males playing females and the other way around, opinions?

[Diamond Cross]

I gotta ask, for those of you who are creeped out by players playing cross-gendered characters, or find their portrayals unbelievable, are you creeped out when an author portrays a character of opposite sex in their novels? Do you find their characters unbelievable?

Is Harry Potter a creepy/believable character?
What about Usula LeGuin's protagonist Shevek from The Dispossessed?
For those that have read it, what about Amy Shaftoe from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon?
How about Lois Bujold'scharacter Miles Vorkosigan?
Is Galadriel believable/creepy (in a sexual way)?

I mean seriously, are those of you in this camp asserting that any time a man tries to see/portray things from a woman's perspective or vice versa, they've got some weird sex hang up? Or that they do so uniformly unconvincingly? What gives?

No.

Yes.

Never read "The Dispossessed" Nor any of the other books.

What gives?

Social norms, mostly.

Social norms generally tend to define roles for each gender. It would be the same thing if a Caucasian decided to be a black guy for a while, complete with making his skin black with makeup effects, how else do you think it would be?

As for me, I just won't play opposite genders anymore because it's not really playing the female that bothers me, it's all the stupid comments and the other guys role playing to hit on my character.

But when you take on the role of another person, it does really open your eyes to some things. For example, the male's expectation that the only thing that a woman for is for sex. When you experience that for yourself, you really don't know what it's like.

Then it starts giving you the creeps because it's just not normal to be on the receiving end.

 

[Banshee16]

I'm surprised the whole "working out psychological issues" thing even comes out. Players don't need to be playing characters of the other gender to work out psychological issues.

I've had lots of players with whom it was quite obvious they were working out something. Whether it's being an elf, a wizard, the powerful fighter who is the leader of the party, when in real life you've never kissed a girl and are a couch potato.....

I mean....really, it's a fantasy game. When we play, unless we're rolling up stats for ourselves and using the campaign setting "Earth: No slice of magic" we're pretending to be someone else.

There have been posts on these boards talking about how, if we looked critically at events taking place in a game, the average party of adventurers commits X many crimes each session. Well, isn't that in itself a form of psychological issue being worked out?

In the game, we pretend to be something else, and many of the rules for civil discourse and behaviour are taken away. Don't like how that thug is talking to your buddy in a bar? Start a brawl. Trying to stop that robber who's running away with your treasured magic sword? Fireball him. Like the personal possessions of that goblin you see? He's a goblin. Kill him and take his stuff. PCs are rarely punished for many of these acts.....so by extension, the game itself allows us to toy with behaviour that wouldn't be acceptable in the real world. I'm sure for many players there's a ind of catharsis involved in that.

I'm not sure that playing other genders really matters in any way....unless the players are being creepy about it, as stated above. The only time I've seen a DM ban it, the face that he did so was more of an insight into his own personality than anything else. He was also the same guy who I remember called me a retard (in real life) for being polite with a police officer who had stopped me for driving a little fast.........because yelling and swearing at a cop who's about to give you a ticket is just such a brilliant idea So, there were issues with that person, and how they ran their game was just one sign. I think he also had a game where he only wanted to allow players to play male humans or male halflings. That's it. No other choices.

Personally, when I DM, I care less about *what* someone wants to play, than about how they play. If they're going to play a female, or a centaur, or whatever, I'd prefer they at least *try* to RP the character.....rather than just sit there and role dice and walk over to their laptop to play World of Warcraft while we're not in active combats, etc. etc.

Hmm.....guess I just vented about a few issues myself

Banshee

 

[Jeff Wilder]

are you creeped out when an author portrays a character of opposite sex in their novels?

No.

Do you find their characters unbelievable?

Sometimes. That's true for "all their character" for some authors. I do think it's more difficult for most or all authors -- in novels, where there's time for deep characterization -- to create and portray cross-gender characters.

Is Harry Potter a creepy/believable character?

Creepy? No? Believable? No, but it has nothing to do with the character being male (or to do with the series being in the fantasy genre). I think Rowling does a stellar job with Ron (and Hermione).

Is Galadriel believable/creepy (in a sexual way)?

Why do you keep juxtaposing "creepy" and "believable"? Aren't you intending to ask if these characters are "creepy/unbelievable"?

Galadriel is the coolest character in LotR, book and movie. Neither creepy nor unbelievable.

I mean seriously, are those of you in this camp asserting that any time a man tries to see/portray things from a woman's perspective or vice versa, they've got some weird sex hang up?

Has anybody asserted that? And what "camp," exactly? As far as I can tell, nearly every single person who's posted in this thread that doesn't enjoy having men portray women PCs has had distinctly different reasons and feelings on it.

Or that they do so uniformly unconvincingly?

IME, men roleplay female PCs uniformly unconvincingly, and either creep me out or offend me (or both) when doing so. The only exceptions have been farcical games, when everybody is playing primarily for laughs.

I forgot to mention: I would (and am) creeped out and/or offended by cross-gender work in film or theatre. (I am not, some might say oddly, creeped out by flicks like Transamerica or Boys Don't Cry.) I'm an English geek, but I wouldn't have enjoyed most of Shakespeare's work live in Elizabethan England. Of course, his female characters almost uniformly suck anyway.

 

[pawsplay]

A female elf is no more real than a male one. The fact that it has one more component that you do not, and a rather irreverent one, is rather meaningless.

Indeed. My wife played a male dwarf. I can't really figure out how that would be more challenging than playing any other dwarf. In fact, if you assume different sexual behavior by dwarves, playing a dwarf of your own gender might actually trick you into thinking you are more competent than you are. What, exactly, does a "manly" elf look like?

And I don't buy the argument that the distinction is real/unreal. Do people object to ...?

non-police officers playing police officers?
non-criminals playing criminals?
non-superheroes playing superheroes?
suburbanites playing rangers?

Even if you played a police officer as a coffee-swilling, donut-eating bully, portrayed with a total lack of understanding of real police work, I don't think you are likely to raise objections with real police officers the way the male/female thing is presented.

I think, when it comes down to it, many gamers are simply hung up on sexual stereotypes. They are so hung up on gender that it doesn't even occur to them that playing a 17th century peasant involves leaps of understanding way beyond shifting gender. At least you and person of opposite gender X live in the same century! There may not be 17th century peasants around to offend, but you can certainly tweak some history fans by a bad portrayal. Frankly, you would be hard-pressed to roleplay any one real person of your choice.

So I'm going to say the objections are usally based on:
- unjustified beliefs in gender differences so intrinsic they cross species boundaries
- homophobia
- self-consciousness
- sexism

I can't really move away from the idea that one reason someone might object to a man playing a woman, or a woman playing a man, is simply that they believe being less conventionally gendered makes one less of a person.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

[MENTION=15538]pawsplay[/MENTION]; re your closing statement.

Yep. Lots of that about. Sad really.

But I would like to say that this thread has been remarkably friendly and flame-free. Not always the case when something like gender roles comes up on these boards. Well done Enworld. Calm, reasonable discussion for the win.

 

[Dragonblade]

I don't allow cross-gender PCs for two simple reasons.

1) I have had immature players in the past (both male and female, incidentally) who played opposite gender just to play up the most horrible chauvinistic stereotype they could and I'd like to avoid that in the future.

2) Even if you are a mature player, not having to remember which gender a PC is in relation to the player simply makes it easier for me to keep things straight at the table. No pun intended. Since I'm the DM and I do all the work, I value anything that makes my life easier. Sorry, but there really is no compelling argument a player can make against this.

There is nothing any player can possibly add to my game by playing an opposite gender PC that outweighs the convenience it affords me not to have to track PC vs. player gender.

And thats pretty much it, really. Expediency and a desire to head off problems.

 

[Subtlepanic]

Skipping pages here, apologies.

Most girls I've played with have created male characters. Why is this?

Is it because they're playing a "man's game"? They want to fit in?
Is it because they want to fulfil some sort of macho empowerment fantasy?
Do girls find female medieval heroes boring, and want something more traditional?
If you pitch "medieval fantasy" to most people, do they naturally think of male archetypes?

 

[JustKim]

Skipping pages here, apologies.

Most girls I've played with have created male characters. Why is this?

Is it because they're playing a "man's game"? They want to fit in?

I don't think the way you've phrased it is especially accurate but you're on the right track there. There's a fear that coming into a man's game as a woman you will be playing the role of the woman, and many women would rather shrug off those expectations, that social pressure, and play a character who's a blank slate, a character who's technically male but essentially genderless.

In my experience once everybody is comfortable together, that defensive barrier breaks down and you see more female characters. But depending on the group, that barrier may need to stay up forever.

 

[Banshee16]

I think, when it comes down to it, many gamers are simply hung up on sexual stereotypes. They are so hung up on gender that it doesn't even occur to them that playing a 17th century peasant involves leaps of understanding way beyond shifting gender. At least you and person of opposite gender X live in the same century! There may not be 17th century peasants around to offend, but you can certainly tweak some history fans by a bad portrayal. Frankly, you would be hard-pressed to roleplay any one real person of your choice.

That's an excellent point. The book Pillars of the Earth is a real eye opener, with respect to showing some of nitty gritty of what life was/may have been like. And the differences in psychology between people now and then were likely very significant....much moreso than gender.

The culture was very very different from now. Life was very cheap. Heck, something like reading and writing is a simple example. Back then, what.....5% of the world could read and write, compared to now? That has significant implications for how people even think, or process information.

I will say that some things can be kind of....weird with players running characters of the other gender. As others have commented, if it's a guy portraying a female PC as wanton, or seducing other characters or things like that, then yeah, it can be a bit uncomfortable. But I really haven't run into scenarios like that.

Banshee

 

[InVinoVeritas]

I play about 50/50 (with the occasional "other" thrown in, like a Drazi or a robot).

Most of the time, it makes no difference whatsoever. It's just a character concept, and it's really just flavor. However, once it was really interesting.

I played a female character in Exalted. I designed this happy-go-lucky gadabout leech who was a genius in getting out of situations scot-free. At the last minute, I thought the character should be female (the cute redhead named Wee Jas I mentioned elsewhere).

Well, the first thing that happened is that Jas met another PC, a faerie who manifested as male and dazzlingly beautiful. A couple die rolls later, and blam, Jas was smitten.

Boy, did the faerie regret it.

I played it more as an innocent crush than anything, where she always made sure he was comfortable, confided all sorts of inane things to him, and always ended up on his team when the party split.

Then, she ended up getting separated from the party, cornered by a bunch of other faeries who wanted to do him harm. They bullied her, promising her anything if she would just betray him. What they didn't realize was that although she couldn't fight back, she was still a master of escape. She negotiated a charm so that she could always see through her paramour's glamour. Then, she betrayed him... into the hands of some death lords who owed her a favor. They simply returned him to her.

Jas ran up to him, threw her arms around him, and gave him a big kiss. "Miss me?" she asked.

He shuddered, "...I promise I'll hit next time."

His faerie foes were livid. They promised to destroy her life forever. She simply looked through their glamour and waited for them to do anything real. They never could conceive of doing so.

It didn't end there. He tried to impress upon Jas about the horror of the faeries, and drew a picture showing her as completely and utterly mangled in a hundred different ways. She looked at the picture, smirked, and drew him a picture of a snowflake. He got the picture.

Jas and her paramour separated for a while. Faeries became a regular part of her life. She became a complete scourge to faeries. She learned how to disintegrate them with cold iron, and developed a liking to "faerie dust." She became known as the mysterious Iron Maiden, one of the greatest enemies to all faeries.

When she met up with him again, he looked at her, horrified at what she had become. She just batted her eyelashes and said, "Don't worry, you're safe. I like you."
"You know, I also have allies that are faeries. You haven't been killing them, too, have you?"
"Mmmhmm..." she replied, noncommitally.

The romance went from him being in control to him not daring to cross her.

This would have NEVER played out this way, if Jas had been male. Sometimes, gender does matter, and creates for more interesting stories.