Cross Dressing: Playing a Different Gender
Written by James
May 24, 2008
When creating a character for a role-playing game, don’t feel that you’re limited to the same gender of character that you belong to. Choosing to play a character of either gender, regardless of your own, is perfectly acceptable.
In fact, many players can create characters of the opposite sex and play them extremely well. Some players can play characters of the opposite sex so well that it’s difficult to tell the player’s true gender.
There is one problem with playing a character of a gender not your own: you aren’t intimately familiar with that gender.
Men may struggle with how much feminism to inject in a female character or writing on specific issues women face. Women may have a hard time describing male actions appropriately, because they are unfamiliar with size and breadth of a man’s body.
Research. Find out how much a man can lift. Learn about pregnancy. Become familiar with the process of shaving a beard. Read about the female sense of scent. The more you know about the opposite sex, the better you can believably play a character of that gender.
And if you do see a player giving another gender the old college try, be forgiving.
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In games that encourage us to imagine ourselves as elves, werewolves and super-intelligent shades of the color blue, why does playing a different gender invoke such contention? Unlike aliens, ratlings or people living in 8th C. Norway, we actually have access to people of the opposite gender to talk with and get advice from. If you have a question or concern, ask someone that you trust.
That being said, I think that roleplaying across gender is much more about what makes us the same: we all think, love, need to eat, want to learn, and so on. Thinking about those things from another point of view is the core or role-playing after all.
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@ Sean - I’ve noticed the issues cropping up more when men take on female roles. People seem to think it’s odd or that the man has some inside wish to be gay or that a man couldn’t pull off a female character.
What’s even more strange, if you ask me, is the number of women who feel comfortable in male personas lol.
You bring up interesting points, definitely, and I appreciate your thoughts.
See, I will never understand why my old RPG group teased me about wanting to play a female. Pixie. Sorceress.
Shit, never mind.
Seriously, though, in a non-RP setting, I wrote as a woman on pregnancy and childbirth issues for years. It’s kind of fun, crossing that line, but at the end of the day Sean’s right - we’re more alike than we are different.
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