When a man plays a woman

[Roseweave]

This should be an interesting thread.

I've have seen many players play opposite genders in my game and not once have I seen a player use the gender to deliberately play the gender poorly, but neither have I seen them play the gender with any genuine depth. I did have one player MANY years ago when we were adolescents play a female that was an over the top promiscuous woman, but he also played a male character that way, too; so as creepy as it was, it wasn't a gender slam, and the group self-corrected. [even the player struggled to portray the sexuality well as, at his young age, he did not have enough of a frame of reference to execute the role play decisions. so it was a short lived experience] I have never seen a player play the same gender and race consistently, unless it was as themselves. So I do not think there has been an issue.

That all said, the depth of background to form genuine role play motivations is a problem for any player, regardless of gender. All player project a portion of themselves (to make the character relevant to them) as well as their own understanding of a characteristic they wish to use to shape the character. But unless the player have genuine experience (real personal experience) that matches the background of the character, it is contrived. Does a player who never had to practice anything really understand the work ethic required to become proficient as a fighter (or do they think it is achieved by natural genetics, Rocky montage, or trained-once movie Conan?) Can a player really role-play the brooding and silent suffering of a character who lost a family member without having to have really lost a family member? Almost all role-play is going to incorporate superficial understanding of the role, and seldom with enough depth to put it in context. At best, players can learn more about a characteristic by role-playing them, but it will only be in the context of the role-played game and their own personal experience.

In my experience, the younger players tend to gravitate toward stereotypes most; and older players tended to have more depth, but that may not necessarily due to more knowledge of others as much as a larger life experience that informs them.

I think about this a lot, actually. At least if you're something like a sorcerer, that can be purely "unreal". But generally you want to play something at least a little unlike yourself, that's somewhat the point. It's escapism. But at the same time even in fantasy there are going to "real" elements one cannot personally attest to, and whether or not it's a question of appropriation, it can make you feel like a poser. Like if I was playing a ninja character around my friend Naziyah, who is btw an actual Ninja I'd probably feel kind of goofy. Other players with actual skills your character claims to possess sort of have to be in on it and encouraging for it to feel "right" I think, or else the illusion falls apart. I think one of the answers is: if you can't go in depth emotionally with a certain aspect of your character: don't. It's a thing, it's there, you might mention it from time to time, but try not to make too big a deal of it or the seems will begin to show. And if possible, make sure to read up a bit to make it more believable. When I decided my character had been a Courtesan on the sly, I had read quite a bit about Courtesans and talked to sex workers, even though it wasn't ever going to be an aspect of the character I really talked about in detail, since again not that kind of game. But it helped me get into the headspace of a character like that, which is important. Reading up about similar characters, and writing short stories about your PC can help with that too.

 

[Roseweave]

Yeah, as my good friend Fusangite once said "If a player goes home after my game and masturbates to the memory of it, my game as clearly jumped the rails".

If someone says "Rothgar wants to spend the night with the barmaid" my response is "Done. The next morning you all find yourselves...."

Yeah, this is how it's done in our game pretty much. Nobody needs a graphic description of what my character's lewd Dad gets up to with the Tiefling girls he has hanging off him lol. Though I think elaborating on "done" with some little tidbit can help improve immersion a bit without making people uncomfortable - some little piece of information Rothgar discovers about the Barmaid(her favourite drink, colour) a quick line of dialogue, or a fairly safe quip. That way there's some actual feedback from the game/world to acknowledge something happened. You'll see video games often use this with the "fade to black" moments, the brothel in Dragon Age II being one example(some of those puns were truly dreadful, lol).

Even as someone who's talked smutty for money previously I don't really feel comfortable with overly explicit stuff in games. I like the FACT that my character is a Courtesan, and that it comes up sometimes, but it doesn't need to be gotten into everything that entails(only one part of which is sex, anyway).

 

[Hawk Diesel]

Now that I've made my position clear, I can say in 30+ years at dozens of tables, I have honestly never seen this stereotype actually happen. I know that it can happen, and have already outlined some theory as to why it happens (which I think accords pretty well with your theory), but I don't think this is as common as you think.

I don't know how common it is and I don't think I mentioned any assumptions that it happens with any particular frequency. But this HAS been my experience, which I think I made clear. Of course there have been exceptions, but generally when I've played in games with males playing female characters, this was the way they were played.

In the rare cases even seen character backgrounds with sexual violence, it had nothing to do with stereotypical man-hating or playing the character that way. So far as I could guess playing amateur psychologist and not doing much inquiry into a players private affairs, it was largely an excuse for the player to play an essentially asexual character. They were more or less taking that off the table, which is fine.

I have also seen male characters who had been victims of sexual violence in their background. Again, no real interest in playing amateur psychologist on why that would be, and as long as they keep it 'PG', I don't care.

Personally, I find your stereotyping mildly offensive, as it seems to expect the worst of people and RPers in particular. That hasn't been my experience with people, though perhaps I've just been lucky.

The entire reason I started this thread was specifically because a player that wanted to join one of my games presented a female character with a background of being used as a child sex slave and hating/distrusting men and wanting to make them pay. The player was a male. I make no assumptions about how people play characters, and the entire reason I started this thread was because it sparked some curiosity and I was hopeful that perhaps my experience hasn't been the norm. I'm neither stereotyping nor expecting the worst in people. I'm attempting to create a conversation, and I think I have worked fairly hard to be upfront with my perspective, experience, and biases specifically so that I might challenge them through discourse with others.

 

[Nagol]

I mostly DM. Looking at my last dozen of so PCs (scattered over at least as many years), I see about 50% male, 40% female and 10% non-gendered/other/not applicable.

For games with random generation, I'll typically roll gender as well. For design games like Champions, sometimes one gender or the other feels right for character I envision.

My first PC began play at ~200 years old and expected to live for a few more millennia having not a soul, but a reincarnating spirit (1e elf). My second character was an anthromorphic violent plant-creature (Runequest elf). What are gender perspectives compared to that?

As a DM, people can play anything legal at the table.. I've found those players for whom gender play degenerates into unpleasant situations typically exhibit other unpleasant play patterns that get them weeded out from my table.

 

[Roseweave]

Now that I've made my position clear, I can say in 30+ years at dozens of tables, I have honestly never seen this stereotype actually happen. I know that it can happen, and have already outlined some theory as to why it happens (which I think accords pretty well with your theory), but I don't think this is as common as you think.



In the rare cases even seen character backgrounds with sexual violence, it had nothing to do with stereotypical man-hating or playing the character that way. So far as I could guess playing amateur psychologist and not doing much inquiry into a players private affairs, it was largely an excuse for the player to play an essentially asexual character. They were more or less taking that off the table, which is fine.

I have also seen male characters who had been victims of sexual violence in their background. Again, no real interest in playing amateur psychologist on why that would be, and as long as they keep it 'PG', I don't care.

Personally, I find your stereotyping mildly offensive, as it seems to expect the worst of people and RPers in particular. That hasn't been my experience with people, though perhaps I've just been lucky.

tbh sexual violence is so common and treated with such a blasé attitude that I'd be very wary of including it as an element in a game.

I remember one time after a joke went sideways my Cyberpunk 2020 character(that I played around 2004 or so) ended up being a "pimp" and had 5 girls he tried to take care of. The GM then proceeded to turn it into a murder mystery, with each of the escorts being murdered in increasingly brutal/grotesque ways. Like, stuff out of the Hannibal TV show or some nasty horror film. As someone who was coming to terms with being trans, this messed with my head. Reflecting on it, having dipped my toes into a form of sex work, it's even more traumatic. I'm lucky to have never experienced really serious sexual violence personally, but I have experienced transphobic violence and various somewhat casual instances of molestation(when your trans especially your boobs and butt sort of cease to become fully just yours).

I am very flattered when a player expresses a romantic interest in an NPC, because it means I've been doing my job as a DM characterizing that NPC well. I've had plenty of players both male and female get "crushes" on NPCs, and as long as it stays at that level I'm ok with it. I don't get wierded out being the girl or the boy in a mildly flirtatious relationship, although I confess it surprised me and threw me off my game the first time it happened with a gay player.... for all of 15 seconds or so, just because I wasn't anticipating it.

But that is where it stops, and anything beyond that is like the wedding bed scene in Les Miserables - let us now draw a curtain over the scene, upon which we will not intrude. The details are not important to my game.

My character fell in love with a giant spider we picked up as a guide on the Rock of Bral. She was an Aranea who lost her memory and couldn't shapeshift(it turned out she was actually a super Plastic Man/Kamala Khan-esque shapeshifter later on, from a family of royal mutant aranea). The GM thought it was sort of a cute/sad story, with the poor girl stuck as a monster getting rocks thrown at her, but of course my character fell utterly in love with her because it was such a perfect fairy tale. It was also sort of a trans girl metaphor(or more specifically maybe genderqueer since she goes over and back now) so I identified with it on that level. (Here's some arts of them! http://roseweave.deviantart.com/art...-to-Walk-476106391?q=Roseweave/17246133&qo=18 http://roseweave.deviantart.com/art...nuggling-624713894?q=Roseweave/17246133&qo=11 and my fav with them dressed up in pirates from that one priate episode - http://roseweave.deviantart.com/art/Grappling-Hook-627213488?q=Roseweave/17246133&qo=0)

I adopted her and some other NPCs to write stories about them(which you can read here! http://crystallineprincess.tumblr.com/tagged/short-stories) I often wonder if it's flattering or just weird to do that.

 

[Roseweave]

I don't know how common it is and I don't think I mentioned any assumptions that it happens with any particular frequency. But this HAS been my experience, which I think I made clear. Of course there have been exceptions, but generally when I've played in games with males playing female characters, this was the way they were played.



The entire reason I started this thread was specifically because a player that wanted to join one of my games presented a female character with a background of being used as a child sex slave and hating/distrusting men and wanting to make them pay. The player was a male. I make no assumptions about how people play characters, and the entire reason I started this thread was because it sparked some curiosity and I was hopeful that perhaps my experience hasn't been the norm. I'm neither stereotyping nor expecting the worst in people. I'm attempting to create a conversation, and I think I have worked fairly hard to be upfront with my perspective, experience, and biases specifically so that I might challenge them through discourse with others.

It's weird, because most of us would watch a movie or read a comic featuring a character like that, written by a dude. Stuff like the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, X-23 from X-men stuff, Mad Max: Fury Road. When it comes to roleplaying it's a bit more suspect because it's an isolated character that doesn't have a guaranteed narrative like in a regular story. Like that would raise red flags for me tbh. I'd recommend he maybe go with a similar concept but tone it down somehow. Find another slightly more PG form of abuse and make the character less Zealous and more emotionally complex I guess.

 

[Teflon Billy]

The entire reason I started this thread was specifically because a player that wanted to join one of my games presented a female character with a background of being used as a child sex slave and hating/distrusting men and wanting to make them pay. The player was a male. I make no assumptions about how people play characters, and the entire reason I started this thread was because it sparked some curiosity and I was hopeful that perhaps my experience hasn't been the norm. I'm neither stereotyping nor expecting the worst in people. I'm attempting to create a conversation, and I think I have worked fairly hard to be upfront with my perspective, experience, and biases specifically so that I might challenge them through discourse with others.

if it sets your mind at ease, I saw nothing in your original post that I'd call stereotyping or offensive.

 

[Roseweave]

Who else i still listening to motown lmao. I'm on Kool & The Gang's Ladies night now.

 

[Celebrim]

But this HAS been my experience...but generally when I've played in games with males playing female characters, this was the way they were played....The entire reason I started this thread was specifically because a player that wanted to join one of my games presented a female character with a background of being used as a child sex slave and hating/distrusting men and wanting to make them pay. The player was a male.

*sigh*

Well, either I've been very lucky, or you are being very unlucky. It sucks to hear that this is something that has been repeatedly forced on you be experience.

I don't think I would approve a female PC with a background as a child sex slave, especially in the hands of a male player. I can't see anything good coming out of that.

I prefer to think well of people, but then people always do make that hard...

 

[Hawk Diesel]

It's weird, because most of us would watch a movie or read a comic featuring a character like that, written by a dude. Stuff like the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, X-23 from X-men stuff, Mad Max: Fury Road. When it comes to roleplaying it's a bit more suspect because it's an isolated character that doesn't have a guaranteed narrative like in a regular story. Like that would raise red flags for me tbh. I'd recommend he maybe go with a similar concept but tone it down somehow. Find another slightly more PG form of abuse and make the character less Zealous and more emotionally complex I guess.

Yea, my response to him was that I didn't want such themes or that kind of tone for the game I want to run, and asked him to tone it down. It's also a game, and I don't much want to bring things into a game that I have to deal with at work that could trigger me from my own vicarious trauma.

Btw, [MENTION=6806914]Roseweave[/MENTION], I really appreciate your perspective and honesty in this conversation. It's really interesting to read how you've used RPGs to explore and cope, and on the flip side how playing in certain kinds of games or things within those games has triggered you.

[MENTION=264]Teflon Billy[/MENTION] - Thanks, I appreciate that. I try to be very aware of how I come across and to check my own baggage, so I'm glad that it didn't come across that way to everyone.

*sigh*

Well, either I've been very lucky, or you are being very unlucky. It sucks to hear that this is something that has been repeatedly forced on you be experience.

I don't think I would approve a female PC with a background as a child sex slave, especially in the hands of a male player. I can't see anything good coming out of that.

I prefer to think well of people, but then people always do make that hard...

Well, I used to primarily play on PbP boards as a teen because I didn't have anyone in my area that would play, and the one group I did play with wasn't exactly made of the most mature or savory individuals. It wasn't until college that I got to play with decent human beings.