When a man plays a woman

[innerdude]

As a GM, obviously I've played NPCs of both genders. As a man, I do try to make a conscious effort to incorporate strong, competent female NPCs into my games. Whether this translated well in my games or not, I don't know, but even with the minute sample size of the dozen or so players I've run for, I've never had complaints about gender stereotyping.

One of my favorite NPCs I think I've ever created was a female leader of the shadow agency for the Andoran Eagle Knights. She was a former Red Mantis assassin turned "good," with a fairly extensive backstory. But I don't know if my affinity for her had as much to do with her gender as it did with her story, though truthfully in some ways you can't really separate the two.

Interestingly, though, as a player I had never had any desire to play female characters. As others have mentioned, there are enough human issues to explore through characterization without having to play the opposite gender. But then for some reason, as a player in our current campaign I thought maybe I'd try playing a woman as a PC for the first time in the 30+ years I've been playing RPGs.

And truthfully, I don't know that I've played her all that much differently then I've played any other PC over the years. I try to imbue my characters with real motivations, with backstories that fit the world. She's an escaped slave, held captive by a rich noble for her magical abilities, but without any troubling sexual backstory. In fact, I don't know that I really gave much thought to her "sexual history" at all, simply because the campaigns we play in don't really have a focus on that kind of subject matter.

I've tried to avoid stereotypical "female" qualities, with two exceptions. First, she does have an elevated attention to appearance. Whether that's right or wrong I don't know, but I can say that it actually has had some significance in terms of roleplaying. When interacting with nobility, I see her as being much more attuned to standards of dress, propriety, etc., things others in the party might not catch. Second, there's an interesting sense with this character that I haven't had with other characters, in that she feels a need to prove competence. And that's interesting to me, because that's certainly something I don't think would have come up playing a male character.

The other players in the group were a little bit . . . jarred by it at first, I think, but over time have come to see her as a real character, with "woman" being just one of many aspects that define her.

Now, would I make the claim that this character is anywhere close to being an accurate depiction of a woman? Certainly not. Experiences we have as gendered individuals in our society will always be unique and varied. I'm not saying I'm doing anything particularly right, or that I'm in any way representative of all gamers, but it truthfully has been an interesting and dare I say fun experience at attempting to see certain things about reality through a different lens, even if my attempts are ultimately less than perfect.

And this idea of "less than perfect" dovetails directly into the next point, RE: Cultural Appropriation.

If by "cultural appropriation" you mean, "Any time white / Western culture borrows anything from another culture, it's inherently wrong and disrespectful, and any member of the 'appropriated' culture has a right to be offended and tell other people what to do about it," then I completely agree with @Celebrim. This version of "cultural appropriation" only exists in the minds of some individuals, not in reality.

If by "cultural appropriation" you mean, "cultures coming into contact with each other will inevitably borrow / synthesize things from those cultures into their own," then absolutely! Every culture does it; it's not limited to Western Europe / America. Are there cases where certain dominant cultures have used aspects of another culture to create injustices and wrongs? Certainly. But why can't we simply call those things what they are---injustice and tyranny---instead of trying to wrap it up into some kind of weird, social shaming phenomenon and call it "cultural appropriation"?

To me, the main arguments for "cultural appropriation" adherents are two-fold: The first is that anyone who wants to borrow from another culture will "do it wrong." The "borrower" will not fully capture the spirit/essence of the culture, and as a result the attempt will inherently be offensive, and the person shouldn't do it. I comprehensively disagree with this. Can someone from the synthesized/borrowed culture be offended by some attempts at cultural synthesis? Of course. But no one individual owns that culture, even if offended by some portrayals of it. Even if someone borrows from a culture and "does it wrong," by definition the person doing the borrowing has just created a new, separate version of the culture---a culture of one. You may not like it, but isn't that their right?

The second argument for those who want to enforce their view of "cultural appropriation" is that there are some aspects of history, related to culture and race, that are inherently offensive, due to past oppressions, injustices, and tyrannies. This I think may have some merit. There are elements of American history that are brutal, cruel, and shameful regarding cultural and racial interactions. But even if I thought that someone dressing up in Native American dress, standing on a street corner, holding a sign that says "The Trail of Tears" is abhorrent (and I absolutely think such a thing is vile and abhorrent), I certainly don't think I would have a right to walk up to them and forcibly destroy their sign, then tear off the offending clothing. Either freedom of speech is a thing, or it's not.

 

[Argyle King]

Physically, I'm male. Socially, I also identify as male. (I don't at all identify with the term "CIS".) Culturally, I identify as American... occasionally "European American" if I find myself in a conversation where someone insists upon using labels, but my family tree has enough Native influence that I'd say that's not really accurate either.

I have played female characters, but not often. For some of those characters, sex was important. For some, it wasn't.

I'd say that my history of characters as a whole would be predominantly male. For some of them, sex was important. For others, it wasn't important at all. In a few cases, other players at the same table alluded to sexual things and my character.

The main reason I don't play female characters more often? I don't feel that I can perform a convincing female voice. That being said, I recently did fairly well as my character Vespa... a D&D 5th Edition Druid with the Noble background.

In recent years, I've noticed that I tend to play robots, droids, and various other sexless characters a lot.

My only active character at the moment is a Half-Ogre Wizard in a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game. I really have no idea how that relates to real life issues or cultures. The character's skin tone doesn't look like a normal skin tone at all, and his pupils are shaped similarly to something like an orange & purple Star of David.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] You may be right in that some of what I said was not as carefully constructed an argument as I normally might provide, given that I'm writing much of this between projects at work. I will say this though. I do not recall claiming one-to-one stand-ins to represent various people or cultures, but rather that themes of injustice (whether based on race, sex, or what have you) have been and continue to be a part of D&D, of for no other reason than it is a part of our society, and our creations tend to often carry our own implicit ways of viewing and interacting with the world. Even in pretend worlds, we tend to view them through the lens that we see our own world.

And you're right. Theories and writing on topics do not explicitly make them exist or valid. This was poor form on my part.

As for the issue of respect you mentioned, if you felt attacked or disrespected, that was not my intention. These are topics I am quite passionate about. I am a therapist and worked with the most vulnerable populations, and so issues of social justice resonate strongly with me and I may lose sight of logic while my heart takes over the argument. I will work to improve that in future responses. I have more to say, but as I mentioned I'm on a phone and have work to attend to. So I will continue my response later.

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]I do not recall claiming one-to-one stand-ins to represent various people or cultures...

You wrote: "it can be argued that non-human races can be representative/analogs to non-white, non-western peoples and cultures." If in fact they are representative or analogs to non-white, non-western peoples and cultures, then in fact they must also be one to one stands ins for various peoples or cultures. That's what words like "representative" and "analog" means. If your words in that statement mean something wholly different, as you now assert, how is the reader to know?

...but rather that themes of injustice (whether based on race, sex, or what have you) have been and continue to be a part of D&D, of for no other reason than it is a part of our society, and our creations tend to often carry our own implicit ways of viewing and interacting with the world.

How in the world would I be expected to understand "it can be argued that non-human races can be representative/analogs to non-white, non-western peoples and cultures." to mean all that (whatever that means). That's not clarification. That's some completely different tangent.

What really gets me here is that you seem to think you are in making the above statement you are in some way backing off and making a lesser claim. But in fact you are making a greater claim. You now not only have to show that non-human races are stand-ins for real world ethnic groups or cultures, but that this portrayal was unjust. Leaving aside that until the first statement is proved the second remains a counter-factual, while the second part of that may be easier to show than the first and I might be more willing to concede it (hinted at in my first response), it is by no means a given that it is so. For example, see a work like "The Record of the Lodoss War". Themes of injustice?

Beyond that, I have a pretty good idea what is meant by the word "justice". It means something like, "A person gets what they deserve." But I see no sign that "themes of injustice" were being consciously or unconsciously explored by Gygax and others when they created D&D, much less when I read an entry in the Monster Manual. You certainly can have a game in which there is a story about justice or injustice, but I see no reason why you inherently have to do so because D&D has "themes of injustice" deeply rooted in its conception, construction, or engagement at the table. I'd personally love for games to be so deep and thoughtful, but in point of fact I don't think they usually are.

Besides which, when you say "justice" or "injustice", I suspect there is a bunch of other baggage you are hauling around, and that you are implicitly expecting me to unpack a lot of things you didn't say. I think what you really mean to say is that we can look at the worlds and creations we create in ways that are just or unjust, or create them in ways that are just or unjust, based on the biases that we bring with us to the table. And in that I might agree, but the exact application of that and what constitutes a just or unjust way of looking at things is going to be something there will be no universal consensus on.

As for the issue of respect you mentioned, if you felt attacked or disrespected, that was not my intention.

You don't know me very well, but you should know I care little if someone attacks or disrespects me in the conventional sense you mean it.* I generally don't get upset about that sort of thing. The sort of things likely to provoke me to aggressive commentary have more to with what I see as intellectual laziness and unconsidered words. If you'll allow me a bit of my usual hubris, I like to think of myself as being a bit like Gandalf, who has to ask, "What do you mean by 'Good morning'.", when someone says, "Good morning", and its not clear even they know what they mean by it. Likewise, I get a little perturbed when people use "Good Morning", in a way that makes me marvel how many things that they use "Good morning" for, but I don't actually get offended by it. There are things that do offend me, but they aren't the sort of things that other people seem to worry about.

I am a therapist and worked with the most vulnerable populations, and so issues of social justice resonate strongly with me and I may lose sight of logic while my heart takes over the argument.

I'm rather a fan of living justly myself, and tending for the vulnerable - what has been at times called (without meaning it as a put down) "the least of these". But I'm not very much of a fan of the phrase "social justice", as I find that it's one of those modifiers that gets added to a word to make it mean rather the opposite of what it means. Quite often this is done with the best of intentions, but I'd rather it was not done at all.

*PS: I went back and tried to figure out why in the world you thought I was troubled by you disrespecting me, and I couldn't. The only time I employed the word "respect" was in reference to a different conversation, and the reason I employed it was not to contrast with this one or to imply you were being disrespectful (which if you were, I couldn't care less over), but that the conversation - because it was largely respectful despite the strong disagreement - might be worth your time.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

At my table players can play what they want, nobody has ever played a female PC but if they did fine. If it was a stereotypical characterization fine, if you offend someone they will let you know as we are all long term friends and acquaintances. Nobody at my table is interested in examining the human condition or fighting for social justice via D&D. We are just down for some adventure gaming. If someone had a friend they wanted to join the game and they were looking for that I'd advise them to pass on the game. Hell nobody even comes up with a PC background so we aren't a good fit for that type of game focus.

 

[Lwaxy]

I have a man playing only females because he says anytime he plays a man the char slowly turns into him and he wants to be something different. Many of my players play all genders, and all types, and the only time we had a stereotype issue was when someone played a gay char. It was a version of Detlev-the-hairdresser stereotype - German speaking folks will know that one, not sure if it is the same elsewhere - and it became unbearable quickly. We asked him to switch to something else.

Most men playing women complain about the difficulty to find char pictures not half naked or in annoying suggestive poses.

I'd give more examples, some quite interesting but still sick so too tired But we didn't really have any issues with cross gender play yet.

 

[Roseweave]

I have a man playing only females because he says anytime he plays a man the char slowly turns into him and he wants to be something different.

I always worry about this with characters, but at the same time for long term campaigns I find it less stressful to play a character that's similar to myself but highlights different aspects. It's definitely a good strategy to avoid pitfalls though assuming you can do it right, and gender is an easy way to sort of view certain things in a different light.

Many of my players play all genders, and all types, and the only time we had a stereotype issue was when someone played a gay char. It was a version of Detlev-the-hairdresser stereotype - German speaking folks will know that one, not sure if it is the same elsewhere - and it became unbearable quickly. We asked him to switch to something else.

Not German as we've established but I know the stereotype. I would heavily side-eye anyone trying to do that. It's also an issue with people playing obvious proxies of real world ethnicities. I'd be cautious of anyone playing for example a Calishite/Zakharan character and playing up that element of it. I think it's all about respect(and skill) though.

Most men playing women complain about the difficulty to find char pictures not half naked or in annoying suggestive poses.

http://www.heromachine.com/

I usually send people here. I'm okay-ish at doodling my own designs too. I have pictures of my character and some NPCs along with all the Heromachine stuff here - http://roseweave.deviantart.com/

 

[Dualazi]

I disagree. First of all, most D&D settings are human centric, and it can be argued that non-human races can be representative/analogs to non-white, non-western peoples and cultures. Also, while the setting may be built in with examples of females holding power in the produced settings (and even then I would say there are vastly more examples of white males represented), and while it may be a fantasy game, you cannot escape the inherent and implicit biases that color choices, interactions, and reactions by the player or DM. These things will come out, and to deny that they exist is to deny you have any biases of your own.

First off, I would love to hear exactly which races are analogues for real world ethnicities, because I deeply suspect that any examples you might give will be quite the stretch.

Secondly, with all the races and creatures present in D&D, I think you would be hard pressed to make the argument that straight white men are over-represented as opposed to other categories, especially one as broad as ‘female’. Even if you were to do so, it still would not matter, because perfect parity in representation is a joke of a goal. What
matters is that in most published settings (FR definitely so) women are explicitly stated to be as competent as any man and have (and continue to hold) the highest offices in the land.

Third, you can 100% escape the implicit biases, choices, and interactions in a made up fantasy game. That’s the whole point! You can imagine cultures and histories untouched by our own assumptions and experiences. If you’re afraid of making your villain homosexual or your savage races dark-skinned out of some need to avoid even tenuous real-world implications, then in my opinion you’ve already lost from a creative standpoint.

It's also not even necessarily bad to include those things in the game world, because it provides a vehicle to challenge these very same issues in a safe place that does not carry the same real world consequences. This is why D&D and all other roleplaying games hold so much therapeutic potential. Socially awkward people can learn social skills and cooperation through a structured game. Individuals with trauma can face analogs of their trauma, but in a situation in which they have the power to overcome it. And people can take on roles they might be denied in real life due to their gender, gender identity, lifestyle, sexual orientation, skin color, or whatever.

It’s not inherently bad, but it also adds little of value. D&D should never be a ‘safe space’, at least by default, because the very concept is intellectual poison. And ‘challenging’ these issues sounds like a masturbatory fantasy of bringing down strawmen to pat yourself on the back for how progressive you are. That’s not intended as a personal attack, I just remain remarkably unconvinced that D&D is the proper venue for this.

Although it does remind me of a humorous play report I read about a group who found out gay marriage didn’t exist in the fantasy (not)Europe they were playing in, and got so sidetracked trying to overthrow the government to implement it that a lich completed his evil plan and overran everything.

 

[Roseweave]

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.

At the end of the day, the difference between appropriation and exchange, as with the subject of "A man plays a woman" is respect. And unfortunately most of us have been raised in or spend a lot of time in environments where we're told we're the heroes of our stories and the subaltern are little more than accessories - your sassy gay black best friend, the spicy Latina girlfriend, the east asian martial artist dude. As such people aren't used to the idea of really respecting subaltern groups, but see any bone thrown as doing so since it's a step up from the baseline.

These things aren't just "theories" and there's certainly a lot more written for the idea of Cultural Appropriation than against. You can talk to the lived experiences of groups heavily affected by appropriation - particularly Native Americans, Romani people. It hurts people - and I don't think that people not from those groups have a right to tell them that what they see and experience or feel somehow isn't real. That is, frankly, amazingly imperialist, and we need to be real that what we call "Cultural Appropriation" is really the modern iteration of Orientalism, which goes hand in hand with Colonialism.

I'm in a unique position - I'm white, though I am Irish so until somewhat recently we were affected by such things. I was adopted by a Romani family, so I can see the harm "gypsy" stereotypes cause(even if the Roma themselves aren't always aware of them). I'm a convert to Islam, and I can see how the use of Islamic & Middle Eastern imagery and concepts can be harmful. Most of the people I talk to are non white(Despite living in Ireland, not even sure how that happened!), and a large number are activists educated on their cause. One of their biggest complaints goes thusly: Roma people will get discriminated against for being visibly Roma(wearing the long skirts+diklo), black people get discriminated against for dreadlocks etc. but when a white person puts on a Sari without any pretext they're often celebrated for it. Granted a lot of people will find it distasteful, but an actual South Asian person would increase their chances of being told "go back to India" - with a white person it won't. Somehow something that's a beloved part of someone's culture has become a safer part of someone else's. Of course, if they were going to a Diwali festival with some South Asian friends, it would be a different example. That would be being invited in to a cultural event. Similarly if my Roma friends dress me up as Roma, that's being invited in. Dressing up in an abaya/niqab for Hallowen? Not so much.

The idea that "all cultures borrowed from each other throughout history" actually hides a very brutal history that white westerners want others to forget - a history of imperialism, colonialism, mass starvation and killing. This is why the concept of "invited in" is so important because generally white, western people didn't bother with that and just took what they wanted. Entire peoples practically disappeared because some westerners wanted some spices. Britain's relationship with India is a great example of this. The relationships between white majority western countries and essentially the rest of the world wasn't quite the same as throughout history because it was so starkly biased. Of course - if you go back far enough you'll find other examples of empires and the like causing a mesh of cultures, but it's been long enough since most of that Occured that it's history(though contrary to popular belief, history seldom fully goes away as an effect). Millions of people are still alive that remember the creation of Partition in India/Pakistan, for example, or France's brutal and comically evil occupation of Libya that a lot of people don't realise was a large factor in France's issues with "Muslim" immigrants.

People who say cultural appropriation doesn't exist honestly just don't care about things like this, or haven't spent enough time at intersections to see it. Which sounds like a hefty and hurtful accusation, but so is saying "Cultural Appropriation doesn't exist". Do you know what happens when people say stuff like this? Most of the time, instead of arguing the case, PoC especially those from heavily exoticised cultures, back off. They don't come here. They don't reveal their ethnicity. They may even feel like not being involved in the hobby. While not everyone making the argument is white, "Cultural Appropriation Doesn't Exist" serves to help mark roleplaying games as the territory of white or at least heavily westernised people.

As for Orcs, Elves, etc. as analogies for human racists - it's a terrible idea to view these as direct racial analogues because most of these creatures from folklore and are often metaphors for other things, other aspects of human existence, other sorts of "groups"(like for pirates, bandits, corrupt rich people, whichever). Unfortunately, it's also hard to deny that the way these races are written in D&D and similar systems make them less alien, fairy tale creatures, and can be somewhat more analogue to real world ethnicities. It's really curious to me that people are saying that racism against real world ethnicities doesn't exist in D&D(which is untrue, in the Realms at least you have the Gurs, and it's mentioned that people do "exoticise" Zakharan and Calishites, just like in real life), because of the existence of other species, though the species also don't count as any sort of analogue for ethnicity. But hold on - this is like pulling yourself up form your feet! The issue of racism just somehow disappeared. This is a magicians trick. For the idea of real world racism to be obfuscated, there needs to be some conceptual overlap. Unless the mere presence of "alien" races opens everyone minds so much that racism stops existing, which I really really don't think is the case. It's interesting to me too that privileged groups often tell marginalised groups to be happy with "allegorical" representation(like the X-men etc.) but then deny that it happens when it becomes problematic.

Saying absolutes like, Drow or Orcs can never be seen a real world minority or Cultural Appropriation doesn't Exist are very decisive statements that need an awful lot of defence given the number of examples you could imagine where these things are the case and are harmful. Obviously there is a need for nuance here and discussing to what degree these things are true, when, and how we can minimise disrespect for others. The people who make aggressive blanket statements and then act like they're being persecuted for being called out on it are standing in the way of any sort of rational discussion. I can't be in a thread where people are trying to set the absolute premise that something I have seen in action - even from my own perspective, being Trans, and seeing how people co-opt trans culture & achievements for yet another Oscar bait movie - is not real, and I'm dumb for believing it. And if I feel that way, I can only imagine how most non-white people will feel, and not just that one black guy on youtube who holds views that are convenient for people that don't much care about what most subaltern peoples have to say.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm a straight male. I've been playing D&D since 1983 and I have never had the desire to play a female character. If I did play one, I'd do it badly since I'm not a woman.

I have, though, seen somewhere between 12 and 20 players play female PCs in games that I run or have played in. Invariably one of three things happens.

1) They play it as a joke acting outlandishly "female".

2) They try to seriously play the PC as female, but do it badly, because they aren't women.

3) They just ignore sex altogether and play the female PC like they would play any other PC.