MrBunny,
That kind of difference is what i think would be good for the group and the game as a whole, she probably cried because many comments were usually very very rough and while you feel just that you were more of yourself she might have thought you were being more of a rude, mean or whatever the comments would entice.
Since studying some gender subjects and reading articles and books I have more conscience of how woman get their way into the game and how male are the dominant figures, i am thinking of representations only by the way, for example, if you look at Drows, they say its society is matriarchal and still, most references we see and pictures on 2nd edition complete drow had males on it, the 3rd edition books have man msot of the time, the occasional woman are either nearly naked with a godly appearence or are antropomorphic creatures like a sphinx, medusas and the like, this is prejudice we perpetrate.
Woman are not only a part of the players, they are mostly not a part of the game itself, the represenations, and we don't event think about it. this does not mean we are all sexist, but that we do roll on with the idea that woman can't be strong, that woman are fragile and the like, by short we make rpgs a world full of man and woman wearing magical bikinis for +13 armor bonus, roghly equivalent to a +5 full plate, most drawings you see on the rpg books and market support this way too.
Right now I am working with soem friends into making an RPG organization untied to government that will focus both on the potential of rpg a a tool for learning and also, in its side as a game, we will want to have people to know how the patterns they make into the game usually reinforce some kind of atitude and how they need to have a knowledge of that to change it, even if little.
A friend of mine has gone as far as making we roll for sexuality and sex when we make a character, one friend who joined his game last week is now a bisexual male iaido style fighter. This will be interestig because he is mostly homophobic an besides, we make it clear that this is where he has a chance of leaving prejudices and learn that beign different is not being unnatural or freaky, it is just being oneself.
That said, this is in an all straight group made out of males, but we sure are not eh standard when it comes to how we think about prejudices and we try to take them out of the game, our talk, and our lives.
Sicne I wandered into a gender, feminism and chauvinism problem, feel free not to answer, I don't want to make a flame war of this, but I do think D&D as a whole is a man's game simply because it is a chauvinist game more often than not. Sorry if this became a sexist post, still lvoe D&D.
