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I'm unsure whether this will be addressed in the upcoming Minions movie, but just wondering whether all minions are male or even gender neutral?

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There are no female minions

In an interview with TheWrap, (handily entitled "‘Minions’ Creator Pierre Coffin on Why None of His Animated Little Yellow Helpers Are Female") Pierre Coffin explains that all the Minions are indeed male (and why)

According to “Minions” creator Pierre Coffin, in fact, all the title characters in Universal’s prequel to two “Despicable Me” hits are male, voiced by male actors (including Coffin himself).

“Seeing how dumb and stupid they often are, I just couldn’t imagine Minions being girls,” Coffin told TheWrap.

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  • This "and why" isn't really an explanation to me since it's clearly tongue-in-cheek (IMO). I'd be very interested in a real reason.
    – ThePopMachine
    Jul 15, 2015 at 0:19
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    How incredibly sexist...
    – user16696
    Jul 15, 2015 at 5:49
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    (spoiler) Minions have been there since the beginning of time, and there's no evidence they reproduce at all. Does calling them "male" or "female" even make sense?
    – George T
    Jul 15, 2015 at 7:18
  • @GeorgeT - You'd need to take that up with the guy who created them
    – Valorum
    Jul 15, 2015 at 10:09
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Are there any male Minions? We are never given any indication that Minions have a gender one way or the other. While they all have male names, we have no indication (since they do not speak intelligibly) that the male-oriented names they were given by Gru or anyone else for that matter apply in any particular way.

  • In the first film, there were really only seven main and notable Minions that have names: Dave, Stuart, Kevin, Jerry, Tim, Mark and Phil.

There are multiple explanations for their existence, none more confirmed than the other.

  • Their existence as artificial beings is noted by the final schematics in the little girls' room. The image is from Universal Studios.

enter image description here

  • Minions are possibly made from humans by the Minionizer, a ray gun that turns humans into Minions, as seen inDespicable Me: Minion Mayhem at Universal Studios. This is generally considered as non-canon (or just something Gru invented for the express purpose of the ride).

  • One of the short films suggests they are made from a single strand of mutated DNA. In the latest movie, they have existed for at least 42 years before Gru, so their origins predate anything the current movies have shown so far.

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    There will be a minion movie this year and you'll see the minions following a t-rex, so they've existed long before humanity
    – Wouter
    Jun 11, 2015 at 7:52
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    @wouter or someone made a t-rex clone or robot or a Time machine.
    – user16696
    Jun 11, 2015 at 12:11
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    @cde you can see them go through the ages in the trailer :P
    – Wouter
    Jun 11, 2015 at 12:18
  • I think that absent any other information, male names is a decent indication of male gender.
    – zipquincy
    Jul 14, 2015 at 21:04
  • the schematics clearly point to non-machines: "minion creature" "eye vision impaired' "brain" "bare hands" "hairdo", etc.
    – Olivier Dulac
    Jul 14, 2015 at 21:21
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From the creator himself "Seeing how dumb and stupid they often are, I just couldn’t imagine Minions being girls." There you have it.Find out more at the link

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  • I don't see why this was dowvoted if its in a nutshell EXACTLY the same answer as the accepted one.
    – Yasskier
    Nov 12, 2015 at 20:20
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    @Yasskier - Because it's exactly the same as my answer except a week later and with less detail.
    – Valorum
    Feb 15, 2018 at 18:20

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