male playing female PC

[fusangite]

you miight wanna check your stats on this one. i know for years columbus ohio held this distinction.

columbus had: the largest all gay softball league in the world
the biggets gay chorus per capita
more gay bars per capita than even san francisco
"pink pages" a gay version of the yellow pages, was bigger than any other city on earth.

heck, at one point while i was living there a "summit" was held and members of san franciscos gay community showed up to learn how to deal with problems from the stronger col.s gay community.

if you ever get the chance, the columbus ohio gay chorus rocks! some great nights of entertainment there, and thew after parties ROCK! [/B]

Well, every federal election, we get these stats in our local media. It'll be about two years before we get another election and thereby the next set of updates in these stats from the media. Our demographic census data breakdowns are expected from the 2001 census soon so maybe I'll be able to give you more current stats soon.

It may also be that Columbus has indeed surpassed us and the media here are just chauvinistically hanging on to outdated stats. It may also be that we're engaged in an apples & oranges debate because different percentages of our total urban areas' populations are within the core municipality. For instance, Vancouver's per capita gay population stats may be upwardly skewed because the gay community is concentrated in the City of Vancouver, which comprises only 25% of the Greater Vancouver population.

Or it may be that Vancouver is still closer than Columbus to being North America's gay utopia.

OK -- back to the gender debate:

To continue to respond to those disagreeing with me on the original subject of this thread, as in Al's latest post, seasong said it best: I am offering useful generalizations not true generalizations. I think I've repeatedly indicated that I believe female behaviour and motivation to be more diverse than male behaviour and motivations.

And yes, I acknowledge that there exist amongst women all types of people. I just find it distasteful and unpleasant to have men playing extremely masculine women or comic book charicatures of women even though such women exist. Thus, I think the "everyone's different" doctrine is insufficient justification for prohibiting GMs from making decisions to prevent people harming suspension of disbelief.

Finally, Gez's assertion that gender differences should be treated identically to all other differences between groups of people (such as differences of height) is not supported by any credible academic work. Read a Women's Studies text book if you want to understand why your suggestion is ridiculous.

 

[alsih2o]

I just find it distasteful and unpleasant to have men playing extremely masculine women or comic book charicatures of women even though such women exist.

lots of d.m.'s have things they ban, i think part of the problem and disagreement here may be the rather narrow focus of the question.

i would ask fusangite and tb (and all other defenders of female/male banning) what other things they ban in their games?

if you wish to avoid these stereotypes even tho they exist what other stereotypes do you refuse, if any?

the silent brooding fighter? the overly intellectual mage? the attention hungry bard? trolls who live under bridges?

i just think there may be a pattern in what is banned from certain games that would help to shoarten the gaps betwixt you folks.

(edit: and fusangite, i have heard about 7-8 of "the worldest highest gay population" cities. i think a lot of that is posturing and trying to draw people like me who thrive on d.i.n.k.'s i should have been more clear.)

 

[Gez]

Finally, Gez's assertion that gender differences should be treated identically to all other differences between groups of people (such as differences of height)

Thank you for putting words in my mouth.

 

[Pielorinho]

(edit: and fusangite, i have heard about 7-8 of "the worldest highest gay population" cities. i think a lot of that is posturing and trying to draw people like me who thrive on d.i.n.k.'s i should have been more clear.)

Me too! Olympia, WA; Boston; San Francisco; New Orleans; Asheville, NC; and now Columbus and Vancouver. Absents cites, I think we can dismiss this as urban legend material.

I'm still baffled that someone would allow (for example) me to play a male from a hunter-gatherer mountain-dwelling clan before they'd allow me to play a woman intellectual who lived in a city. My mindset is going to have much more in common with the woman than with the hunter-gatherer male; my experiences, philosophy, dialect, even attitudes toward sex are going to be much more similar.

Obviously, you can prohibit whatever you want in your own games. But prohibiting genderbending would be a "DANGER WILL ROBINSON!" sign to me, enough of one that I'd not play in the campaign.

Daniel

 

[Piratecat]

but is that including San Francisco and whatever that Boston women's college is?

You mean Wellesley, where my wife went? *grin*

Remember, folks, it's an interesting topic that people tend to feel quite strongly about. Let's keep this friendly.

 

[fusangite]

i would ask fusangite and tb (and all other defenders of female/male banning) what other things they ban in their games?

I cannot think of anything else I routinely prohibit in all my games. Generally, I have long lists of flavour-based prohibitions which are unique to each campaign I run. About the only universal ban I have is against the Monk character class because none of my games are set in a fantasy Asian environment.

I simply haven't found anything that raises a red flag anywhere near as reliably as men playing female characters.

(edit: and fusangite, i have heard about 7-8 of "the worldest highest gay population" cities. i think a lot of that is posturing and trying to draw people like me who thrive on d.i.n.k.'s i should have been more clear.)

I never said that Vancouver had the highest gay population just that it had the densest concentration -- the peninsula on which downtown Vancouver is located is extremely densely populated and has an incredibly high percentage of gay residents. If you actually look at the stats we are respectively citing, we aren't actually contradicting eachother -- we're just employing different pieces of information to suggest that our cities are very gay-friendly.

 

[carpedavid]

To the original poster: I let male players play female characters all the time, and I've never had a problem. Nor have I ever had a problem with female players playing male characters. Give the fella a shot and see how it works out.

In my games, people have had more trouble playing bards than opposite genders.

-DMG

 

[seasong]

You mean Wellesley, where my wife went? *grin*

Remember, folks, it's an interesting topic that people tend to feel quite strongly about. Let's keep this friendly.

I hope my post about Boston didn't seem too unfriendly .

 

[Henry]

I have a male player who consistently likes to play female characters, and play them well; at least to the point of them being indistuishable from the other characters in the game. His reasons are his own, but he does well, and keeps stereotypes out of it, so I see no need to ban.

I've taken his lead and the last character I created was a female halfling druid. Unfortunately, the campaign did not last long, but no one took me to task over it; the issue of my beliefs on the conservation of nature and wild animals we ran across was far more controversial than my character's gender. I am not as politically "green" in real life, and it was interesting butting heads with two of the other players over their characters wanting to kill everything that moved and burn the whole forest down, to claim the land they owned.

If the character can be played without grating discrepancies, or without stereotyping, then I've never seen harm in it. Like so many things (sexual connotation, rape, gore, explicit depravity, etc.) it depends on the group, and the comfort level of its constituents.

 

[Buttercup]

I presently have one male player who is playing a female character, and it's a total nonissue for everyone around the table. She is a human druid, who will only sleep indoors if it is absolutely necessary. There isn't any hint of domanatrix, or any other creepy stereotype in the character.

However, many issues that have come up on this board have made me believe that I must have unusually mature (or sane) players.

As for whether or not I would gender bend myself, were I a player, probably not. I haven't yet, but I don't get all that many opportunities to play instead of DM. And why wouldn't I? I can't really say. In thinking about this issue, I realized that in all the years I've been playing computer games, I have never played a male character, except in the one game where I wasn't given a choice--Planescape: Torment. And it really pissed me off that the designers were so restrictive. It made me feel like they didn't really want my business. Yeah, yeah. I hear you saying that I over-reacted. No doubt you're correct. Nonetheless, I guess that my gender is so deeply ingrained into my whole frame of reference that I don't consider changing it during role play. Maybe I'm nutty, or maybe I'm not that unusual. Dunno. It's not that I mind if other players do it, though I suppose I would be repulsed by the whole Drow-dominatrix thing that Teflon Billy and Fusangite are complaining about.

Well, there's a whole lot of post for not much insight. Sorry 'bout that.