When a man plays a woman

Mallus

Legend
I'm a guy and I primarily identify as "DM". As a player, I'm probably around 70/30 split male PCs to female PCs. That said, 3 out of my last 4 PCs have been female: Kelis the Brunch-Loving Archer, Amber Alert, and currently, Black Swann LaVey. As DM 3 of my all-time favorite NPCs have been female (2 cis, 1 trans): Mercy of the Guild of Revelry, The Lady Eve, and Shalazar, Director of the New School for Gate Research.

I'm not aware of treating/conceiving of female PCs any differently from male. My goal's the same: create an amusing fictional character. All of my PCs tend toward the exaggerated and absurd, frequently broad comic types (but hopefully not stereotypes) that eventually get more grounded and humanized (in theory, at least). I don't go into the process with the deliberate intent of exploring different identities -- in the cultural criticism sense. It is, however, my experience that role-playing in a game has a knack for for revealing attitudes about things like gender that a person not consciously realize they hold. So there's that.

I try to give all my PCs the same general kit: they're good at something, they want something, and they're a mix of good, neutral, and awful like most real people I know. I also give them some sort of ridiculous shtick, behavioral, conceptual, or both, whose purpose is to keep me entertained during play while I try to 'find out' who the PC; to locate the character inside the caricature.
 
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Celebrim

Legend
Well, yeah, a bit like how you can put "Half-Elf" in the race field but play it like a Human or Elf aside from minor mechanical differences.

I think that this actually gets to the heart of it, both on the main topic of the thread and the side discussions that we've been having. Yes, we can. And that's not only 'Ok', but inevitable.

There is no one in the world that can play an authentic Half-Elf. There is no one in the world that can play an authentic Elf. This is obvious and I would hope uncontroversial. These things are self-evidently true because elves and half-elves aren't real, so no one can speak to the authenticity of being an elf. I can give my players a 10 page document describing in a very high level overview elven culture as it pertains to my wholly invented imaginary world, in hopes of sparking some amount of creativity in them, but I certainly can't claim my take on elves is authentic. There is no standard to judge authenticity by.

Nonetheless, as the DM, I have a responsibility within the game to be every other single being in my creation who isn't a PC. I have to be all the men and all the women. I have to be all the fair skinned people, and all the dark skinned people and all the peoples whose ethnicities and even species have no parallels in the real world. I have to be all the saints of my world and all the most dastardly villains. I have to be all the gods of my world, and all the lowest peasants. I have to be the abusers and the oppressors and the abused and the oppressed. I have to be the pretty people, and the low charisma people lightly regarded within the world. I have to be the proud and the humble, high and low, the meek and terrifying dragon fuming arrogantly in his lair. I am every single extra in the story, and I am the villain that chews up the scenery that everyone loves to hate. I'm the mentors and the henchmen and literally every character in the story but the protagonists. The PC's get to decide who those are.

I don't feel like I have any particular obligation to anyone but my players regarding the world I create and the stories I tell, but it is my pleasure as the creator to fill the world up with as diverse a cast as I can manage. I shall be very put out if someone comes and tells me that I can't do so because I'm not authentic enough to pretend for a little while to be a woman, or a child, or an old man, or a Tumesi, or Elven, or Mokoheen, or Averen, or a Har peasant patriot with a foul mouth, a swaggering Orine bravo, or a Sea Folk Wise Woman puffing on pipe, or a goblin prospector seeking out wealth, or a barbarous merfolk girl hunting gulls, or a 4000 year old incarnation of the spirit of a bitter well, or any other darn thing that I think of that I think makes my world a richer place for their presence. And I shall be even more put out, if I'm told that I'm not authentic enough to do these things, but that I didn't do these things that the absence of "diversity" in my world reflected somehow on what I thought of people in the real world. There would be no way to pass this test, and I'm arrogant enough to think that the real world would be slightly less rich and interesting of a place for it, if I had to shut up or whitewash my world, or otherwise alter it from what I've wanted it to be.

Of course I can't be perfectly authentic, but the truth of the matter is that I can't be perfectly authentic pretending to be anything other than myself. It's just not women I can't play with perfect authenticity. It's everything and everyone other than who I am. Am I any less authentic pretending to be a woman than I am pretending to be a jester with a ready wit and good humor? Am I less authentic pretending to be a dark skinned merchant buying cedar for the palace of a far off land, than I would be pretending to be an olive skinned slave boy working on the docks of that cosmopolitan market? It's all made up, yet I've never lived there or really experienced these lives. And there is no one that I can go to tell me what would be authentic, or what it is really like to live them. This is my world, it's all out of my head, and I am the only authority about what is authentic in it.

And the truth is, even to the extent that my world borrows liberally from ideas in the real world - as it must since my imagination is not limitless - there is still no one that can come to me and tell me what is authentic. Some woman can't come to me and tell me some character of mine isn't authentic, because just as I can't authentically be anyone but myself, they can't authentically say what is right and real for some other woman. And invariably an argument over who was or could be authentic would just degenerate down to averages, aggregates, and stereotypes of people - which wouldn't be authentic either. Now they might could say that my representation of women in the game was consistently disrespectful in some way, and though that has never happened, if it did happen I'd probably give it hard thought about whether I'm presenting a true diversity of female characters and or whether my female characters are the sort of characters that are respected or admirable in some way, or at least as admirable as the male characters. And maybe, depending on how strong of an argument they presented, I'd consider changing whatever element that person saw that had escaped my attention. I don't think that there is anything like that going on, and certainly my female players never brought anything like that to my attention, and granted when I had a sizable number of female players it was sort of like playing with the cast of "Big Bang Theory" so it wasn't a "representative sample of women" (whatever the heck that would mean). But sure, hypothetically speaking, there could be a deficit of respect in my play that needed addressing.

But this is not the same thing as saying I can't play a women because I can't play one real enough. I'm fairly sure that it is possible to pretend to be a woman well enough that you can't tell the difference over the internet, because I used to MUSH and it really was never possible to know anyone's gender and I've been mildly surprised both directions (guessing that a female character didn't have a female player, and being wrong, and guessing that a female character did have a female player, only to discover to my mild amusement that they were actually a male fire fighter in Alaska). If I can't guess, then the portrayal is convincing by at least one standard. But ultimately, that doesn't matter, since I can only really and fully be myself.

Since all of this has to be true of me as the DM, it would be hypocritical of me to hold the players to any different standards. I can't tell a player what to play, or that they aren't authentic enough to play that. So long as they seem to be respectful to the group, and taking their role seriously - which in my opinion includes avoiding jokey characters of all sorts, whether the jokes are offensive and not appropriate, or just would get old in a hurry, or would diminish the literary value of my game (or all three).

Like I said before, most RP is not to a high standard anyway. It's not like most tables are groups of method actors or aspiring thespians who bring consistent quality drama and characterization to the table. Most tables are trying to have fun without getting to deep into acting. Some players may be extremely shy and uncomfortable interacting socially period, much less getting into character. Some players may not enjoy dramatics. Many players just don't have the knack and really, regardless of what is on the sheet, are only playing themselves. And all that is fine, and in my opinion in good fun.

I mean fundamentally, if men can't play women in role-playing games, where are we stuck at? I mean forget that we lose something comparatively trivial, like the ability to play a RPG. If fundamentally we can't walk that far in another person's mocassins even as a leisure activity, how are we ever to exercise empathy and compassion for each other when its challenging?
 
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Gentlegamer

Adventurer
Has anyone here had an experience of playing someone of a different gender identity?

You're referring to a character's sex. Gender is a grammatical concept. And gender identity is a nonsensical concept.

I've played characters of the opposite sex many times, as Dungeon Master. I also often portray characters who aren't even human.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
Straight male here.

As player, I'd say about half the characters I roll up are female. In the currently-active parties I'm playing 2 males and a female; retired I've got another 2 males and 4 females. At our tables anything goes for gender, sexual preference(s), alignment, etc.

As DM I somewhat obviously have to play all kinds of things, but for major NPCs or party-member NPCs e.g. henches it's again reasonably even between male and female.

Lan-"named after one of the characters noted above"-efan
 


Roseweave

Explorer
You're referring to a character's sex. Gender is a grammatical concept. And gender identity is a nonsensical concept.

I've played characters of the opposite sex many times, as Dungeon Master. I also often portray characters who aren't even human.

Hey cool thanks I'm trans would be nice if we could keep your "opinions" out of the thread.

(OOI I'm not big on the concept of "gender identity" as defined, because it can lead to people circumventing with biological essentialism, but that's another story, this poster is basically saying trans people don't exist)
 

happyhermit

Adventurer
It's really disheartening that even after a locked thread people still want to talk about Cultural Appropriation, and by talk I mean absolutely insist it isn't real and anyone who believes in it is an idiot. I just want to be clear about this - the reason why people, especially largely white, western sorts who don't experience much in the way of appropriation hurting them, make arguments that appropriation isn't real, racial/sexist bias doesn't exist etc. is because they want to keep on doing that stuff without checking themselves or opening themselves up to the experiences of others. People are acting like they have an intellectual slant on it but it's really false.
...

Wow, that makes my skin crawl, to say the least, as does much of the rest of your post. Generalizations such as this wherein a person not only attributes the same motivations to everyone who holds a particular opinion on a subject, but links that to race and ethnicity :-S.

I don't think the people you are speaking about actually wanted to talk about "cultural appropriation", from what they have written, but were actually responding to it.


As to the actual OT, this seems to come up a lot in online discussion, IRL it has never been a big deal for me so it's interesting to read. Sure, a lot of bad stereotypes get played, some people don't allow it but it isn't a big deal for the most part. A lot of the people who are problematic when playing another gender are problematic at other times too. I have seen quite a few instances of females depicting males that were not very good... at all... but, meh.

I think part of the problem comes from wish-fulfillment and the aforementioned "wanting to use gender to make a different character from oneself".

A large chunk of the "bad" RP by females playing males IME has been of the "If I were a man I would sleep with everyone and not care about their emotions or feel bad about it" and males playing essentially the same thing with a bit of the "sleep with everyone, toy with their emotions, and get free stuff in exchange". To some extent I have seen those same things by people playing their own gender, so not great but whatever.

The second part about using gender as a crutch to differentiate from oneself has it's own issues. If I think of myself as "myself but the opposite sex" for example, that does essentially nothing to differentiate the characters. There are people of the opposite gender who have the same job as me, the same political views, the same sense of humour, the same everything. There aren't a lot of them, but there aren't a lot of the same gender either. Gender does not differentiate the personality on the individual level. So, what happens is we tend to think in terms of the actual generalities that exist and apply those to the individual character. Instead of being "me with a different gender" the character becomes "me with some stereotypical traits of a different gender".
 

Roseweave

Explorer
Wow, that makes my skin crawl, to say the least, as does much of the rest of your post. Generalizations such as this wherein a person not only attributes the same motivations to everyone who holds a particular opinion on a subject, but links that to race and ethnicity :-S.

There's honestly very little I find worse in the world that people trying to take an argument designed to protect the dignity and the marginalised and trying to turn it around saying "NO U R THE REAL RACISTS LOL". I'm really not sure you understand all that much about "race and ethnicity" but I'm too exhausted to get into it.
 

happyhermit

Adventurer
There's honestly very little I find worse in the world that people trying to take an argument designed to protect the dignity and the marginalised and trying to turn it around saying "NO U R THE REAL RACISTS LOL". I'm really not sure you understand all that much about "race and ethnicity" but I'm too exhausted to get into it.

Uhm, I never said anything about you being racist, I find your post and line of reasoning to be insulting, disrespectful, factually wrong, etc. The fact that you are denying my personal emotional response to it because of what you think you know about me is rather telling. I happen to know a whole lot about race and ethnicity, which would be pretty obvious if you knew my background. I am not too exhausted to get into it, but this really isn't the place, is it?
 

the Jester

Legend
Has anyone here had an experience of playing someone of a different gender identity? What was it like and how did you play that character?

Sure! I've played lots of pcs of both sexes, as well as a few (elves) who didn't really have a gender identity. My most recent Mage character was a trans man; my current 5e pc is a gnome with a cantrip that allows him to change sex, so he spends about half his time as female.
 

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