Playing cross-gender PCs

[davidschwartznz]

Which song? Haven't heard many, though.

'All This Stuff Takes Time' from Mystic Journey (1996).

Bill died of a heart attack
Beating up his wife
Now he's come back as a lesbian
Who's looking for his wife
Who is now a psychoanalyst
Who likes to work with plants
Except of course on weekends
When she likes to wear the pants
She's a leather goddess minister
Who works with the confined
Don't take much to realize
That all this stuff takes time

That was the character concept - 'Bill died of a heart attack beating up his wife'. Bill was perhaps the most fun WoD character I've played, although he went Spectre relatively quickly (which was part of the fun).

If I ever play a game where the characters are mediums, I definitely want to play Bill's wife.

Come to think of it, I have actually played a female character in a Werewolf game that only lasted one session. My advice to everyone: never design a werewolf character after watching Clueless.

 

[Lasher Dragon]

My advice to everyone: never design a werewolf character after watching Clueless.

 

[John Morrow]

Seeing so many posts that think it is gay (by I think you mean homosexual) just because someone pretends to be a different gender in a game where you are playing at being someone you are not. I remind you that this is a game, that you are suppose to be pretending to be someone that you are not, that you are suppose to pretend to a completely different person then you are.

Later, you go on to write...

I know what it looks like to me- these people that object to someone playing a different gender, it looks like they have some major insecurity in their own sexuality.

If you don't want people making a psychological diagnosis on why you want to play a character of the opposite sex, then don't make a psychological diagnosis of everyone who objects to someone playing the opposite sex. It cuts both ways. If you get to play armchair psychologist with people you don't agree with and make less-than-flattering assessments of their psyches, then don't complain when other people do the same thing to you.

Perhaps you should do some soul searching if you take offense to this observation.

Unless anyone here is a psychologist or psychaiatrist qualified to make a diagnosis over the Internet based on postings to a web message board, perhaps everyone should stop trying to tell other people what really motivates them deep down inside.

 

[der_kluge]

Folks, I'd like to not get this thread closed.

That said, this thread is intended for people who play cross-gender PCs, and their experiences doing that, and why they feel compelled to do that. There shouldn't be a flamewar involved in any of that.

Thank you

 

[Desdichado]

Perhaps you should do some soul searching if you take offense to this observation.

Or if you take so much offense from other people's positions on this question that you need to make this "observation" in the first place.

 

[der_kluge]

As to the character who posted wanted female-specific character concepts.

I think it's a perfectly valid question.

This has been raised before, specifically by Teflon Billy, and I think it's a perfectly valid question worth exploring.

For starters, I don't think there are many concepts which work only as women, but I do believe that there are some.

A lot of it, I feel, has to do with the genre of the setting, and how realistic it is. There are certain bsaeline assumptions made in D&D settings that women are equal. They are from a mechanical standpoint, and there aren't any restrictions based on sex. So, a female can just as easily be a half-orc barbarian as a man can. She can be just as strong, or just as ugly. I think that's the way it should be.

Our society teaches us that women can (and should) be everything that a man is. And I think that's the right attitude to have. Certainly not all countries feel that way, and certainly even the U.S. didn't necessarily have the opinion pre-women's suffrage. But I digress.

Anyway, according to the RAW, there's no reason why a female character would work better for any "concept". To consider playing a female persona, one has to look beyond the rules. Certainly, "elf sorcerer" does not automatically imply a female. Nor does any other race/class combination. No, there has to be some sort of role-playing or background reason to play a female character.

Just as there are stereotypes that can be played upon with male characters, there are stereotypes that can be played upon with female characters. Certainly we've known women who were "trampy" and so as cliche as that might be, it's certainly a viable, realistic option that could be explored, though it can end up causing problems if done poorly. Another might be a matronly figure, or a mother-figure, perhaps as a druid, or cleric. This one could easily be done as a male, I agree. I don't necessarily agree that males can pull off the "trampy" stereotype as easily, due to social norms. When was the last time you heard of a guy "sleeping his way to the top?" I never have.

Furthermore, there might be a background reason to play a female. It's hard to play a male character who is a princess. So, one interesting concept that could be explored is that you are a princess, with no hopes of ever becoming ruler - you set out with adventure in mind. And maybe you have to constantly hide your appearance so as to not be recognized. This might work with a second-born Prince as well, but there might be other factors which would make the princess character more interesting to you.

There are numerous subtle background and role-playing differences which might make more sense as a female. For example, my last character had a quilt that she treasured. It was a quilt her mother had made for her. But her mother died during childbirth, and she never knew her mother. So, this quilt was a valued treasure that she had of her mother, and she cherised it more than any other thing. While you *could* create the same story for a male character, I have a harder time imagining a guy walking around with this quilt. Again, social norms. Guys are expecting to be stronger, tougher, and to "get over it" more than women.

So, I feel like there are certain aspects and conditions which are unique to women that are acceptable to society, that are less acceptable when assigned to men.

Feel free to disagree with me. These are my opinions.

Though certainly many of my female characters had no reason to be female at all. The starting concept I might have is vague, but when I placed the "F" in the sex column, I consider it from the female perspective, and the character's demeanor might be different. So, for me, it presents new role-playing challenges and opportunities that I might not have otherwise.

 

[fusangite]

For starters, I don't think there are many concepts which work only as women, but I do believe that there are some.

Isn't this completely contingent on setting? I'm not sure we can make any generalizations about this question that are not setting-specific.

Personally, I would have a great deal of trouble suspending disbelief about any setting that did not have real and meaningful gender distinctions.

That stated, one can certainly find premodern, and especially pre-literate societies that mapped sex to gender at a rate of much less than 1:1. For instance, Sioux society was highly gendered but if a woman wanted to be a warrior, she simply had to change her gender to male; it was not expected that everyone would choose a gender role that corresponded to their sex.

The problem with "gender" as defined in D&D is that it assumes the tight coupling of sex and gender we have in modern society. Today, if someone's gender and sex don't correspond, we perform surgery on them so they do. While some pre-modern societies had the same feelings we do about sex and gender needing to match, some did not. And unfortunately, the the phraseology of D&D obscures this possibility.

Even if societies we might view as sexually reactionary, like Counter-Reformation Catholic Europe, accommodations were made for people whose sex and gender didn't match, such as Catalina Erauso, the Peruvian muleteer who was granted permission by the pope to live as a man so she could continue running mules and dueling with men (both things at which she was much better than any man).

EDIT: And having sex with women -- she was apparently pretty good at that too.

 

[Wombat]

*Cough* Richard the Lion Hearted *cough, cough*

It happened often enough, several noted kings, a number of popes... But it tended to be people in power who could get away with it... And the Byzantines had a... reputation.

The Auld Grump

Actually, the whole bit about Richard is based on faulty modern interpretations of a single manuscript. There is nothing from his time that points towards (or, for that matter, away from) him being gay, any more than for his supposed partner, Philip Augustus. The two of them were said to "share the same bed", but, in context, this merely shows friendship and trust -- most nobles crowded several to a bed and to offer to share your bed was not considered a sexual come on in the 12th century, but rather a sign of hospitality.

 

[apesamongus]

This is how I've responded to this question in the past.

 

[Torm]

Okay. I'll just flat out say it. I like to play female characters because I wish sometimes that I were female. Which is not to say I'm gay - if I were female, I'd be a lesbian. Women, in my experience, make up the best and the worst people can be, the most beautiful and the ugliest, the most divine and the dag-nastiest evil - and sometimes, that is the same woman, at different times of the day. They are interesting. With rare exceptions, mostly to the negative, guys are boring for being guys. They may be interesting for their place in life, for being President or Pope, for example - but a female President or Pope would be more interesting. She'd have the interesting office, AND she'd be female.

I readily accept, in real life, that there is no point in trying to be something you are not and cannot be. I am a man, and on the one occasion I was in drag (a school theme day, no less) I was a damned ugly woman. (Though I did manage to convince my 1st period class that I was a sub, before the real teacher showed up.) If reincarnation exists (or reintarnation, as it is known to people from the Ozarks ), and we get to choose, THEN maybe I'll worry about it. But for now, I am a man.

Some people would like to be elves, or vampires, or dragons, or unicorns, but they accept that in real life, that's fantasy. (And some people don't accept that, and act a little bonkers.) But, in the game, where we're all pretending to be something we aren't, anyway, they can be. And sometimes I get to be a woman. And I am pretty good at it, if I say so myself - it may sound a little creepy, but I have studied women. I really don't understand why that would be an issue. I can understand some people might not like it if someone is playing a woman as a caricature or just flat WRONG, but they would have the same issue with someone playing a rapping Dwarf in the Forgotten Realms named Eminem, wouldn't they? Is this really about gender? Or is it about bad roleplaying?