that, for 1 it doesn matter, an for 2, atleast for alot of trans girls like me, but im sure cis girls too, we still wanna go for the skinnier more danty stuff (again its not noticeable but if it were), in a way, games are a escape from reality, great video tho -v-
@@PrinceOfCloudCity but is that a bad thing ? doesn't it bring more good to the table than bad in the grand scheme of things if in the end more people can feel represented by the game ?
You have good points, but now the question is how would make a game that is centered around a female audience. You make many cases the world of gaming is male centric and it's inherently ingrained into the market. If this is a problem how do we fix it? How do we make the gaming landscape more gender-neutral?
In 2022, women made up 48% of game sales and return subscription gamers. The reality is that women don’t need “girl games”, just as men don’t need hypermasculine coddling. I would argue the latter is more of our current problem, as it encourages the industry’s standards. The goal in an ideal world would be to remove the idea of designed identity completely from the equation. I want a future where men playing Infinity Nikki is as common as women playing Black Ops and that the developers would allow room for that.
I was a child when this update was made to minecraft, and I’ll admit I always felt the same way about it! I feel like people being flippant about most likely lack the lived experiences you shared earlier in the video. If there is an issue to be tackled here at all, it isn’t (just) the sexism in the models, but how it invites people to interact with each other, like the children you mentioned criticizing people for using the wrong model type. Maybe if it hadn’t have been introduced alongside a new default skin that was meant to be more feminine, it wouldn’t have the same effect, but who knows. I hope you get a good grade on this assignment! (also, excellent use of clickbait)
I loved this video :) As a female person who started playing minecraft after Alex was added, I always felt like I was *supposed* to pick Alex, and that picking Steve was somehow the "boy skin." When looking up skins online and making my own, the pastel feminine skins were always on the slender model, which generally *only* had the "girly" skins. And although this may not have been minecraft's intention, it's the culture that's been created because of the it. Another interesting point is that the seperation of these two body types removes the possibility of a true non-binary option, as a skin that looks gender-neutral is more likely to be percieved as male on the Steve build, and female on the Alex build. Thoroughly enjoyed this essay! Ignore the pointless hate comments, I don't think they watched the whole video 🙃 You can love a game and still acknowledge something is wrong. I hope you get a good grade!!
great comment, but I think the fact that you were supposed to pick alex isn't Minecraft's fault that's more of a social construction that made you think that way, but Minecraft never pushed anyone to use either skin
i have a lot of problems with this and im only 2 minutes in 1. you talk about how white men are the usual protags of games and then show an image of steve who is dark skinned, sure he may not be fully brown or black but he is in no way white 2. "male" the last of us, resident evil, assassins creed, tomb raider, portal, half life, metroid and celeste. all these games have (at some point in their trilogies) had a female protagonist. i will still take the benefit of the doubt since im only 2 minutes in that there is probably a good reason to counter this argument however
I remember as a kid that I was so irate about them adding a "woman" body type and breaking their own math just to make her daintier that I refused to even acknowledge it existed for years and just kept using the classic model haha. Nowadays I use the slim model just because I do kinda like how it looks, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who was initially bugged by it and maybe even felt the tiniest bit othered! Maybe if Alex was just introduced as a skin option instead of a model change, I personally would have received it better? Or if the slim model was introduced as just a character design option instead of a gender? On one hand, I wish the people being dismissive here would open their mind to the discussion. Because yeah, it's not a big deal or anything. But isn't it interesting? Isn't it fascinating how the world around us affects our art and media? Minecraft wasn't created in a vacuum, it didn't pop up out of nowhere. Isn't it fun to dissect and analyze why certain decisions were made? And how we can improve those ideas in the future? On the other hand, though, it goes to show the validity of your "experiment" at the end. People saw the word "sexist" and IMMEDIATELY got defensive. They saw it as a bad word and an insult instead of opening a discussion and an opportunity to learn and improve. And that reaction, in and of itself, is fascinating too. Regardless, very interesting video and topic! I think I could discuss it for ages tbh :D Hope it gets a good grade!
"It's not a big deal, but isn't it interesting?" EXACTLY!! That's what essays are for!!!! And people don't want to admit it but they saw the title and clicked on this video for a reason, either to hear an interesting argument about minecraft... or to get angry at. I'm pretty sure anyone who got angry from the title probably refused to pay much attention to the video.
I think mojang did a great job at adding the slim skin, as making a slimmer steve would have been kind of weird (even though they did end up doing that) and adding a very feminine protagonist would also have been out of the blue. Alex brought a gender neutral character to a game that didn't have one (Steve clearly looks like a man and I believe saying he's gender neutral is personal bias, especially if you say that steve has no gender but villagers do)
i have never heard people calling the smaller body as feminine, i have never seen the smaller body as feminine, for me the smaller arms made more interesting ways to make skins, in my opinion the feminine skin can be the big one and the small one, and when mojang announced more default skins i was actually kinda disappointed that they didnt use the opportunity to make more body types, tho kids bullying each other for the wrong gender skin, i thing is a american thing idk why but america is so focused on gender, here in the ex-ussr we dont have such a gender war.
Very well said. I play a lot of older games myself, and I've definitely noticed that I wasn't the intended audience there. Luckily, this is getting less pronounced now than logs that read "[player] killed himself." For a while, and within a lot of modded games I see, the options for armor, clothing, or skins consist of 'normal' and 'female.' When something is meant for women, it's labeled as such, and if it's for men, it's not labeled, because maleness is normal. What Minecraft did here was construct a category of 'female' by distinguishing it from the 'normal,' and not change the (now male-coded) 'normal' at all. And as you lay out, there are also specific problems in that the way they differentiate gender is slimmer arms. I hope you get a good grade!
![[SFM] Risky Recital](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RzNkY1_Nk3o/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm sorry... I know its not my place, since I'm not a woman... But I cannot take this serious _at all._ Just because Alex has slim arms doesn't make Minecraft sexist, and I think you're overthinking it (and yes, I will get into reasons why).
They wanted to give the player more customization options, and the default player (Steve) looked blatantly male (he literally has a beard), so they decided to kill two birds with one stone. They added a more "feminine" default skin with slim arms... But just because Alex has slim arms doesn't mean its _because_ she's a "girl." Alex was actually based on Jeb (one of Minecraft's developers, who is very slim and has orange hair). Notice they also chose the name "Alex" which can be both a boy _and_ girls name (unlike Steve which is once again clearly a boys name). Also, in the skin settings, they do not title it as "male" and "female," they call it "wide" and "slim."
To disprove this further, they also recently added 7 new default skins (which were designed to be taken as either male _or_ female), and added both "wide" and "slim" variants for ALL of them (this includes Steve and Alex)... And on top of all that, some of the more "feminine" ones still have wide arms (the best example being Ari, who has a lot of similarities to Alex in clothing and appearance, but has wide arms in all the promotional art and trailers).
Kai also has wide arms by default, but is wearing a dress (according to Bedrock's character customization) so either they're a woman, or they're a guy who doesn't care about gender norms. Either way I don't see how that can be sexist.
(and I use the words "feminine" and "masculine" in quotation marks because both men and women can have stereotypically/traditionally feminine or masculine traits regardless of gender).
You make a lot of good points regarding designed identity, I just don't think they apply to Minecraft specifically.
1. Women can have facial hair
2. Why isnt kai being non binary also an option?
I dont see why if they dont have pronouns youre giving them such. Seems a bit like queer erasure.
youre not really engaging with the wider point
such a good comment imo
@@kmriifps If you want me to engage with the wider point, don't initiate the discussion with a false statement.
@ hey this wasnt said in bad faith please dont get mad ;-;
Isn't Alex supposed to be the true gender neutral option? Their design is more feminine than Steve's, but could still pass as a boy. Alex was actually based on Jeb, and even the name "Alex" is gender neutral. So maybe the 3 pixel wide arm felt more natural to implement for the new default skin, not for a girl, but for a person.
When looking at the new default skins, there are actually feminine looking wide models and masculine looking skinny models. I couldn't actually find their canon genders, and the new fan favorite "Efe", who is quite feminine and has the thin model, is regarded as male by many. So maybe all of this shows that other than Steve (who was designed be Notch back in 2009 without consdering inclusivity, ant stuck around for being a classic), none of the default skins are "supposed to" have genders, and the arm thincness is just another degree of customizability.
yeah i was also gonna bring this up, though i guess the developers' intention didn't really do much to affect much of the public who just automatically cast alex as the female counterpart to steve
they did say that they wanted another default skin option that was less mascule-looking than steve, but i don't think they ever explicitly said "yeah, this one's the girl"
hell, even in one of minecraft's recent shorts (titled WHO ARE YOU ON YOUR FIRST DAY?) they assign alex a variety of different voices, not just a feminine one
I think one of the default skin is non binary too with They/them pronom too ? I mean the weirdest part to me in this is that nothing in Minecraft have gender except the player and Player skin, that's litterally one of Mojang game design rule
Its not a "boy" and "girl" body its slim and a wide, if you want proof go into the launcher and look at kai and ari. They added these bodys for more options while creating a character
Also there is 6 "girl skins" and 3 "boy skins"
Also Radar from Minecraft: Story Mode is the only character in that series to have slim arms. Everyone makes fun of him for it, lol.
the creators have privately said that they specifically added/ changed it to slim and wide to for the west audience, specifically western shareholders who are too fragile to understand basic concepts like gender
@MC_CN free my man radar, he did nothing wrong
hi, it's me. the cinemasins guy from an alternate timeline, here to mark the sins of this video:
0:00 minecraft parkour in the background footage trope
3:42 great, now we're making art styles sexist
4:09 the disrespect on stardew valley is insane
4:54 this is sexist
5:09 subtle foreshadowing.
5:35 Alex is based off of one of the founders of Oxeye Game Studio, Jens Bergensten.
5:35 that's not an official skin
5:35 Alex's skin fits on the classic model, and Steve's on the slim model.
6:05 the american tennis player?
7:18 after Notch left Mojang
7:20 ,*slim model
7:33 fun fact, this design is based off of one of the founders of Oxeye Game Studio, Jens Bergensten.
8:01 no it does not, the player despite being 24 pixels tall is still shorter than 16 pixels of blocks. this is mixels.
8:16 they broke their rules way earlier ago, think dropped items. they're smaller than blocks! when you hold them they can grow in size! held blocks shrink down too but retain the same amount of pixels! mixels.
8:19 last comment
8:19 they did not make the slim model just to make Alex, they made the model so players had more choice of body types when making their skins
8:26 all pixel artists would like to disagree with you
8:47 the amount of Notch disrespect in this video disappoints me
8:59 correction: "There's a slim model and a classic model."
9:02 ,*slim model
9:10 that's how those skin creators want to perceive the models, but not everyone shares the same perspective
9:15 not every guy plays a male character, not every gal plays a female character
9:19 ,*slim model
9:28 Alex is genderless, there's plenty of long haired dudes... have you heard of this one guy who works at Mojang?
10:05 the previous and this skin type may have very well fit on either model.
10:09 dresses were originally for men
10:22 that's what the nuclear scientists thought during the 1930s too
11:19 ,*slim model
11:24 this is not a new concept?
11:36 this is assumptive of all players, there are many players who do not think this way. like me.
11:49 i feel like you would also be offended if everyone was turned into a villager
11:53 that's based off of your perception
11:56 ,*alex skin ,*slim model
12:06 we don't know if those are jeans.
12:08 we're 85% of the way into this video and still haven't talked about any of the other skins available besides Alex and Steve. No Ari, no Kai, no Noor, Sunny, Zuri, Efe... not even Makena.
12:16 just went from "well they probably didn't realize it" straight to "they probably knew"
12:20 capitalism alert!!!
12:23 not in this day and age, modern marketing is evolving past the harmful gender representations.
12:29 cliffhangers are cringe
12:33 that's all we've been doing for the past 7 minutes? is there something i'm missing?
12:39 what is this? the 1910s???
12:40 "In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person as an object or a thing. It is part of dehumanization, the act of disavowing the humanity of others." - Objectification - Wikipedia
12:54 Alex Skin != Slim Model
12:54 Alex is still gender neutral.
13:05 would you rather the modders do it instead? have you seen the god damn curves on those things? talk about breaking math.
13:12 to therapy.
13:26 you do not provide evidence to back this up, i have played Hypixel for quite a while (9 years) and have never seen this situation ONCE
13:45 don't you disgrace his legacy with your $13 video
13:49 F for Fnotwellresearched
13:53 i thought we were past clickbait
that's 49 or 50 sins and i need to go and drink pineapple juice to drown my sorrows
i am open to criticism
@@MinerGritz and was added as the female counterpart to Steve, as Mojang said to Wired Magazine in 2015 (which I cited in the video). What’s your point?
@@PrinceOfCloudCity Alex is not female, you may project feminine attributes to it but that's your own perspective.
Additionally, the point of the default skins isn't for you to be stuck with them forever. It's to have a template to make your own skins off of. You aren't forced to choose out of only 9 skins.
You might be liable for plagiarism as well. While you may have submitted the proper citation work for your assignment, you did not attach the same citations to this video's description.
It would be wise to take care of that.
I think the problem with this video is that you are treating your subjective opinions as objective fact. I can certainly see how the way the Alex model is designed bothers you. But you than claim that this represents an actual issue as opposed to being merely a result of your own personal preferences. In our lives, there are a great many trivial things that bother us, and they almost always stem purely from our own subjective views; that is, in fact, what an "opinion" is. Just because someone doesn't like the color red doesn't make it an objectively "bad" color, and just because someone likes a particular ice cream flavor doesn't mean it is the "best" flavor for everyone.
In your argument that the design of the Alex model is sexist, you have certainly shown how it is sexist to you (i.e. it personally causes you sex based discomfort). You have also shown exactly how and why this is the case. However, different people have different thought processes and what you find distasteful, others heartily approve of. The arguments for why the Alex model are not sexist are just as persuasive as the arguments for why it is sexist. Ultimately, the entire issue comes down to personal preferences. It's an opinion, it's not related to "true" and "false", but to "like" and "dislike". You dislike the Alex model, and you have reasons for why you dislike it, but to argue that it is objectively sexist is to equate your own personal opinions with reality.
I enjoyed the explanation of designed identity, but I disagree with using minecraft as an example, alex's body type is not refered with any gender connotation, just slim, and all the default skins have slim and wide variations, and alex's appearance was also based on jeb. Good video tho, the comments gave me a good chuckle, ppl can get so mad about nothing lol
I think I understand the sentiment a bit, but I think you lost me a bit when you started claiming the slim mode is gendered because it was introduced with Alex.
YOU CAN USE THE STEVE DEFAULT FOR FEMALE SKINS STILL, NOTHING HAS CHANGED!
You can still put a dress on the default body and you can put armor on the slim. My skin is a slim sailor boy, but I can make the skin slim or default as much as a want. You do not have to be limited, you are the only one putting this limit on yourself
I wanted to be intellectually open to such an odd claim to me on paper, but there are so many logical leaps that I just can’t agree with.
Considering that the Alex skin was based on a guy (Jeb, one of the lead developers) this argument doesn't really hold that much weight (at least not so far as intentions go). Also there are so many better examples of sexism in videogames you could have looked at, which don't involve reaching so hard to find something to say.
Is this a troll because ur taking literal cubes too seriously, even the description Is stating that they wanna ruin our favorite block game,
Did you make it to the end of the video or
what does the description state?
Before yapping for 15 mins... have u looked at minecraft dev, jeb?
@@valentine.09 preach brother preach
Or Jens if we wanna go by actual name, and yeah he does look pretty skinny and ginger (also leaving this here I used to headcannon alex as a guy cause Alex is a more commonly used male name where I'm from)
@@ntinakos21roriginal39 Jens actually based Alex off of himself, because he didn't really understand how to design a female counterpart to Steve! (source unverified)
I have played this game since Beta 1.3 and never noticed that there are two different playermodels you can put skins on.
I feel like there is multiple explanations for this:
It is possible that the developers wanted to add a female skin to the game, felt like the arms looked too "masculine" and then made changes to the character model.
It is also possible that they felt like the arms on the original player model looked a little wide _regardless_ of skin and then added the new model with a new skin to go along with it, where the skin happened to be interpreted as female. Maybe this was also done to give people making custom skins more options.
I didn't expect to comment on someone's uni assignments on RUclips of all places. We don't get to do that in engineering much xD
fun fact: complaining about one pixel is not how you fight back against sexism.
Is it complaining or is it literally doing my school work as assigned
@@PrinceOfCloudCity this is a school work?
@@PrinceOfCloudCity That's a terrible assignment topic then, and this really could have used some work.
Why does this comment section have the idea that this person just hates minecraft, and this video is JUST about minecraft.
It's in the thumbnail. Designed identity. Designed identity is what this video is actually about, not "grr sexist minecraft! get them cancelled!"
I think most comments, especially the top comments, are actually pretty respectful and not just like "grr why u say minecraft bad"
And yes, most of them are about the minecraft part of the video, but none of them from what I've seen discredit what's been said in the rest of the video !
They probably agree with it, and only disagree on the minecraft part
at least that's what I'm getting from it, personally
this video cannot be real
Oh it’s real and it’s helping me work towards my masters
If ninecraft was sexsist then alex would have a smaller inventory bc women arnt as strong as men. Also games are not targeted at white people and idk why u would think that. @PrinceOfCloudCity
Also minecraft added Alex to include to be more diverse u said it urself. There is no difference between Alex and steave oh no some slight graphical bug
@@PrinceOfCloudCityexcept she also has a poneytail not sure how u could miss it since u had to be looking at the skin so long to notice a 1 pixel difference 13:11
@AussieMulletboi
Even tho Alex has a simple pony tail, doesn't mean it's exclusively feminine thing, any body of any gender can have ponytails both in real life and in minecraft. In real life you just need some long hair to tie into a ponytail doesn't matter the gender really, even jeb has a simple yet long ponytail,
In minecraft it's allot easier because you don't have to wait for your hair to grow the length you want it to be at, in minecraft there are quite a bit of pony tail designs in the bedrock edition in the skin customization menu and In Java you can make custom original various pony tail designs with various third party apparel or websites compatible with Java edition.
Mfs just be finding anything to make a video on these days 😭
Since 2022 (version 1.19) all of the nine default skins have a "wide" version and a "slim" version.
I grew up watching a lot of Grian's building tutorials. His Minecraft skin uses the 3-pixel model and I never found it weird that I guy would use the "girl" model.
I never noticed people in servers or forums bullying other players for choosing the slim model or the wide model, but I also stuck to communities that had rules against any sort of bullying.
Interesting I never considered the slim and wide character options to be gendered. Also at 13:16 you mentioned kids bullying each other for using the wrong skin model which is messed up. Having Alex as the thin model and Steve as the wide model at the start may have unintentionally reinforced the gender stereotypes that people already had. Also the fact Jeb took inspiration from his own appearance is something I think people bullying each other for "using the wrong skins" should take note of.
Edit: I forgot to mention 1.19 that is great they gave the option for all the default skins to have a wide and slim version.
A bit ironic that one update later in 1.19.1 they broke GDPR law.
Wow, okay excellent video, your point at 3:30 made me immediately think of Animal Crossing, or Stardew Valley and initially it was simply because you mentioned cute and fluffy, but as soon as you mentioned their orientation around "feminine household tasks", i immediately realised that those games are very focussed on taking care of your house or something and I have no problem with those games, but I will never be able to see them without designed identity in mind.
Also, your quote on Notch, given his most recent... activities, in comments he's made, things like that. Initially, sure, his comment could come across as "it's a game for everyone" but now it just makes me think of sexism in general. And with genderless Steve, I can't be the only one who really wanted his beard to be a smile.
The point about bullying for using the "wrong" gender model, as well, really stuck with me. I'm not even sure of my identity, but when I was younger, I always, even with custom skins, used the "slim" model, mainly for custom skins but even when playing Steve, I just identified more with it I suppose, but I did get called out on it a lot, and it always made me acutely more aware of that difference.
(Maybe it's obvious but I wrote this comment throughout the video but like this was amazing, good luck on your grade!)
Notch, like any human being, is flawed and has a wide spectrum of (changing) beliefs. Just because he's said things that we might disagree with and that got him into hot water, doesn't mean we should disregard everything he says as having no merit.
Not to mention, the last time I looked into the whole Notch controversy, it seemed pretty overblown and misrepresented to me. He struck me as a person who mostly wanted to be accepting, but was rooted in some prejudices from his upbringing, and so said some half-baked problematic thoughts that went viral on social media and inaccurately painted him as being defined by those few comments, while ignoring anything to the contrary. I highly recommend watching the video "Notch - What We All Got Wrong" on RUclips, it's pretty enlightening on the topic.
are you trying to become a game journalist? you are doing well.
I'm actually majoring in media ethics with the goal of getting my masters and teaching certification to teach other people media ethics! But thank you, that's very kind.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity I am sorry for the confusion my original comment was actually a backhanded insult to the video as game journalists are stereotyped as people who find politics the the stupidest of situations (such as finding sexism in the removal of a arm pixel). However I have decided to be actually constructive now so I will speak a few points on why I think this topic is kinda dumb.
1. out of all the controversial Minecraft skins to pick from Alex is probably the least egregious change (ex. Athletic Steve)
2. the addition of the slim body type could add diversity given that not all people who you would like a Minecraft skin of are the same bulky 6'5" beef machine that Steve is, and customization is a good thing, I know I have quite a few male skins that use the slim type and not because the characters are feminine but because I feel the arms of the wide type just looks dumb.
3. I believe that if Alex never had the slim type there would be essentially nothing to differentiate Alex from Steve leaving Alex to be forgotten (Alex was not the 1st different skin after all) and I think in the complicated trolley problem about adding the slim type for Alex or not, I think that the slim type gave Alex at least a little more memorability and I think that that memorability brought in more little girls who want a character to represent them in Minecraft than the inclusivity would if Alex were to be forgotten.
4. I think the best point you made here was about the kids in the huge servers being assholes about slim vs wide skins on different characters, however, children would have still been assholes (especially to women) if the slim type was never a thing (perhaps it would be laughing at how bulky all of the female skins are by default), unfortunately the child-asshole level is a constant no matter what is happening or what has happened in the past.
but I guess I am a straight white Caucasian male so I guess my opinion on things like discrimination re less valuable in the public's eyes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
p.s. congrats on the (almost) masters or whatever I know it's an accomplishment even if it is a master's degree in videogame politics.
In terms of basic biology.... male humans tend to have a wider shoulders and taller body on average.
And thats probably why the COMMUNITY decided to make alex model a female.
I never really see the arm size as something gendered, most of the skins ive used are male ( im a dude ) but i always use the dainty model because i like being skinny, its just different body types. no hate, we just have different views on it. still love the video, very informative
This is a class project so it's understandable that you would play up academic language, but in future non class-project videos you should tone it down a bit. A lot of people nowadays are primed to the idea of a "triggered internet feminist" and are ready to turn their brains off and start feeling oppositional if you sound too smart. You probably know that already though.
I loved it though. Great video, I agree completely 👍
I’m starting a podcast next year with specifically watered-down non-academic language to try to educate people without having men send death threats to my DMs lol, I’m glad we all watched Hank Green’s video on populism
@ i actually DIDNT watch that video im just a genius 🧠
wheres my goddamn laugh react for youtube videos. i need it right now
Real I actually thoght thus video was a parody at first
I didn’t know what designed identity was before this, it makes so much sense! You’ve inspired me to learn more about it. Very interesting video. It’s also interesting how hostile some people can get in the comments, at least your title worked.
I get the point you're trying to make but Minecraft was not the game to target while making that point, I'm sorry
Here’s a solution
Step 1: play whatever game you choose
:] 👍
me, a man, using the thin skin, because i am skinny, and tall, tall and skinny, or rather, have no muscles to speak of, just like jens, jeb if you want, the man the alex skin is based on, as you know, men can have long hair too, as do i, actually, also, alex is a gender neutral name, in case you didnt know that...still hope you got a good grade
your title worked its magic! i never thought that sexism could be so simply intertwined with really small things like that.
it's also hilarious how the biggest yappers who had the dumbest shit to say are the ones who didn't even watch the whole video. they can't fathom an experience outside of their own! really amazing job!
I just realized I don't actually care
@@Ao5pXB thank you blank RUclips channel with COD music playlist, very cool
@PrinceOfCloudCity I simply point that out because I was 2 minutes into the video when I thought to myself why does it matter if Minecraft were supposedly sexist, pointing it out certainty doesn't add to the positivity in the world. Now I get you're a content creator and making videos makes you money so do whatever, it's your channel, my simple little existence here on RUclips is just to consume content, anyways...
@@Ao5pXB Pointing it out is actually extremely important. We can not grow if we do not know what mistakes we need to grow from, even if those mistakes might seem small. Being incorrect or doing something harmful is a part of the normal human experience - it's about making sure what we do next comes from a place of us trying to be better. I point this out with Minecraft so that next time someone thinks about doing something like this, perhaps they think twice and make the space more inclusive for all genders without creating an "othering" divide.
Are they really mistakes?
@@PrinceOfCloudCity what on earth is with you and being condescending towards your viewers who disagree!
Also what's wrong with COD
After watching this video
I still don't understand how minecraft is sexist😭
Well, the ragebait worked lol. These comments totally miss the point.
Isn't it just amazing how the comments prove my point? Dr. Chess would be proud
@PrinceOfCloudCity can you explain how the comments prove your point I'm geniually curious
The comments are a very interesting part of this (yeah, the title clearly worked). Yes, it might be true that you always use the slim skin (I do, as a guy), but it's hard to argue that they aren't designed with gender in mind when Steve, the only character with a beard, has a wide model and Alex, the character with a gender neutral name and long hair. I think the new characters added recently do something to redress this but it's far too late to change the perception of wide for the 'male' skin and slim for the 'female' skin, and we shouldn't pretend that bias doesn't exist.
Exactly. Alex was added as the developers solution to making a female model - they said so themselves and I quoted them in the video - and this can not be ignored. Intention matters.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity I agree with this, and I think the video should have focused on this more ; rather than "minecraft is sexist", why not "minecraft was sexist" ?
i quite agree with capitalism that genders thing [i have a lot of criticizes for this video too so maybe keep reading?]
but we have also generic masculinity which is gender neutral, which the sexist part was that we added feminine terms to languages which you can research before that everything was gender neutral
i as a trans nb disagree that CoD is a boyish game
and i also agree "misogyny" which i prefer to call sexism isnt just in andrew tate or violent way
i actually think misogyny is a sexist term because it refers to an state that female individuals are mistreated by mostly patriarchy but imo the truth is sexism isnt just "men < women" or "men > women" its array of stereotypes and stuff like that, which is why i really hate word misogyny and patriarchy making me feel its going to be used by TERFs like JK Rowling
i personally have been researching a lot about sexism a lot and stuff like that
though i appreciate your effort for making this video, its really binary gendered and twitter bluehaired wokeshit
tbh (not trying to be offensive rather being straight forward)
and the title as it was intended was very catchy as you mentioned and you could have said it in 2mins without even mentioning Chess
I am trans so I can promise you that when I speak about feminism, it is never bioessentialist
Great video essay! This was very informative and you made amazing points, I appreciate that you specify that this is an example of casual misogyny and that it likely wasn’t intentional on the game devs’ parts and we shouldn’t blame individual creators for this.
Btw the way, the title did indeed turn the comment section into a meta component of this essay. It’s obvious from reading most of the comments that they’re knee jerk reactions to the title and that they didn’t even give this video the light of day because they think, “feminism bad” and, “it’s not that deep.”
Yes, minecraft is genderless, but when it comes to multiplayer and gender expression, I think it's a good thing that minecraft added smaller arms
it stops becoming genderless once you add multiplayer and by extension the real world into it, and even regardless of gender, having smaller arms is good for expression in general, more customisation means more expression. I think you are stretching the effect of a single pixel a little bit, the slim model is not tiny and puny, it's still tall and just as strong as the original one. It's purely visual
Just watched the whole video, I completely disagree. The different body types can be for anything and they don't have to represent gender, you could make a "male" skin with skinny arms and a "female" skin with thick arms. If you wanted to blame Minecraft for some kind of misogyny it would have been so easy just to use the misogynist tweets that Notch has sent but you had to talk about some obscure detail that isn't really even related to gender. And this somehow makes it "sexist"
This is some of the best parody work I've ever seen, great job! I actually choked laughing.
I like that some people are accidentally proving the video's point in the top comment saying that "This can't be real."
Also great video, lol
Your title certainly caught my attention. I have been playing Minecraft for over 10 years and never felt like the game was sexist. I remember the update with the Alex skin and the option for slimmer arms. For some time I used the slimmer arms, depending on what skin I wanted to use. I didn't think that was inherently something for a female skin, I just saw it as an extra feature to customize with. You can maybe say statically that a female has a higher chance of having slimmer arms, however, as far as I am concerned everyone can have any type of body.
Call me surprised, I didn't know that choosing the slimmer version or not is a reason to bully other people. Over the years, I have been part of several communities, and I have not seen to my memory, that another player has been bullied for their skin. Perhaps I think too simply about it, I just think it is childish to bully someone over their preference of using a slimmer or wider skin.
I use slim arms on my skin (until a bedrock bug made it annoying on imported skins lol) because it fits the character a lot more, and they're supposed to be a war vet!
i have never seen a single insult about models types in minecraft in 11 years since *Java Edition Classic 0.30*
Y’all what is this- Are we seriously pissed about a character having a slimmer model than another one? 😭
You should not think of these models as the steve model and the alex model, steve and alex are characters, steve happens to use the larger model and alex happens to use the slimmer model, I as a boy always use the slimmer model as I prefer the look of it, the same can be said of dream and grian, its very simply a different model, not a girl model, a different model
Ain’t no way a creeper be sexist 💀
Ain't no way an Enderman could be racist stereotype
If it walks it blows up to the creeper, don’t matter about a single pixel lol
@@CAPME00 nah tall black long arms violent and afraid of water 💀
Steve isn’t white tho.
People will always have something to say
I think mojang has started doing a better job at trying to avoid this bias, I'm specifically thinking about all the new default skins added in 2022, where by default there are 4 skins using the slim player model, two more feminine, one more masculine, and one more androgynous, and 5 using the wide player model, one looking more feminine, one looking more masculine, and three looking more androgynous. and even then there haven't been any confirmed gender identites put on these characters, they've been added as a way for players to find whatever identifies with them the most and allowing their gameplay to show off who they are.
I do think this video is an important reminder of the bias we so often forget about in every piece of media
oh and also hope you got a good grade!!!! best of luck brave warrior
This might just be the greatest ragebait of all time im ngl
Thank you, I'm here all week
lol the end reveal about it being a graded project.
Anyway, because of the purposefully inflammatory title, I clicked on this expecting it to be overblown and to disagree with pretty much everything, but on the contrary, I agreed with most of what you said. And honestly, I actually had the same negative feeling about the addition of the Alex model when it first happened, though I didn't take the time to flesh it out this fully of course.
But I do have a counter-argument to when you were saying that there is no "woke virus" ruining video games. I agree it's not what the alt-right claim, and definitely not to the same extreme, but I think there's a seed of truth to their protestations. In fact, I think this video actually perfectly exemplifies what the real "woke virus" is. The real "woke" agenda that is increasingly being pushed in media, and often drastically reduces its quality, is exactly this. It's when corporations see a media culture that has a typically male designed identity, and then they forcibly and disingenuously try to address it by inserting "diversity" or "social commentary".
The Alex skin/model was an attempt by the company to address Minecraft's lack of diversity. It was done exclusively for that reason, to try to appear more diverse and seem socially conscious. But because it was done in that manner, it results in actually being innately sexist, and worse than what it had been. Yes, most games are still made with a male designed identity, even the ones that the right disparage as being "woke". But that's because the real "woke agenda" is nothing more than thoughtless and disingenuous corporate pandering, which is bound to be deeply problematic with its real messaging. The right isn't wrong to be upset by the way this is transforming media. They just lack the insight (and are often too discriminatory) to see why it's problematic, and instead they attack groups of people.
Nearly this entire comment section is so anti-intellectual it hurts, how does someone literally SHOW you examples of the divide and sexism a mere pixel can cause and you still just revert to "lol, ur just yapping, stupid feminist."
You guys can't even argue against their points, all you can do is just scream sensitive, yapping, or what have you till you're red in the face.
And this is exactly why I made the comment section a part of assignment
Did you actually read the comment section? Cause that's not what I'm seeing
@noname-rt3cv yeah I have. I'm currently looking through hundreds of comments mocking anything this person has said. in fact their are a lot less comments praising OP's research and observations compared to the ones mocking them.
Don't be glazing 🙏🏿
As a female Minecraft player, I found this to be a very interesting watch even if I didn't agree with all the points made in it. I'm not sure I'd call the game, Minecraft sexist in itself, though some Minecraft players can be. That is a problem not only in Minecraft but sadly with the gaming community as a whole.
As for the slim models, I also found it a bit odd how they made the arms slimmer on the more feminine player model, Alex when they were first released. I understand wanting to add more customization options but I think it would've made more sense to me to just keep the default arm width for both Steve and Alex.
I sometimes like to create Minecraft skins and I personally prefer using the wider armed model when playing as and creating skins regardless of the skin's gender or presentation. I don't know why exactly but perhaps I just enjoy the added pixel length to add more detail to my skins. :P
i still dont understand how minecraft is sexist, its just slim arm? I mean all skins have slim and wide? In my whole life i never seen anybody bully if somebody chose slim or wide type in mc.
I just got to the end of the video its for a class. It all makes sense now, hope you get a good grade.
(I think my first comment got deleted automatically because of a certain word)
As a sociology student, thank you for this video. There is little awareness of the implicit nature of misogyny in public discourse. Partly because people often take the term too literally, as opposed to a system of power relations, attitudes, and prejudices that reaffirm traditional gender roles, positioning women in a subordinated stratum. And as you mentioned in the video - the casualness of it all is the most dangerous part, this lack of awareness is precisely what perpetuates this mechanism to this day.
wasnt alex based on jeb? and it was the community that said alex was a girl? same thing with the bullying thing, ive only ever seen the two models refered to as the "slim" and "wide" models not the "alex" and "steve" models so the bullying would be more on the community even if alex is a girl.
(do correct me if im wrong here, as im just speaking from what ive personally seen/heard.)
for the example you put of them being gendered with your own skin, i took that more as armor being bulkier than a dress, rather than masculine vs feminine like you displayed it as. i have a skin thats an axolotl, i used the slim model for it because i thought it would look better, not for any gendered reasons, and same deal with dragon skins ive made in the past, i used the wide because i thought it looked better.
i may be missing somethings, since ive never really seen gender as personally important so i doubt problems around it would weigh on me as much as it would with others.
(also whats with the shoe/bootless alex image you used? lmao)
3:54 that idea has allways been weird and creepy to me. Why is the "ideal" woman allways so infantilized on media? It is so disgusting, and if you notice it, you see it everywhere
@@santiagoorgeira9142 i hardly classify removing 1 pixel as sexual idolizing
...why? Who cares? I'm gonna play what I want. Minecraft is fun. Isn't that the whole point? If a game had a much more story-focused aspect (like anything other than Minecraft), I can understand being upset that it could be sexist, but MINECRAFT? Who cares? Isn't the name Alex used by males and females? Anybody should be able to have fun killing a dragon and not have to worry about if the game is sexist.
No one is telling you what you can and can't play. I play Minecraft all the time. But I also study media ethics and you can be critical while also being a fan. In fact, I would argue critical thinking is key for being a fan of a game in the first place.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity Agreed. Sorry about my rant there. Your title set me off, and i don't know why. Again, sorry. What's funny is i am exactly the target audience you described, so i'm just gonna stop talking.
@ The title setting you off was the point, to be fair! Peep the last 30 seconds of the video.
@@V1_The_Machine you are one blessed and respectful individual don't change
I loved the video. There's also the sounds villagers, illagers and witches make. They're supposed to be genderless but it's very obvious they're not. I still headcanon all of them as women ✌
I think that's just cause your a woman. They all sound like men to me. Other than witches who I think are assumed to be female given the name.
its a sound...in a game...about blocks. there isnt some "SeCrEtE StrAiGht mAlE AgeNdA" its a game about blocks and they chose that for the sound. look at cows and ANY animal in the game. they are all male and female. they can all breed and 2 cows can give milk and then breed, why? i dunno cause its a block game about creativity and not how the game is sexist over a singular pixel.
@@raginggecko8963 why are you so angry? nobody even brought anything like that up, are you good?
villagers and illagers don't sound like women bro
@@TheQWERTYkeyboard if a villager is struck by lightning it always turns into a female witch which means all villagers are female duh
If you check out Minecraft Dungeons, all of the characters use the 3 pixel arms. Seeing that Alex's design was based on Jens(a slim man), the intention may not have been to create a "female model". It's an added layer of customization. I think the 3 pixel arms are a better design because the arms are distinct from the legs. I always choose the 3 pixel arms
Side note: Your video is well made. I get the impression that you genuinely care about this topic. Keep going
My assignment was on a time limit otherwise I would have brought up Dungeons AND Storymode, which both change the body models again! And they have more characters besides Alex and Steve, which is something I would love to talk about sometime. Thank you for the kind words!
@@PrinceOfCloudCity wow an excuse better than the ones made in your video
@@PrinceOfCloudCity Minecraft has 9 skins
I'm not sure if "sexism" is the right word here. More just gender stereotypes. I'm transfem, and I adore Alex, whether with or without the extra pixel
This is one of those moments where the word "sexism" carries such heavy connotations that it can be hard to bring people into the nuance of it, because I totally hear your point. Similar to talks about transphobia or homophobia, how the words are SUPER weighted and so it can be hard to talk to cishet people about microaggressions or things that are small but still "othering". I would consider this sexism BECAUSE of the tie to gender stereotypes - but it's so small that it can fly under the radar to most, and it obviously upsets people to bring it up (see other comments lol)
Also transfem, and I also like Alex.
I do feel the genderedness of the slim and wide models but only with my own character. Mostly when using a more Human looking/gendered skin.
But not with other players.
Didn’t even account for my older brother using the slim model gender wise until this video. The skin is a masculine one.
Dreams skin is skinny, was he trying to look feminine? No! This is a very odd way to put it.
This is so bad, it genuinely makes me angry. God you people are brainwashed. Please touch some grass.
Hi, Vincent! I see you're subscribed to some very cool feminist creators like The Cozy Creative and Quinton Reviews. Maybe, if you're so offended by "wokeness", you should look inwards at the wokeness you carry every day! Thank you for your view.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity why do you check people's pages and watch who they're subscribed to and then make assumptions based on that
I think it's a little bit creepy
Favorite comment from the bunch tbh
Of course people are gonna think and doubt with updates / changes. But if we're talking about 'awareness' it should not lead to us for even thinking Minecraft is sexist. You're mostly judging biology and Minecraft isn't even that great of an example. COD / Barbie/pony games are. Games are most of the times great when they remove themself of the movements or politics because developers kind of already know it's gonna be a black hole.
In the scale of it all kind makes you victimize yourself, especially about your talk from 12:39 and you talk about your own assumptions instead of what is meant. Overanalyzing that 1 pixel is ofc more important than Alex being a gender neutral name, and since I'm focusing: You tend to rather judge with your own facts, foundings and thoughts instead of researching intention and reasons that could made this whole article go somewhere else, yet it didn't.
I've heard many analogies, theories and 'monologue discussions' this one added something new and interesting, but it still kind of dramafies it in the wrong way..
4:45 these ideas are so goofy.They problem wont solve itself if you make games designed only for "girls" it wont solve the problem like at all you are only creating the same thing you are complaining about.Instead people should make gender neutral games just like minecraft which isint sexist, just design for smaller audiances.
Nowhere did I say to make games just for girls. I'm actually pointing out that this mentality is the problem. You might want to rewatch the video.
This video finally explains exactly why I felt “othered” the moment they announced a tiny girl alternative. As a young girl, it was so LOUD how I was already unwelcome in the spaces I occupied, so being separated in such a minor yet telling way was heartbreaking for my little brain to comprehend. A lot of the people disagreeing have benefited from the addition in some way, excited that they were able to “other” more people, or born masc people who are excited to be feminine, and that’s great, but that doesn’t excuse the quiet damage the initial change caused for so much of the player base. Of course good can come from a bad thing, but so much more bad came from it than good. It’s embarrassing to see how excited people are to exclude others, it really punctuated this videos thesis.
ok that's fair
I still disagree with a few points, I think more good came from it than bad personally, but apart from that you have a very valid feeling that can't be disputed in my opinion
I always viewed Alex as non-binary from the start. It felt like they added a skin that could be male could be female. This matters to me because it never makes me look at the arms of a minecraft skin and let's me think girl/boy but just frail adsmall vs. strong and wide. And this comes from sb who in this moment can't think of any other video game character that exuded a strong ambience of nonbinary identity
It’s cool you saw her like that! As a trans person, I totally understand how us as non-cis people use identification and projection onto characters to feel seen and heard.
It’s also important to remember though that our personal perceptions don’t change the core intent - which sadly, here, was the act of “othering” cis women.
"How do I make this about me?"
THE LIKE TO COMMENT RATIO IS INSANE
I think a lot of comments are missing the point, saying things like “its just one pixel” or “it’s not that important”
It’s the fact one pixel can have such an impact on our thinking and actions. It is so easy for us to fall into divisive gendered thinking. We should always strive to be more self aware of our thoughts and actions.
it doesn't have an impact on anyone's actions??? Just cuz a couple of people got offended that there is a skin type with arms 1 pixel thinner than the default one doesn't mean the entire playerbase cares about it. Look at Grian, he has a male skin, is very masculine and uses the thinner skin type.
@@reinbew62 she quite literally proved that it kinda does.
@@e-miner-man its a pixel it has about as much of an impact of a ant getting food to its queen
The pixel doesn't have anything to do with gender, I have always thought of it as just having more options for making a skin. I feel like she just made this video so she could get this title and thus views and comments.
@LarryDeskPlant Did you even watch and listen to the video?
RUclips just recommended me this video of Minecraft being sexist yea I’m done. 💀
Minecraft is a sandbox game... You can LITERALLY be anything, make a custom skin. Make a skin of YOU, its LITERALLY a sandbox.
Of all the games "made for men" this is one of them that women play very often on.
8:20 Not everyone wants to be super buff? Once again its a sandbox game, if you wanted you can make an alex skin WITH the classic skin type.
8:56 Correction, there is a "slim" body type and a "classic/wide" body type. ALSO if you go on skinmc and look at trending skins. MOST of them are either: 3 pixel women skins OR 3 pixel men skins (with santa hats)
Also for the rest of the video let me just say this "There are large variations of size among humans but in all populations, _men are larger on average than women._ "
12:00 This picture... LITERALLY IS A 4 PIXEL ALEX SKIN-
Anyway I hope you got an A+ since this is actually well made.
...
BUT WHY WAS THAT THE TITLE-
@@AntiSkeppyClone it was the title on purpose because the comments are proving my points about misogyny in gaming in real time lmao. The comment section is a part of the research essay. And it worked very well apparently, because a man found my Instagram from this video and sent me a death threat so
@@PrinceOfCloudCitythat fuckin sucks, I’m sorry to hear that and who ever did that sucks.
I still think the video is a little rough when I come to your points though. When you said at the end it was for a research project for school it made more sense because the connections between the book and the game in your script felt somewhat forced and only focused on that one source.
My advice to you is when making an argumentative essay you need to have opposing sources to help make your point stronger when you dismantle them.
It makes your arguments feel less dynamic and convincing which I’m sure your professor will point out
Also the research felt really shallow. Just a quick google search and you can see more example of female default skins that use the wider build like the Ari skin and men like Sunny have the slim model.
I feel like if you want to argue that even though these exist the fact the Alex and Steve are different and they are they poster characters it still pushes this idea, then yeah better argument, but again when you hyper focus on one point you miss the chance to make you argument dynamic like this
Anyway hope you get a good grade regardless and fuck that guy who threaten you
@PrinceOfCloudCity while I dissagre with your points sending death threats is not cool
wow… this speaks a LOT ! i mean, what you said is inevitably true… and as a person suffering from dysphoria it does even more to me… like… i mean, i already realized this pixel and it always shocked me, like how a block game can add gender stereotypes is horrifying… even when i was younger, i initially took the « one pixel less body type » without a care in the world, but when i realized how sexist it just blew my mind… (now i just use a red and gray faceless and genderless skin with the thin body type, but i’m showing how i do not care about the meaning of it even though being transfem, mostly because i always played with three pixel arms as a habit and it won’t change… but i mostly see it as a « weapon » to fight against this mojang decision by wearing it with mods installed, and in older versions, which makes it bug. it could sound meaningless but it litteraly shows how mojang did a bad job at it and i am not quitting this habit.) (i know i’ve gotten a little far with this, but anyway… i know that when i explain things it feels none sense and i might get missunderstood in this comment. but i had to say that you are goddamn right)
idk, i much prefer the slim model and always have since it's release, even when playing hypixel or (java) hive most people i see use it, whether their skin is supposed to represent a male or female character, and it's been like this for a few years now
generally the skins I see on the old, wider model are non-human
i make skins and for most designs i would use the slim model
My gender is somewhere between non-binary and female, sometimes I feel more female and sometimes I feel more non-binary. And wearing a slim skin literally makes me feel dysphoric despite being born a woman and being small in size, it doesn’t matter which way my gender swings.
And I’ve read a lot of comments that I can only assume are written by men trying to argue how wrong you are, despite you saying that this is literally for a class assignment.
My personal stance is that the addition of the slim skin is kinda sexist, but not as sexist as people seem to be arguing in the comments. I also don’t believe Mojang is even the main problem, the community is, they are the ones who make the custom skins. Mojang may have been the ones to add the slim skin, but the community are the ones who twisted something well intentioned but perhaps slightly sexist into a barrier of femininity is represented by the slim skin and masculinity is represented by the wide skin.
Before any men comment on this, if you want to DISCUSS my take with me, go ahead.
But if you are just going to just ARGUE with me, I’m going to make this as clear as I can. I was born and raised a woman. If you still think you know more sexism than me, you are sexist. (Those who have studied sexism probably know more than me, but those that try and argue rather than discuss are not real researchers and therefore their opinion is invalid)
this comment is proof that genuine left wing extremist ideology and parody of left wing extremist ideology is often nearly indistinguishable. Same thing with this video honestly, I cant tell if its rage bait or genuine.
I think saying "it's the community" is a little reductive. The devs are (in part) responsible for the community and they should be considering how everyone will react to their decisions.
telling your doc that you use a anime boys skin in the maid outfit is bold
Wanting my masters so bad that I’m willing to expose my femboy gaming habits
it is, a singular pixel. its not that deep. taking 1 pixel from a skin isn't sexist, its removing a pixel from a skin and nothing more. and if u want a woman skin that isn't slim just use Steve body type. it isn't that hard. and if people are getting offended by a pixel I am scared for us as a species. they added it as a extra layer of creativity. if you look at the actual gameplay animals villagers and anything in the game doesn't have a gender. all cows give milk and all cows can breed with one and other. it is just extra creativity for skins. there is no agenda there is not sexism. its a pixel get over it.
1:46 How the heck did you figure that out?? Even if we restrict ourselves to only the most popular games for some reason, the results will be heavily skewed towards genres that have more playable characters. So hero shooters, fighting games, and gacha games. In what world do 'able-bodied cishet white men' come out the majority here? For many characters the answers to questions like race or sexuality will be "N/A". And what about customizable characters, are they just not being counted at all?
2:12 I like to think video games are made for everyone. Restricting yourself to only ones with main characters that are exactly like you in every way is just weird.
5:34 I don't think of Alex as necessarily a girl, and I'm sure lots of other people do too. The only thing I associate with the Alex skin is "Oh, this person is new and hasn't made their own skin yet." Heck, Steve is much more of a boy than Alex is a girl.
7:39 The skin's one pixel thinner, so therefore... Alex is female? That's a strange assumption to make about people, much less a genderless Minecraft skin. The thinner arm model exists to give the players more options when making skins--if you only associate thinner arms with femininity that's your problem. There's a version of Steve with thin arms and a version of Alex with thick arms, and both can be switched to right this instant on the Minecraft launcher.
11:05 "Probably might not be"? What kind of weasel words are these..? It sounds like downplaying your own downplaying.
12:23 No they aren't? I'll use my niche interest in linguistics to offer one counterexample. Linguists can confidently reconstruct the lexicon and grammars of ancient proto-languages by comparing their descendant tongues. English, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and plenty others go back to one called Proto Indo-European (circa 3500-4000 BCE). By looking at what words these ancient speakers had we can tell a lot about their culture; one thing being a clear patriarchy evident in the language. The word for 'husband' was literally 'master of the house', the root meaning 'wed' also meant 'lead away' (suggesting women would've left to join another family), and 'father' comes from a root meaning 'to protect'. This was all fundamental vocabulary, and it would've been entrenched way before anything even like capitalism was known to these people. (Let's go, my linguistics nerdiness was useful for once!)
I want to know why you are assuming that *I* have assigned Alex as female for having one pixel less when it is the developers, who added Alex, who I quoted in the video, that are explicitly saying that Alex was added as a female alternative to Steve? They gave Alex the gender AND took away the pixel.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity You keep saying that the devs are explicitly saying that added was added as a female alternative
which... no ? Even the thing you quoted only says "Steve doesn't represent the diversity of our player base"
how is that explicitly saying that alex is a female alternative ?
As a girl Minecraft is not sexist at all
I don't want to stirr up drama here, I'm sure the comment section is gonna be a war zone as is.
But we can all acknowledge that there are biological differences between male and female bodies. Regardless of what gender identity you combine them with. And I hold the believe that you should be proud of those differences, regardless of which biological body you own. We as humans can celebrate those differences if we choose to do so. They all have different advantages and disadvantages. And continueing this train of thought, it is just a fact of our reality that biological men have broader shoulders on average. That is one of those differences, and it's the one they decided to put in the game. Full stop. Literally no strings attached.
Any additional notions of "weakness", "delicateness", "expected to not take up space" are projected on to it by you with an explicit but unwarranted negative connotation. One can easily turn these around and make statements like "Men are expected to be always strong, crude and take up too much space." with the exact same negative connotation.
You are in this sense no better than the kids you overheard in minecraft servers making fun of people using the "wrong" skin for their model. It's just projecting stereotypes onto something that is inherintly just normal.
I am a trans man. I am married to a trans man. All my friends are transgender. I’ve seen biological gender changed, rearranged, turned on its head and made all brand new - these features that you mention are deeply trivial.
And even outside of that, I know cis women taller and broader than my own cis man father. I know cis woman beefier and wider than my uncles and cousins will ever be.
To argue that it’s natural for women to look like Alex instead of Steve is kind of exactly the energy I’m trying combat with this video.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity theres a thing called minorities. a minority of women are tall so of course theyll pick the majority over minority.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity Obviously you can find many individual exception where cis men are smaller and more slim than specific cis women. Thats why I was explicitly talking about averages.
Because for hundreds of million humans this will simply not be the case. And I think being able to embrace those difference, which are anything but trivial, and finding strength in them is very important. The same thing goes for beefy women or scrawny men. It goes both ways and really has nothing to do with gender entirely.
I hope you realize that being able to transform your own body to the point of completely reversing your biological gender in certain aspects comes from a place of massive privilege. For the majority of people on this planet, this is simply not an option they have the means or the access to.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity
It is on true that on average men are indeed larger and stronger than women. It's not saying there's never deviations from this. It's just on average
@@PrinceOfCloudCity but doesn't testosterone develop bigger muscles than estrogen generally speaking ?
I agree there definitely are big women and small men out there but I'd say the average man could beat the average woman in an arms wrestle
I would like to explain why this argument doesnt really work. Since 2022, we have gotten 7 more default character skins. Some female, some male. There are female characters with wide arms, and male characters with skinny arms. So the whole "they made female skins dantier" is kind of invalid. To give you credit, there was a long period of time where alex was the only female skin, and there was definitely some division there. But with the addition of these new characters, you get to see that its not a matter of gender, but a matter of body type that suits the character design itself. Gender may have been the original reason the skinny body type was made, but its not representative of female characters specifically, and definitely not required for them either.
I see that Minecraft comunity is going through the same process the tf2 comunity went through
We don't know what to make videos about anymore
I would definitely not consider myself in "the Minecraft community" since this is a video for my degree program lol
and then the left will ask why gen-z moved even further right next election
If this twelve minute school assignment moves you to the right, then you have no backbone
I feel like this is digging a little too deep into something that probably doesn't really matter that much? the "good games" are such because of the fact that they have a number of elements to them that declare them as "good games". The other games you compared to them are brand named (Like the Hello Kitty ones, which is intended for a young audience, and as such won't be as developed as Stardew) or are just made in a way that's not as enticing. I am not cishet, yet I still enjoy the games that you would deem as "cishet games". There are some design choices that I myself don't really like, but the games I play don't really put a crazy emphasis on it if it's even there because the game is about the gameplay, which is what I'm actually playing for. I enjoy OTXO because it's pretty fast paced. I enjoy ULTRAKILL because it's fast paced with a lot of tech. I enjoy Rain World because it has a lot of tech to it. It really is just a matter of personal preference as to what games you play. Games aren't really sexist unless they have an actual underlying tone of it. Some simple design choices such as a slimmer character frame doesn't really say that whatsoever. Not to mention, once custom skins became a thing, the intent was that Steve would be replaced for your own skin and, as such, all the default skins were never intended to be widely used, which also makes the argument rather obsolete.
I feel like gender doesn't really play a role in gaming. The reason some fields may be less desirable for someone is either preference, or the people who already are there. Gender doesn't really have an inherent impact on it whatsoever. Someone will enjoy playing cozy games that they can just relax and farm with, while someone else will want to go on a power trip, it's all a matter of taste. While gender may have some role to it, it's not really the developers choice of audience, as triple A just makes something that has already been proven to make sales, and indie will either try to make something fun for them (these are always a blast to find) or something that'll hopefully sell well (it almost always fails). i'm pretty sure the inherent "boys field" of gaming comes from the fact that when gaming first became prominent, women weren't really respected enough to be "allowed in the field", which is stupid since it was women who were working on the first computers.
Okay, I've probably detracted from my argument with the rambling, but point it that gaming isn't necessarily gendered like you claim it to be. It's all a matter of taste, you just need to find the flavour you enjoy the most. The "good games" are declared as such because they were made well and are actually deserving of the title, or are just widely known enough that plenty of people play and enjoy it to grant it the title by the general gaming space. Gender doesn't have anything to do with the actual good games, because a good game is good because of the core content itself, not these pretty obsolete "I'm looking too much into this thing that doesn't matter" details.
Side note: good luck with the grade
Hello Kitty Island Adventure actually won Best App Game of the Year at the 2023 Game Awards and is moving onto the Switch because of its huge boom in popularity with people ages 18-30. So actually it is a very good game that gets an unfair gender bias, like you just displayed in your comment.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity I understand how you could miss my argument with this part, my whole comment was a rather confusing mess. So let me make myself clear, what I meant with that part is that whenever a company makes a brand of media, if they try to branch it out into other forms, they often do it very poorly, and will end up just making another game with a skin of their IP. They also often end up losing the thing that made their IP so appealing in that initial market as well, resulting in an even less appealing end product. You can see this in franchises like Bakugan or Beyblade, where they made video games that happened to fall off rather quick due to the main appeal being the novelty of it being a video game. They didn't translate their franchise over very well, and the games they had made trying to branch out suffered because of it. Pacman did this as well with a show that was ultimately pretty meh. The original games are classic, albeit a bit too simple to be of much value today other than the novelty of it, but they didn't have a proper framework to make the show off of, and it ended up suffering because of it. I assumed that, because Hello Kitty became so widely known for it's show, it would have followed the same fate as these other companies that tried to adapt into a game format. Maybe Hello Kitty was just the perfect franchise to translate into a cozy game like Animal Crossing, or maybe they just got lucky with how it played out, I don't know. I made the assumption because of the record list of many larger franchises failing as much as they did, and accounting for the fact I never even heard of this anywhere at all, I assumed it had a very similar fate. Gender had nothing to do with the assumption, which I had tried to imply with "The other games you compared to them are brand named".
Another thing that had me assume this is that the franchise was initially marketed towards a young demographic, which happens to not work out too well for the longevity of that IP, as the initial audience grows up and pays attention to the more mature and fleshed out content of other pieces of media, and the newer audience that it would appeal to are more interested in something much newer. This part I implied with "which is intended for a young audience, and as such won't be as developed as Stardew".
Again, I don't blame you for missing these, as I wasn't very clear with presenting my argument, but I never had any gender bias in my argument at all. Please do not project on me because we disagree.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity where did darkprism ever display an unfair gender bias towards the hello kitty game ? all they said is it's directed at a younger audience
What I’m failing to see is why it’s wrong to add a female character to any game. Minecraft isn’t the right example for what you’re going for, but seriously, I think women would be happy to have female options? I mean I get feminists get mad when anything boy is even referenced, but come on, Minecraft was made WAY before feminism was so huge and was made by two dudes. The fact that they did add diversity just shows how they are NOT sexist.
Holy cringe
Ok so, I believe a lot of issues, e.g. kids bullying each other over gendered models, come from perception of gender that got tacked onto the size of the model rather than the reverse. I do not believe a slimmer body implies weakness, it does imply bio women are smaller, which can be argued for, but I do not believe it implies weakness or inferiority. Simply having different body sizes is great, but the fact that the burden of gender, and therefore societal opinions, happened to come with it, has caused classic misogony to carry over. Still, glad to see people learning to debate. I believe a possible solution would be to add more body sizes and assign different "core characters" to said body sizes, maing a man short, a woman tall, ect. to undo any intentional gendered design by Mojang. Ay problems from thereon out would be due to players projecting.
(If it's relevant, Biological man, agender)
An actual productive and engaging comment on RUclips is rare to find and I am grateful for yours. I also 100% agree about the different body models, especially now that Minecraft has a core cast thanks to Minecraft Story Mode. There's a lot of fun stuff that can be done with avatar meshes in the blocky style and Mojang should lean into it more.
While definitely not a complete fix on Bedrock you can choose from 4 different heights. The default, two short ones and a tall model. Tho that starts bringing character creator which is a different system to skins.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity minecraft bedrock edition has all kinds of different player models and sizes, but they don't want to change anything but the arms in java edition so the hitbox stays the same (arms have no hitbox)
I watched the whole vid but i'm still very confused... Good title eye-grabbing title i guess?
THE TITLE WORKED! I hope you get a good grade, this was a great video (good grade or not)
I think it's crazy people do not see your point because it is weird to slim down the "female" character
THE TITLE DEFINITELY WORKED LMAO
I get where you're going with this. There's plenty of different brands that added a "female version" of things that felt very uncomfortable and that I personally could not support. However, I feel Minecraft wasn't intending for the sexism. Yeah they chose to be the Alex design, but they don't advertise the model as the Alex model. At least not anymore. Now the models are wide and thin. And at least in pocket edition and possibly other bedrock games, you can also choose the height of the character. I use these combinations to make plenty of varying body type of male or neutral characters because that's what I prefer to play as. I have an extremely tall orc with thin arms who has more androgynous feel, but I picture him as male. A tiny gremlin with Viking braid and muscles for days with the wide option and I pictured them with neutral terminology preferred. I have a thin arm, armed, average height, male character, who looks ready to just lounge on the couch with his dark green skin dappled light from the window that he uses as light to read a book. I even have a literal sentient Haybale/scarecrow who, despite his size in fact he's made of hay looks like he's ready to fight whatever monsters come into his fields and will definitely win. Whether the models were initially intended to be used as female or male designs is no longer the case. Fans have taken it to be whether or not you want a character to have thinner or thicker arms. If you want another example of this, I will go into you to an old let's play hard-core series I was watching of Fwips (hopefully I've spelled that name right.)there is a point in one of his series is where he actually debates whether he should go with the thin model or the wide model. he even states that he prefers the thin model with his current player skin. His player skin being a bushy beard redhead in a hoodie. He wasn't seeing it as gendered, but as a choice in variation.
Hopefully my talk to text message makes sense. I also hope this message doesn't discourage you from continuing to Delvin to topics like this because there are plenty of examples of Companies making questionably to outright sexist design choices. Wishing you the best in your grades.
Just because Alex's Arms are slim doesn't directly mean that Alex is a girl. Like, I'm a twink irl and as thin as a pretzel stick, that doesn't make me a girl. I actually don't identify with any gender really, despite being physically masculine. Oh yeah also the billions of minecraft skins made every day that can be seen as a girl, even then those skins use normal arms instead of the slim ones but whateves..
Alex is promoted as the original "girl" in Minecraft. They debuted the model WITH Alex. I'm not the one assigning the slim body to the girl avatar - that was literally Mojang, as stated in the video.
I mean fair enough, but the option in the character creator is "narrow" not "girl". Why'd you respond to me though? I have a similar argument to everyone else?.
@ I can’t respond to everyone because I have over 200 comments so responding to one person hopefully responds to everyone by proxy. If you didn’t want me to respond then why did you comment?
@ I'm just a little surprised I guess. No one's ever really responded to me on yt before
@@PrinceOfCloudCity so what about what mineblox just said, what do you have to say about the fact that alex has never been called a girl once by mojang and that the skin name is "slim" (or "narrow") and not "girl" ? 🎤
as a kid I thought alex was also a guy who was just skinnier than steve
could very well be the case, Alex's gender was never said by mojang explicitly (despite what the video says)
Yeah, I always thought it was weird that Alex's arms were thinner. I think I used to play as Alex sometimes, but I didn't like the arms being thinner. It just looked wrong to me because the square end shape of Steve's model seemed more in line with minecraft's art style to me. Maybe minecraft should just add a version of Alex with the thicker arms, and Steve with thinner ones, so that players have a bit more choice
They do, it’s a selection tool in the skin creator
I know I can trust the source when their name is a game
Tbh as a trans girl, i still disagree tbh, also i didn even notice tbh till you mentioned, my perspective however is that, for 1 it doesn matter, an for 2, atleast for alot of trans girls like me, but im sure cis girls too, we still wanna go for the skinnier more danty stuff (again its not noticeable but if it were), in a way, games are a escape from reality, great video tho -v-
I mean, you kind of prove my point by personally even saying you prefer the body that looks "feminine" to you.
@@PrinceOfCloudCity but is that a bad thing ? doesn't it bring more good to the table than bad in the grand scheme of things if in the end more people can feel represented by the game ?
You have good points, but now the question is how would make a game that is centered around a female audience. You make many cases the world of gaming is male centric and it's inherently ingrained into the market. If this is a problem how do we fix it? How do we make the gaming landscape more gender-neutral?
In 2022, women made up 48% of game sales and return subscription gamers. The reality is that women don’t need “girl games”, just as men don’t need hypermasculine coddling. I would argue the latter is more of our current problem, as it encourages the industry’s standards. The goal in an ideal world would be to remove the idea of designed identity completely from the equation. I want a future where men playing Infinity Nikki is as common as women playing Black Ops and that the developers would allow room for that.
@PrinceOfCloudCity Good answer and also good luck on majors!
I was a child when this update was made to minecraft, and I’ll admit I always felt the same way about it! I feel like people being flippant about most likely lack the lived experiences you shared earlier in the video. If there is an issue to be tackled here at all, it isn’t (just) the sexism in the models, but how it invites people to interact with each other, like the children you mentioned criticizing people for using the wrong model type. Maybe if it hadn’t have been introduced alongside a new default skin that was meant to be more feminine, it wouldn’t have the same effect, but who knows.
I hope you get a good grade on this assignment! (also, excellent use of clickbait)
I loved this video :) As a female person who started playing minecraft after Alex was added, I always felt like I was *supposed* to pick Alex, and that picking Steve was somehow the "boy skin." When looking up skins online and making my own, the pastel feminine skins were always on the slender model, which generally *only* had the "girly" skins. And although this may not have been minecraft's intention, it's the culture that's been created because of the it. Another interesting point is that the seperation of these two body types removes the possibility of a true non-binary option, as a skin that looks gender-neutral is more likely to be percieved as male on the Steve build, and female on the Alex build.
Thoroughly enjoyed this essay! Ignore the pointless hate comments, I don't think they watched the whole video 🙃 You can love a game and still acknowledge something is wrong. I hope you get a good grade!!
great comment, but I think the fact that you were supposed to pick alex isn't Minecraft's fault
that's more of a social construction that made you think that way, but Minecraft never pushed anyone to use either skin
I don't really think it's a problem, i haven't seen anyone else complain about it and it seems such a minor thing to me..
i have a lot of problems with this and im only 2 minutes in 1. you talk about how white men are the usual protags of games and then show an image of steve who is dark skinned, sure he may not be fully brown or black but he is in no way white 2. "male" the last of us, resident evil, assassins creed, tomb raider, portal, half life, metroid and celeste. all these games have (at some point in their trilogies) had a female protagonist. i will still take the benefit of the doubt since im only 2 minutes in that there is probably a good reason to counter this argument however
I remember as a kid that I was so irate about them adding a "woman" body type and breaking their own math just to make her daintier that I refused to even acknowledge it existed for years and just kept using the classic model haha. Nowadays I use the slim model just because I do kinda like how it looks, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who was initially bugged by it and maybe even felt the tiniest bit othered! Maybe if Alex was just introduced as a skin option instead of a model change, I personally would have received it better? Or if the slim model was introduced as just a character design option instead of a gender?
On one hand, I wish the people being dismissive here would open their mind to the discussion. Because yeah, it's not a big deal or anything. But isn't it interesting? Isn't it fascinating how the world around us affects our art and media? Minecraft wasn't created in a vacuum, it didn't pop up out of nowhere. Isn't it fun to dissect and analyze why certain decisions were made? And how we can improve those ideas in the future? On the other hand, though, it goes to show the validity of your "experiment" at the end. People saw the word "sexist" and IMMEDIATELY got defensive. They saw it as a bad word and an insult instead of opening a discussion and an opportunity to learn and improve. And that reaction, in and of itself, is fascinating too.
Regardless, very interesting video and topic! I think I could discuss it for ages tbh :D Hope it gets a good grade!
"It's not a big deal, but isn't it interesting?" EXACTLY!! That's what essays are for!!!! And people don't want to admit it but they saw the title and clicked on this video for a reason, either to hear an interesting argument about minecraft... or to get angry at. I'm pretty sure anyone who got angry from the title probably refused to pay much attention to the video.
I think mojang did a great job at adding the slim skin, as making a slimmer steve would have been kind of weird (even though they did end up doing that) and adding a very feminine protagonist would also have been out of the blue. Alex brought a gender neutral character to a game that didn't have one (Steve clearly looks like a man and I believe saying he's gender neutral is personal bias, especially if you say that steve has no gender but villagers do)
leftist nonsense
"leftist nonsense" and it's a basic sociology assignment
I don't know if it's fully true but Alex is also bases off of Jeb, who doesn't have the largest arms
i have never heard people calling the smaller body as feminine, i have never seen the smaller body as feminine, for me the smaller arms made more interesting ways to make skins, in my opinion the feminine skin can be the big one and the small one, and when mojang announced more default skins i was actually kinda disappointed that they didnt use the opportunity to make more body types, tho kids bullying each other for the wrong gender skin, i thing is a american thing idk why but america is so focused on gender, here in the ex-ussr we dont have such a gender war.
Very well said. I play a lot of older games myself, and I've definitely noticed that I wasn't the intended audience there. Luckily, this is getting less pronounced now than logs that read "[player] killed himself." For a while, and within a lot of modded games I see, the options for armor, clothing, or skins consist of 'normal' and 'female.' When something is meant for women, it's labeled as such, and if it's for men, it's not labeled, because maleness is normal. What Minecraft did here was construct a category of 'female' by distinguishing it from the 'normal,' and not change the (now male-coded) 'normal' at all. And as you lay out, there are also specific problems in that the way they differentiate gender is slimmer arms. I hope you get a good grade!