feminist roleplaying

[Gwazi Magnum]

Vilageidiotx said
I think letting people choose their own way of doing it makes the most sense. Equality should be equal in the sense of equal rights and access to choices, not equal in the sense that you are forced to fit some shallow abstract that somebody else invented.

Agreed.

[Entropsy]

This is a topic that really bugs me when I rp.

I think a lot of women play as femme-male characters as opposed to female characters--which I have no problem with--but there's usually not a lot of girls...I wonder why? I mean, I do it too, but I kind of wish more people played as women.

For the same reasons I always want to see more POC characters in roleplays, but I'm conflicted about playing one myself. I mean, I could never understand what a person of color goes through, so would it be right for me to play as one? Isn't that a bit disrespectful? A lot of roleplays are really, really whitewashed, though, and they need more racial diversity.

[Entropsy]

Sorry ignore. >>'

[Vilageidiotx]

Entropsy said
This is a topic that really bugs me when I rp.I think a lot of women play as femme-male characters as opposed to female characters--which I have no problem with--but there's usually not a lot of girls...I wonder why? I mean, I do it too, but I kind of wish more people played as women.For the same reasons I always want to see more POC characters in roleplays, but I'm conflicted about playing one myself. I mean, I could never understand what a person of color goes through, so would it be right for me to play as one? Isn't that a bit disrespectful? A lot of roleplays are really, whitewashed, though, and they need more racial diversity.

"I could never understand" is sort of an empty phrase, like saying that everybody is so fantastically different that empathy is impossible. I think ideas like this, whereas they may have good intentions, tend to feed into the defacto segregation of society and worsens the racial situation for everyone. At the end of the day, people are people.

You might never succeed in understanding, but it is not wrong to try, and writing characters (so long as they are honest and well thought out, not caricatures) that exist outside of your own experiences can better your understanding of the human condition.

That being said, you don't want to approach things from the position of pop-sociology. That will just create caricatures. People are people, each with their own struggles, their owns strengths, and their own personal weaknesses. If you write a character from the perspective that their only personality trait and condition is being oppressed... yeh, you're going to end up with a disrespectful representation. You'll create an image of helpless child-beings being abused by the big, strong white man. History is much more complex, and humanity much more nuanced, than being just the stories of the oppressors and the oppressed.

...also, since i've spent the last few years RPing a series of characters spanning across Africa in Precipice of War, I think I might have the least whitewashed RPing history of anyone here. That is coming from a poor white boy from the midwest.

[Gwazi Magnum]

Entropsy said
This is a topic that really bugs me when I rp.I think a lot of women play as femme-male characters as opposed to female characters--which I have no problem with--but there's usually not a lot of girls...I wonder why? I mean, I do it too, but I kind of wish more people played as women.For the same reasons I always want to see more POC characters in roleplays, but I'm conflicted about playing one myself. I mean, I could never understand what a person of color goes through, so would it be right for me to play as one? Isn't that a bit disrespectful? A lot of roleplays are really, whitewashed, though, and they need more racial diversity.

I second everything Villageidiot (That's a really misleading name for you btw dude) said.

But I think it's also an element of that it's a very immersive, engaging and demand kind of RP in terms of being the character, playing them out etc.
For example with myself, although I play 50/50 male and female characters to things such as video games, D&D etc. I find my forum characters tend to be majority male.

Because you're not just doing outward actions and fighting stuff, you are going into the mind and basically writing everything they think and feel. Which might draw people off who feel they can't do the other sex justice, or may quite simply just be fine expressing such things from their own sex. I mean personally, now that I kind of noticed this exception to the rule of mine with forum RP's I will make an effort to play more female characters. But odds are I'll just end up playing them the same way I do my male characters, cause whenever I make a character I just make them as people. I try not to think about "Their male/female therefore X". I just go "This is a person, this is the way this person behaves and acts".

[DELETED324324]

I try to avoid playing another gender or race in RP's due to the sole fact is all you hear is gender or race stereotypes. You don't hear about what it's really like to be in their shoes.