Girlcraft, the Kickstarter that stalled (and thank goodness)

Recently, one of the other women on the NYMGamer team shared a link to a Kickstarter for “Girlcraft,” a proposal for a Minecraft knockoff branded for girls. Same ideas, just pink and purple and full of fairies and rainbows. My heart sank as I read the description, but it didn’t matter in the end — the attempt is like a master class in what not to do on Kickstarter: no real plan, no details, and no need for the project. After all, there are plenty of mods that allow players to turn Minecraft into anything they’d like. There are already fairies galore (and mods branded Girlcraft!), and players don’t even have to resort to a lesser game to get there.

But that doesn’t mean the idea of giving girls their own branded entry point is going to go away simply because this particular Kickstarter is a nonstarter. Thanks to Lego Friends, Nerf Rebelle, and even products like GoldieBlox, girls get versions of toys, activities, and ideas just for them. This is good, right? This is how we’ll break down those lines between gendered toys and get girls to slowly move into boy-occupied spaces, right? Or instead, by handing girls special toys, are we simply telling them to stay separate? Why venture past “your” aisles in the toy store when you have weapons just for you right here?

To piggyback on some of what Dr. B was writing about yesterday, I am concerned about what this means for girls as they grow up. What seems inclusive, or an effort to be inclusive, seems the opposite to me, because what happens when kids are in math class and there’s not a special purple book? When they’re doing experiments and the beakers aren’t glittery and sized especially for delicate lady hands? Once we strip away the trappings that make math and science more fun for younger children, will they begin to resemble those other aisles in the toy store, the ones that aren’t an explosion of pink and tulle? It’s no surprise, then, that girls gravitate toward classes like English, where that extra coat of glitter on a poster is appreciated (and maybe even required).

I was just discussing something similar with some parent-friends, in fact, in regard to their sons, who are in junior high and high school. These boys had been penalized on projects for some classes because their presentation wasn’t creative enough. Items weren’t painted or colored or decorated in any way — things we often train girls to do from birth, but not boys. This further reinforces a split I see when students arrive in my classes, in college: boys say they want things straightforward and no-frills (logical, of course), and girls are given the task of organizing, decorating, writing, and editing. But these ideas don’t often mesh with actual student strengths. Just their cultural training.

By not focusing on children, and students, as individuals with particular strengths, and in not allowing their interests to flower freely, we are doing our children a grave disservice and not only creating but reinforcing problems that follow them to college and career choice and beyond. Just as boys should be taught creative approaches to assignments, because that can be part of taking those extra steps to impress — something young men are not always good at, in my experience teaching — girls should not be taught that their interests are specialized and different, or to the left of “regular” things. Every time I walk into a Toys R Us and see the few aisles of “girl” toys versus the rest of the store, I wonder what interests and possibilities are being crushed for girls who just don’t venture beyond “their” aisles, and that’s unsettling — moreso now that I have a daughter myself. 

Have  a daughter interested in Minecraft who wants a prettier experience? Teach her about mods and skins and extras. Don’t hand her something subpar; let her learn to remake the world in the image she wants. That’s a powerful lesson, and even if her palette is pink and purple and frilly, so what? She has learned to forge her path, and that is infinitely better than being shunted aside into a restrictive girls-only space. If we teach our girls to fight for their space instead of handing them a separate path, they will be better equipped later to fight for a seat at the boys’ table.