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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Al" data-source="post: 281397" data-attributes="member: 2486">The 'anti-cross-gender' brigade seem to have about threearguments, but none of them is terribly convincing: Stereotyping, Weaker Roleplaying and No DifferenceStereotyping Now, the first major objection that they raised was that gender stereotypes would predominate.  There were accusations that most male players play female characters as lesbians or whores.  However, one must bear two things in mind.  Firstly, again, is this the fault of the notion, or of the roleplayer.  It is perfectly understandable that some may have reservations about people playing stereotypes, but then these are likely to be faults inherent in the gamer.  It may be therefore advisable to suggest that weaker roleplayers do not play cross-gender characters, but a blanket ban (unless you have a very poor group indeed) does not seem the solution.Secondly, the notion of racial stereotypes has been discussed.  How many dwarven fighters have you seen?  Or halfling rogues?  Or half-orc tanks? And so on ad infinitum.  If you ban cross-gender characters because you feel that it encourages stereotyping, surely one must also ban cross-racial characters.  Granted, there is no one 'to be offended' but the fact remains that this argument alone is specious (and the above argument only stands if you have truly awful players, and gamers of opposite gender to be offended.)Weaker Roleplaying Perhaps a more sound point.  The fundamental premise is that it is more difficult to play a characters of a different gender to yourself than one of the same gender.This is true.However, it is also true that playing characters with radically different personalities is more difficult than playing 'yourself'.  It is more difficult to get into the mindset of a different race to oneself.  It is very difficult indeed to play characters of higher Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma than oneself.  So the logical extension of the 'it's harder to play cross-gender' characters is that players should have characters which are nigh identical to themselves, as this enables them to get 'into the mindset'.  This is clearly an untenable position.  Roleplaying is about fun and escapism, and part of both of these are in playing characters different to you.  If this is more challenging, and perhaps makes for worse roleplaying, so be it- as long as the players are all enjoying themselves.  This is a game, not a performance.No Difference The weakest of the triad.  The argument goes that a female character is no different, or of such insignificant difference, that it is unnecessary to run 'the risk' of cross-gender characters.It could be argued that in a pure 100% dungeon hack campaign, that gender would have minimal impact (in fact, even here it has some mechanical impact, due to height and weight considerations.)  However, in a roleplaying campaign this is quite untrue.  For one, this is directly contradictory to the second main argument: if there is 'No Difference' in mindset, then how can playing a cross-gender character be any more difficult?  However, since I have already conceded the second point, it is this which has the problem.  Repeated psychological studies have shown that the fundamental mindset is, broadly speaking, different.Furthermore, social considerations make different characters a totally different experience.  In a pseudo-medieval world, the attitude towards female characters would be very different to male characters, and the cultural taboos imposed upon the gender could make quite a significant differences.  This is entirely ignoring the possibility of romance...Simply put, the anti-cross-gender advocates have no clear and solid argument.  I sympathise that they have had bad experiences with their groups, but this is still no reason to impose blanket bans on cross-gender characters, and it is unfortunate that their experiences have warped their views on the topic.  More sensible than a blanket ban would be to veto individual character archetypes (or stereotypes?) just as one would with same-gender characters.  The litmus test has to be thus: ask yourself whether you would ban the character concept if it were played by a player of the same gender.  If the answer is still yes, then you have probably judged that individual character concept to be unworthy; if the answer is no, then banning it as a cross-gender character is totally irrational.  Opposing individual concepts is sensible and constructive DMing; opposing all cross-gender characters is authoritarian and narrow-minded.</blockquote>

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