Comfort withcross gender characters based on your gender

[Thomas Bowman]

I agree, but I think there could be many burnt kids in this room. Like, players who have seen very bad examples of cross-gender character play and who don't want any of this in their game.

Thing is that cross-gender play isn't the reason for such obnoxious play, but rather too little communication on what is considered appropriate. Hence my "If you don't wish to portray your cross-gender character like an actual person, then don't play one" statement. Because I'm a woman and I'm really uncomfortable when someone at the table plays my gender as a sexy lamp and as wish-fulfilment only. I can only guess the same applies to queer people and queer characters.

Note: I'm talking about "serious campaigns". Satire or comic relief play is a wholly different animal as long as everyone is on board.

I guess you mean imperfect cross gender characters, ones that don't quite make the transition from male to female or the other way around in a convincing way, is that what you are trying to say. In the movie Dragonslayer, there was a character who was a woman posing as a boy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonslayer_(1981_film)

"A sixth-century post-Roman kingdom called Urland[3] is being terrorized by a 400 year-old dragon named “Vermithrax Pejorative”.[3] To appease the dragon, King Casiodorus (Peter Eyre) offers it virgin girls selected by lottery twice a year. An expedition led by a young man called Valerian (Clarke) seeks the last sorcerer, Ulrich of Craggenmoor (Richardson), for help.
A brutish soldier from Urland named Tyrian (Hallam), who has followed the expedition, intimidates the wizard. Ulrich invites Tyrian to stab him to prove his magical powers. Tyrian does so and Ulrich dies instantly, to the horror of his young apprentice Galen Bradwarden (MacNicol) and his elderly servant Hodge (Sydney Bromley). Hodge cremates Ulrich's body and places the ashes in a leather pouch, informing Galen that Ulrich wanted his ashes spread over a lake of burning water.
Galen is selected by the wizard's magical amulet as its next owner; encouraged, he takes it upon himself to journey to Urland. On the way, he discovers Valerian is really a young woman, who is disguised to avoid being selected in the lottery. In an effort to discourage the expedition, Tyrian kills Hodge; before dying, he hands Galen the pouch of ashes and dies with the words "Burning water ..." on his lips."

Now if a character does a cross gender well, no one notices, people just think the person is of the gender he or she is pretending to be. However there is a character in Shrek 2.

Now in the first instance, the character made a convincing "young boy", in the second...

 

[Lanefan]

If the DM says "You must play characters of your gender", then I'll take it or leave it. If the DM holds a Session Zero and a player says "I'd rather that we each play same-gender PCs" then I'm inclined to acquiesce to that player's request. (If the player instead says "No one pull any feminazi BS" then one of us is at the wrong table.)

One game I was in, each player's first character had to be of the opposite gender to the player. Interesting experiment.

Someone saying "I'd rather just play characters of my own gender" is fine - fill yer boots. Someone saying "I'd rather we all play characters of our own gender" is going to get an argument if I'm at the table.

In this case, someone at the table has made a request (or a DM directive), AND backed that up with a principle, based on their previous experience. At which point, no way I'm gonna argue.

You might not argue, but I would, based on the premise that each player has the agency and freedom to - within the limits of the setting/system in use - play the character(s) she/he wants to play.

Those setting/system limits might mean I can't play an Elf because there's no Elves in this setting or because Elves are being reserved for the DM's use as enemies, or I can't play a Monk because this particular game system doesn't have a far-east-flavoured martial arts class in it; but I've never yet seen a setting or system that only allowed one gender to adventure (and if such did exist, one gender of player will be forced to play cross-gender anyway).

I've seen a man play a woman not as a sexy lamp, but as annoyingly flamboyant and non-pragmatic, speaking in a bouncy falsetto, and that rubbed me the wrong way.

Arguably the best and most memorable character I've ever played was just this. She was a bouncy cheerful bubble-headed fool in most ways except for her spellcasting, on which she was laser-focused; this my way of trying to play high intelligence and very low wisdom. And yes, I gave her a somewhat distinctive voice (though not full falsetto, for which my vocal cords thanked me) and a series of catchphrases.

She lasted seven years real time, and had outlived all her original companions by the time she died out. And during her run she absolutely owned our annual "Most Entertaining Character" award as voted by the participants.

I dunno whether he would eventually have progressed to sexy lamp; that was nominally Session Zero, but the only part of Zero he understood was "this is the session in which we make characters who then meet each other"; he did not understand "this is when we hash out tone, themes, and boundaries". The DM didn't invite him back for Session One.

Not having been there I can't comment on this specific instance, but in broad terms tone is something that arises out of play and can't really be preordained (at least no more often than random chance would allow), themes are set first by the DM and then modified by the run of play as the campaign goes along, and boundaries are two-fold: there's the at-the-table boundaries (show up on time having showered first, no harrassment, no cheating, generally don't be an asshat) and the in-game boundaries (what you play, how you play it, etc.).

The at-the-table boundaries are just common sense.

It's the in-game boundaries we're discussing here, and on these I lean fairly hard toward the "anything goes" side within the setting/system stipulations as mentioned above.

Lan-"the only true 'sexy lamp' I can remember playing was a character with secondary profession of 'actor' playing that role as a distraction during a spy-intrigue adventure"-efan

 

[Ratskinner]

For the most part, I don't care. I will say that I used to get cross-gender characters that were....not good. Whether that's on the players' RP abilities, generally deficient personalities, or Sexism...who knows. Odd, when you think about it, that a person might be better able to properly portray an alien than a girl, but such is life. I haven't seen very many attempts at cross-gender characters for years now.

OTOH, I don't think its a big deal. If someone did want to do a cross-gender character, so be it.

 

[Umbran]

Someone saying "I'd rather we all play characters of our own gender" is going to get an argument if I'm at the table.

You might not argue, but I would, based on the premise that each player has the agency and freedom to - within the limits of the setting/system in use - play the character(s) she/he wants to play.

"Agency and freedom" so, you think that merely by asking, they are abridging your rights? Why are these things always framed in the form of abridgment of rights? Heavens forbid you should make a little room at the table for someone else's sensibilities! Is this inconceivable?

You know, each player should *also* have the agency and freedom to speak honestly and like a mature adult about what they do and don't like in a game. Don't players also have as much right to a game that doesn't make them decidedly uncomfortable?

So, how about you give them a discussion, rather than an argument? Maybe, rather than push back, you first ask *why*?

Because every game is a collaboration, and in good collaboration, you are going to find that nobody gets everything they want - there will be some compromise involved. So, before you argue and push back on the grounds of abridgment of freedoms, maybe you want to actually explore the request, and find out if you would like to choose to accommodate another player?

 

[Lylandra]

I guess you mean imperfect cross gender characters, ones that don't quite make the transition from male to female or the other way around in a convincing way, is that what you are trying to say.

Err, no. I don't have any problem with players who are not good at cross-gender play but who really try to and who love playing as someone else. I'd gladly help them to avoid the most basic mistakes.

What I do mean is players who *only* play the opposite gender to have an imaginary, sexy doll with no personality at all and who only exists to imaginarily look hot, have sex (optional, depending on the age of the player) and maybe kill some monsters.

That's what I meant with "sexy lamp". Okay, it is a sexy robot lamp with a sword, but hey, basic principle.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

From my experience, most players when given the option to pick such themselves, the vast majority of the time with RP a character of the same sex.

But, when we decide for a more unique creation process where we only pick the class and race, and everything else is random, it does make for some strange combinations.

Almost like having to role play those pre-generated characters. It is fun in its own way.

 

[Riley37]

So, how about you give them a discussion, rather than an argument? Maybe, rather than push back, you first ask *why*?

I've been pondering a question along these lines, for weeks now, following discussions on EN World, in other threads before this one, mainly the epic thread on harassment, with a side of MToF. I see a LOT of EN World participants who default to the "truth emerges from no-holds-barred debate" model, some relative of the adversarial system of plaintiff and defendant, without even considering techniques such as "could you provide an example or two?" or "how are you using that word?" or "why is that important to you"?.

There was a podcaster, Crowder, who set up a table, at a college campus, with a sign saying ""Male Privilege is a myth / Change My Mind". I dunno how many undergrads chose to spend any of the precious moments of their lives trying to change his mind. I've been weighing the relationship between Crowder's approach and with another sign, also seen on college campuses: "NO does not mean Change My Mind."

I have a theory that the culture of "everything is a debate, never ask questions, attribute some preposterous extreme position to the other guy and watch HIM refine it" connects with the culture of treating sex as something that men take, and something that women let men take or resist men taking; and that culture opposes conselt culture, in which people make *offers*, and the recipient of the offer either accepts, declines, makes a counter-proposal, or draws a boundary against further offers.

I have a so-far-unsupported speculation that "Change My Mind" model is more comfortable for aggressively masculine men, the kind who wear a fedora and a katana, than for others, and that the "Change My Mind" model is unattractive to many (though not all) women, and also unattractive to anyone who faces extra risks when things go sideways and get violent. (In any nation where there's been racial lynching in the last generation, this category includes race. Canada has over a century since Louie Sam in 1884, and the killers were mostly from the USA.) Such people have less to gain and more to lose, so many of them just walk away, not wasting their time, and find some other venue where people actively work towards understanding each other, without first establishing machismo and mutual respect via duelling.

I don't have a coherent argument on this yet. It's percolating. (Anyone seen a thesis along these lines, elsewhere?)

 

[Riley37]

The at-the-table boundaries are just common sense.

If the basics of human decency are so innately universal and obvious...

...then why do so many nations, and states/provinces within nations, have different laws? Why are so many of them STILL revising their legal codes and/or judicial precedents? Why do people drive on the right side of the road in some places, and the left side of the roads in others - isn't it *obvious* which one is correct?

I lack your confidence in the universality of behavioral norms among players.

 

[Umbran]

. I see a LOT of EN World participants who default to the "truth emerges from no-holds-barred debate" model, some relative of the adversarial system of plaintiff and defendant, without even considering techniques such as "could you provide an example or two?" or "how are you using that word?" or "why is that important to you"?.

The truth does not emerge from no-holds-barred debate. If no holds are barred, we *quickly* degrade into techniques that lie among the logical fallacies, attacking the psychology of the opponent, rather than exploring the actual logic. People become victors in such debate based on illogic and falsehood, rather than truth. Formal debate has strict rules against that sort of thing - it gets more to truth than no-holds-barred does.

 

[Yaztromo]

While GMing (for about 35 years...) I have the impression that, the more time passes, the more players are comfortable with roleplaying characters of their opposite gender... and they roleplay them well, independently from their player gender.