Off-shoot from the Sexism and Gaming thread.

Is playing a character of the opposite gender a really bad idea? I can see it being bad because participants might end up falling on cliches and stereotypes, and just being really insulting and stupid. But if people were to do that and actually see the insults and bad things, might that actually be a good thing as they learn how these bad things affect other people? Or at least become more aware of these bad things and other people?

I've been in groups with players playing characters of the opposite gender, and there wasn't a problem from anyone. Probably because it was all bit jokey, with no real attempt (that I saw) to play a female character from a female player perspective. Though the female player playing a male character seemed fine, like it would fit in a more serious situation.

But that brings up something else for me. Is it necessary or desirable to play a female character from a female player perspective?

Hey thoth

I think that playing the opposite gender is a viable option, really problem is few really do it. For many it's merely an "f" in the appropriate space on the character sheet. Others who at least try to play their female character as a female go one of two roads

* they play the character as a total slut, probably to act out some kind of fantasy or whatever.

* they play the character as a total prude, probably to avoid doing the above.

Only a few have been able to get inside the female psyche and play it honestly. And I daresay this goes both ways i.e. women playing male characters. There are differences between men and women, but mostly we are very much the same at that base human level so it is a matter of first understanding at least this much, and then being honest about it. Now, what is done when playing a female character is really a matter of what the group is trying to do, game they are playing, etc. I don't think that doing this will help too much in the understanding on the negative aspects of being a woman, really, because if it stops being fun, the player can always just stop playing. And it is doubtful that most of it will hit home, really (unless this is what the player is gunning for). Most male players will not really appreciate the idea of, say, their female character walking home at night and they think that someone is following them. It just won't register. It would have to be told to them what is happening in their mind. Add to that that most female characters created these days are either Xena/Red Sonja knockoffs or heavy-duty spellcasters (Like most male character, combat monsters or spell slingers), and the drama of the situation kind of goes poof.

It bears noting that some have stated a dislike for playing with people who play the opposite gender and have even gone so far as to suggest that such people have issues. I'd just like to go on record that if you're going to have a problem with that, you might as well have a problem with the processes of roleplaying, pretending to be someone you are not, in general.

So, I think it's a good idea. As good an idea as roleplaying in general is. And playing from a female perspective probably matter depending on what game is being run.

I attempt to play my female character as females...I've been told I pull it of well too.

I think the key is not to treat them too fundamentally different. Individual people, both men and women, can be so wildly different in demeanor that you can't really use cliche likes/dislikes to define the character's gender and have it actually work (especially in a non-USA-2002 setting). I think cultural background and experiences, and how those relate to gender, should be the biggest factor in defining the character's gender-based personality.

For example, your character comes from a culture where it's offensive for a man not to open the door for a woman. Your female character may be offended by not having the door opened for her. That bit of cultural color is going to define the character's gender more than 'female' personality characteristics. You could easily reverse the example and use it as a means to portray a character as male. Nothing about the character's intolerance is fundamentally gender defining, unless properly set against a social backdrop.

I've seen a lot of female characters played by men that are either men-with-boobs (not a value judgement on macho female characters, I mean flat/genderless characters that act just like the player) or insipid bubble headed stereotypes that don't resemble a real woman at all.

The excuse for the men-with-boobs characters usually seems to be a lack of ability to get into a female perspective. I think this is because too much effort is being put into 'getting into' some sort of wildy different non-male mind set instead of a different cultural perspective. Forgetting the nurture part of why women are different, and ascribing all the differences to nature. I still think the nature differences are there, but they shouldn't be the biggest focus. IMHO, it's not so much a sex thing, as a simple lack of empathy..some people just have trouble being other people.

As far as the stereotypes go, I don't have anything constructive to say about them. The characters are usually either virginal or slutty, and almost always stupid. I like Simy stuff, so these kinds of unrealistic charicatures annoy me (any sexist connotations aside).

In my experience women seem to be better at playing men than men seem to be at playing women...I don't know why, or if it's true, and I'd hazard a guess but this isn't the sexism thread.

I personally think it is desirable to make a character realistic in every sense, gender included. But, this may not be for everyone. Though, doing so probably won't piss off your female players, unlike the bubble headed stereotypes.

EDIT: Heh, cross posted...sorry for the duplicate points.

Playing the opposite sex is, in my opinion, the biggest hurdle in role-playing a character. As Jack said, it's very hard to do well, and many people have a fear of it. I'll admit I do: I've played a female as a player character exactly once, and the experience (with a bunch of 14-year-old boys) was kind of traumatic.

These days, I GM a lot, and so I have to play a variety of female NPCs. Jack mentioned that female characters often get typecast as one of two stereotypes: I'd go further and say that most RPG characters are stereotypes. The main problem is that male players know all of about two female stereotypes: the slut and the prudish bitch. (This may tie into their sexual fantasies, or bad experiences with women, but that tangent has no real place here.)

My solution is to stereotype all my characters, but try to branch out into all the stereotypes I can think of. Here's some short lists I came up with for male and female characters.

Male:
- The soulless brute (Jayne from Firefly)
- The grim, damaged guy who wants revenge (John McClane from Diehard, Burke from Andrew Vachss' books)
- The super-geek, very knowledgable, but socially awkward (most of us)
- The browbeat guy with no spine (Rick Moranis in many roles)
- Mr. Savoir-Faire (James Bond)
- The average joe who things keep happening to
- The explorer, who craves knowledge and kicks ass to get it (Indiana Jones)
- The thug with a heart of gold (Han Solo)

Female:
- The repressed warrior woman (Eowyn from LotR, Willow from Buffy)
- The protective mother, who'd kill for her wards (Geena Davis' character in parts of The Long Kiss Goodnight, the tavern owner's wife in too many D&D games, the main character in Strip Tease, a surprisingly good book)
- The dead-sexy ice queen (Lucy Liu in most roles)
- The airhead, who just might save the day (Kaylee from Firefly, Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels)
- The un-repressed warrior woman, who can't deal with her emotions well (Buffy herself, Molly Millions from Neuromancer)
- The promiscuous woman who craves attention (again with the Buffy references - Faith)
- The intuitive woman who saves men from wrecking everything (every one of Heinlein's females, Valentine from Ender's Game, Trillian from Hitchhiker's Guide)
- The older unsatisfied woman (John Irving's A Widow for One Year, Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate)

There's tons more, but what I do is open a random book on my shelf and just take the female protagonist and write her into the game. A lot of the above ones had to do with sex, I know, which might be considered gauche, but a lot of human experience has to do with sex.

In my current Sorcerer and Sword game, there's been two major female NPC's. One of them is definitely the repressed warrior woman - her village elders won't let her fight in the coming war, but she's determined to - and the other is the intuitive woman, who killed her own reckless father in order to save a village from destruction.

In more humorous games, I do tend to branch out into negative stereotypes: the browbeat water-mage husband and dead-sexy total bitch-muffin fire-mage wife in my last Elfs game were funny as hell, but not intended to represent reality in any (well, not many) ways.

Ah, the same discussion. I may be the first here to have a real problem with it. I've never seen it work well. Now it's not just my inablility to roleplay such a person correctly, it's also because of some of the philosophy that I use with RPGs. Now-

I don't give a hampster's ass (such as Mr. Chubbicans from our first campaign) whether or not your an actor, a writer, a Role-player, or even a CRPG or CCG player, because all of them put a little of themselves into the characters they play. This needs to be true for me to continue in any of these fields. I simply think that the male and female mindset is very different. I also think that every one's mindset is different. It's just that evidence compells me to think that male/female thought procecces are funamenally different from a physiology of the brain point of view.

Example: Look at modern plays (meaning any that are performed today. I'm looking at contemporary styles which means that Greece and Romeo & Julet are equally applicable). Nearly the only time that people take upon different genders is for comedy. Now don't give me that "it's more convenient from a design standpoint" crap. Say they're looking for the roles of umm, Frodo Baggins. You either half to admit that males are adept to playing male rolls or you have to say that the special effects weren't good enough to cover the actors gender. The example is an oversimplification, but it does (I hope) bring an interesting point.

I'm not saying that the taking on of another character is fundamentally wrong, but it has relativelley little advantage over playing a same-role character when you compare it's hazzardous application.

Hello, Eric

Pyron wrote: I don't give a hampster's ass (such as Mr. Chubbicans from our first campaign) whether or not your an actor, a writer, a Role-player, or even a CRPG or CCG player, because all of them put a little of themselves into the characters they play. This needs to be true for me to continue in any of these fields.

It's just that evidence compells me to think that male/female thought procecces are funamenally different from a physiology of the brain point of view.

Example: Look at modern plays (meaning any that are performed today. I'm looking at contemporary styles which means that Greece and Romeo & Julet are equally applicable). Nearly the only time that people take upon different genders is for comedy. Now don't give me that "it's more convenient from a design standpoint" crap. Say they're looking for the roles of umm, Frodo Baggins. You either half to admit that males are adept to playing male rolls or you have to say that the special effects weren't good enough to cover the actors gender. The example is an oversimplification, but it does (I hope) bring an interesting point.

I'd like to once more point at "SAVING THROW FOR HALF COOTIES" ( www.tasteslikephoenix.com/articles/women.html ) and the essays on http://www.geocities.com/poetess47/oocindex.html

which provide a lot of points on the issue that could be discussed.

Hi there,

Oliver (Irmo), that's a great link - thanks!

Here's an older Forge thread which batted the topic around a little too: Suspension of reality and playing odd characters. Before anyone gets all bent out of shape about it, realize that it led to some re-framing of lots of people's starting notions.

Best,
Ron

Clinton,

I think you've got something with the stereotype thing. Thinking about it, I usually start both PCs and NPCs I run with a stereotype, and then branch out in different directions, exploring avenues for greater depth. I start with a stereotype as a template, and then think, "How can I amke this character more?"

Where this comes back to topic is the idea of taking an opposite-gendered character, starting with a steroetype one holds, and looking for character bits which would subvert the stereotype.

Lon

The first RPG PC I ever played was female; I had been running game for a few months before I had that opportunity to play. In the original group, the other guys never played cross-gender, and only one girl played a male as a primary character (although another picked up an NPC as a second player character and did well with it).

I've written a lot of this elsewhere, but can't put my finger on it right now, so I'll write some of it again.

Several years before I'd heard of role playing I was in an undergrad course on creative writing. The class was predominantly female (fourteen to two, I believe) and the professor a woman. We had regular assignments to do particular fragments of story, such as creating a setting or describing something.

One of those assignments, well into the course, was to do what is called an internal character sketch. In literature, you're supposed to establish an maintain a perspective, that point of view from which the story is told; if it changes too abruptly, the reader can be shocked out of his immersion. One possible perspective is to see the world from the viewpoint of one character (not necessarily in the first person, as third person works quite well in this viewpoint). Present the story, the setting, the nature of the character, all from the way that character experiences and evaluates it. The Internal Character Sketch is an exercise in conveying who a character is by presenting the character from the inside, how they see the world and react to it, their thoughts and feelings.

Well, I wanted to do someone who was not I; and I'd been married for about a year, so had spent a lot of time with my wife. I attempted to model my sketch on how I thought she thought and felt, creating a situation similar to her life and describing it through her eyes.

The professor read it to the class, and asked their reaction to it. Not one person in the class recognized that it had been written by a guy, although leading questions were asked to try to elicit that sort of judgment.

When it came time for me to create a character for a game, that was still in my mind; I wanted to play a character who was not I, so I created a female. She was a rather ordinary person, really; but it was an extraordinary setting. The referee was unhappy with the game setting, and ultimately dumped it in favor of something else, so I didn't play it long.

However, probably about a fifth of the PC's I've played have been female. My sons play a lot of female characters as well. (Two of them do females on MUDs, and have shocked a lot of players with the revelation that they were not girls at the keyboard.) My wife similarly plays males in a lot of games.

Regarding the sexual stereotypes, sex is rarely involved in our games, and then only as a suggestion of something that might happen off-screen--that is, characters get married, and they live together, but what they do is never mentioned. I don't play either of the mentioned types; I don't know if I've ever met anyone who was in any way like either of them, and I tend to draw my characters from people. I don't recall any of my players doing a stereotype of a cross-gender character save one. In one game, my wife rolled up a character with a very high leadership/personality score of some sort, and did not wish to end up the party leader, so she created an entirely effeminate self-absorbed beauty with homosexual overtones, knowing that it would freak the referee just enough that he would let the leadership drop to me so he wouldn't have to deal with it. Otherwise, our characters have been pretty solidly gender-credible as far as I could tell.

My first novel just went to press. One of the three main characters is a middle-aged housewife and mother. The odd thing is that in every other way she is most like me of the three. She shares my faith, my views of life, some of my skills, some of my aspirations and dreams, and to a significant degree my ways of thinking and making choices. I wonder sometimes whether I made her female so that she would in that way be different; or whether perhaps I made her like me in so many other ways because she was female. The several women who have read the text found her credible, although I had to tweak a few spots to get it "right enough" for a book.

When I was a kid, the boys didn't like me because I was athletically inept; I tried to hang out more with the girls, who cared less about this sort of thing then. In some ways I think I have more trouble playing the typical male characters than doing the female; I don't understand them so well at times.

There is a tremendous amount of cross-gender and gender preference play happening in MUDs; it has been suggested that teenagers use this context of anonymous role play to explore their own sexual identities. I use role play to help me understand what it's like to be someone else. Cross-gender characters are included in that.

--M. J. Young

Pyron wrote: Example: Look at modern plays (meaning any that are performed today. I'm looking at contemporary styles which means that Greece and Romeo & Julet are equally applicable). Nearly the only time that people take upon different genders is for comedy.

Just a quick recommendation for those concerned with gender issues in roleplaying …

I just finished reading Jeanette Winterson's book, Written on the Body. You can find it on Amazon.com.

It has absolutely nothing to do with roleplaying directly, but does a nice job of exploring gender stereotypes, issues of love, and relationships (sexual and platonic) all through the structure of an androgynous love story.

Something interesting to think about: are the terms gender and sex really interchangeable? Or should sex refer to the biological differences, while gender to the different roles we play?

I've never played a female character. I have friends who constantly cross-play. Frankly, I usually never notice any difference in their style of play. This may be because I haven't seen them play an on-gender character yet.

I also think it has a huge amount to do with the egalitarian nature of RPGs. I think I may still have the old Fantasy Wargaming book which assigns actual stat penalties (in several categories) to female players. I seem to recall older editions of D&D had similiar stat caps.

Now, of course, such limitations would be shouted down from the rafters. Every character, male or female, can be exactly the same. The gameworld they operate in will treat them equally (unless it very pointedly doesn't, which usually means it's some sort of thematic or plot element to be played with). Male and Female characters almost always get the same amount of respect and authority and if they don't, you've just spotted a bad guy.

So really, male or female has been reduced to being a label. In one sense, this is great -- your gender really doesn't have anything to do with your effectiveness as a character. Most games aren't there to talk about gender issues, it's all about the action and adventure. So gender, who cares? On the other hand, this is awful -- something that could be very defining gets reduced to a checkbox.

In the D&D game I'm currently playing in (Dude! My Cleric just resuced his god and made 10th level!) I'm playing a co-ed game with three female characters. Two of them are females playing females, the other is my cross-playing friend. Of the three, one of female players has a slightly more feminine character, the male player comes in second and the final female player probably last. This is all from my perception of a nebulous quality I'm referring to as "feminine". I recognize that they are all female characters and I generally think of them as being female characters when I think about them in game. But I think of them more as "the druid, the bard, the monk/wizard/psionic/pick-a-focus-already players". Their gender is about as important as their eye color.

Personally, I'd have a hard time getting behind a game that was going to focus in on gender issues (outside of a complete comedy one-shot). This isn't why I game. Plus, I have this innate fear that the game would become preachy really fast. No, I'm in it for the escapism so if we gloss over gender problems, that's fine by me. My only real annoyance is that sometimes I'll want to make a meta-game comment or an in game comment about a cross-player. So I'll look at him/her and use the Player's gender pronoun, not the Characters and I always get loudly razzed for that. :(

later
Tom

Of course, we're not talking about playing the opposite gender, we're talking about playing the opposite sex, which is why it's a hot button issue: sexuality is a human obsession. A game where sex is as unimportant as eye colour is a game where players are not playing roles in any meaningful sense.

I have never played a female character as a player character - I run them all the time as a GM. I'm not sure what the discrepancy means. I suspect the root cause is the extent to which player characters are identified with the self, or express the self, whereas GM characters are more impersonal.

I suspect when people play transexually there is a huge potential for the emergence of underlying chauvenism (from the player or from other members of the group) and also for the creation of dissonance between the portrayal of the character and the expectations of the group as to how the character should be played.

Ian Charvill wrote: I have never played a female character as a player character - I run them all the time as a GM. I'm not sure what the discrepancy means. I suspect the root cause is the extent to which player characters are identified with the self, or express the self, whereas GM characters are more impersonal.

Hi there,

Here's a quick paraphrase of a section in the upcoming supplement, Sex & Sorcery, about this very issue.

Point #1 - in many cases, it may be a non-issue. Authors, directors, and creative people of all sorts include characters of the other gender in their works. A role-player (GM or player) may well be in this exact situation, with the same aesthetic limits, difficulties, and conditions. In this case, a given person would play the off-gender character well or badly, and that's the end of the issue - it's a competence issue, essentially.

Point #2 - what about habitual play of off-gender characters? Especially if they're always very similar? Especially if a specific agenda does seem to be involved? I think that sometimes this occurs, often enough for me to have spotted a pattern or two.

- male player plays female characters in order to express and identify with very focused, very stressful themes of alienation and "outsider"-ness. [See Carol Clover's Men, Women, and Chainsaws for an awesome theoretical framework for this issue, relative to slasher and other B-movies.]

- male player plays female characters in order to ... um, basically to masturbate publicly. The female characters are "dream girls" for him and the role-playing venue means that he gets to play with imaginary dolls of them.

- female player plays male characters for access to power, in light of her perception that either in general or in this particular game-group, female characters are deprived of power or significance (read: de-protagonized).

- female player plays male characters as a defense against socially dysfunctional play, specifically that kind of play in which a female character's actions are constantly scrutinized, commented on, and acted upon by male players as come-ons or statements of potential sexual interest by the female player.

Best,
Ron

Hmm.. there iz a lot of interesting stuff being said in here. One thing I'm finding interesting iz that a lot of guys are saying that they don't play female PCs, yet I'm not hearing much about women not playing male PCs. (Or iz it just we have less women in our groups therefore it's harder to include their characters in our discussion...?) Are women less uncomfortable with playing the opposite sex? If so, I have to wonder why. Hmm...

I feel I should share a little bit about my own group. We are a group of six and we each have 2 characters. I am the only female player. Four of us have a character of each gender, myself included. One of my players, a man, has two female characters. The other player, also a man (but oddly enough a gay man), has two male characters. So, we come up evenly split. After reading through all the posts on here I realize that my group may be somewhat on the unusual side since it has so much crossgender playing.

In my group the ability to play a character of the oppsite sex accuratly seems to be pretty evenly split. I've been told that I can play men well, and I believe that to be true (my favorite characters have indeed been men). Crucial's female character iz spookily convincing. My player with two female characters has one convincing female character and the other one iz a flat bubblehead like stereotype (think Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels and you are close). The other two female characters with male players are also somewhat problematic in that one of them has no female qualities at all (the player himself has said that he just has a hell of a time wrapping his brain around trying to play a girl, yet he still plays the character week after week), and the other iz a downright slut (similar to the hooker with a heart of gold stereotype).

Now my question here iz how can we help people to play the opposite sex more convincingly, and hence (in my opinion) help people become better roleplayers? Iz it even possible? Do we even care? (It's quite possible that we may not care, as playing stereotypes appeals to many people.) And, on a more personal level, do you think my group iz unusual or actually rather typical?

I'm sorry, but I've been trying to post this all day:

Hey Jack. I made a bad post, but I think that its ideas can be clarified to better justify my opinion.

Quote:
It's just that evidence compells me to think that male/female thought procecces are funamenally different from a physiology of the brain point of view.

What is this evidence of which you speak? In my personal experience, and I'm not talking about men & women here, but whenever someone has a different way of thinking, even slightly, it tends to throw people off. I think that some of the Euro Forge members can tell us about talking with Americans, or some of the Americans can tell us about talking with people from other countries. I can tell you that some of my Euro friend just plain seem to be wacky. I would suspect a fundamental difference in the physiology of their brains, but I doubt that's what it is.

Example: Look at modern plays (meaning any that are performed today. I'm looking at contemporary styles which means that Greece and Romeo & Julet are equally applicable). Nearly the only time that people take upon different genders is for comedy. Now don't give me that "it's more convenient from a design standpoint" crap. Say they're looking for the roles of umm, Frodo Baggins. You either half to admit that males are adept to playing male rolls or you have to say that the special effects weren't good enough to cover the actors gender. The example is an oversimplification, but it does (I hope) bring an interesting point.

You are losing me big time here. Weren't *all* roles were played by men in ancient Greece and in the days of Shakespeare? Did you see Shakespeare In Love?

Good point. The whole last thing that I said was thrown in as an afterthought. My fault. I'm simply saying that the times when actors have an alternate sex for a part it is almost always for comic purposes.

M. J. Young wrote: In other words, playing an NPC female who is detailed and intricately part of the lives of the PC's is not particularly different in my experience from playing a PC female. In some ways, the NPC can be more involving, as I may well be putting a lot more thought into how this person acts and reacts in relation to the other characters, whereas the PC is more focused on my reading of that person individually, with relationships happening (or not) depending on the other characters.

Hi all,

I'm always a little mystified when male RPGers make a huge deal out of player female characters. If there's anything I've discovered over years of trying to play "in character", it's that I my natural preferences don't match those of many characters I play. I'm not surprised when I have trouble remaining the strong silent type or the suave secret agent, so why should I be surprised when I can't maintain a "female" character? Is there some higher standard for playing female characters?

Can a man understand a women? (And vice versa?) I find numerous examples in the real world and in authors of fiction that some can and some can't. Also, when I look, I see that some real women have personalities more like stereotypical males and vice versa. There's wide ranges of variation. There may be tendencies and shared experiences leading to certain shared concerns among most individuals of a given sex, but these processes are familiar to all of us, even if the details are different. I can't believe that there is one true way to be a woman or a man.

thoth wrote: Off-shoot from the Sexism and Gaming thread.

Is playing a character of the opposite gender a really bad idea? I can see it being bad because participants might end up falling on cliches and stereotypes, and just being really insulting and stupid.

Ziriel wrote:
One thing I'm finding interesting iz that a lot of guys are saying that they don't play female PCs, yet I'm not hearing much about women not playing male PCs.

Hi Amos,

I'm wondering whether this thread is really addressing your concerns when you began it. It's interesting & all to see how various people react to the topic as a general thing, but that's not going to yield a critical conclusion in the way that threads should, especially in this forum.

So ... one thing you asked was,
"Is it necessary or desirable to play a female character from a female player perspective?"

This puzzles me greatly. I presume you are suggesting (or theorizing) that a male player puts on a "female perspective" mask or role, then role-plays the character in that context. On the one hand, this sounds like nothing more nor less than what a male novel-writer does in order to write a female character; on the other hand, it sounds extremely squirrelly and potentially even self-abnegating.

Can you give an example of doing what you have in mind so I can see which "hand" is involved, or if I'm off-track entirely?

Best,
Ron

crowquill wrote: Lately, I've been thinking that I should [play a woman character] as one way of forcing myself to grow . . .

John Wick wrote:

thoth wrote: ...Is playing a character of the opposite gender a really bad idea? I can see it being bad because participants might end up falling on cliches and stereotypes, and just being really insulting and stupid.

...Don't people do this playing characters of the same gender?
What's the diff?

Ziriel wrote: Are women less uncomfortable with playing the opposite sex?If so, I have to wonder why.

Ron wrote: - female player plays male characters for access to power...

ziriel wrote: And, on a more personal level, do you think my group iz unusual or actually rather typical?

ziriel wrote: Now my question here iz how can we help people to play the opposite sex more convincingly, and hence (in my opinion) help people become better roleplayers? Iz it even possible? Do we even care? (It's quite possible that we may not care, as playing stereotypes appeals to many people.)

crowquill wrote: In my current game group, I can think of several times when female players have played male characters, but no examples of males playing female characters. We're a mature group and tend to be pretty progressive politically, but I think we're still constrained by societal notions of the man as the norm and the woman as "the other."

I don't think I've ever played a female character. Lately, I've been thinking that I should as one way of forcing myself to grow as a player but unfortunately I rarely get the chance to play these days. As a GM, I often play female NPCs but I think there's a certain sameness to many of my female NPCs. I have been told, however, that I have a knack for running grouchy old women.

Emily Care wrote: Women often become adept at identifying with male protagonists. Men are not encouraged to do the same since female protagonists are 1) less common and 2) often portrayed as less powerful than their male counterparts. Female protagonists are more common in romantic comedies and many dramas, which are dismissed as chick-flicks.

Emily Care wrote: Your groups gender distribution of characters sounds quite similar to that of my current and some of my past groups. These groups were pretty darn unusual. My other play group that played more "straight" single gm'd adventure stories had male players who always played male characters, and female players who played either gender about equally.

Something that struck me about the description of your group, Ziriel, is that your members play multiple characters. My non-trad groups have always done this, and strangely enough, that in itself seems to be rather unusual.

Alan wrote: I've had the experience of a GM raping my character too - and the other players joining in. The GM insisted on rolling for pregnancy. Humiliating. Still, I found players who weren't so juvenile and continued playing women when it suited me.

Ziriel wrote: (My group iz very into exploring character and quite Sim.)

In a recent Vampire campaign in which I played, the two female players both played male characters, not something for which either of them are known in our group. My best guess is that the Camilla/Lamia image of the seductive female vampire was so overwhelming that neither of them (being new to Vampire) could imagine a female character outside that framework, within which they didn't want to play. (This falls under Ron's category of "female plays male for access to power," I suppose, if only loosely.)

As for male players playing female characters, Ron is missing a category: males using gaming as a therapeutic tool for dealing with gender identity issues. I've seen instances of this with both M->F transgendered players, and male players with non-transsexual gender dysphoria. This is not quite the same thing as the "public masturbation" category, since these players are not nearly as likely to have their characters engage in sexual behavior.

Hmm.

"Is it necessary or desirable to play a female character from a female player perspective?"

Emily Care wrote: Women often become adept at identifying with male protagonists. Men are not encouraged to do the same since female protagonists are 1) less common and 2) often portrayed as less powerful than their male counterparts. Female protagonists are more common in romantic comedies and many dramas, which are dismissed as chick-flicks.

Blake Hutchins wrote: As I write this, I wonder how this discussion would play out regarding a strongly matriarchal setting that systematically disenfranchises males. Has anyone tried that kind of exploration?