Gender

Started by Jetfire May 16th, 2016 6:54 PM
  • 1906 views
  • 24 replies

Jetfire

أربعة ملوك السماوية

Age 31
Male
???
Seen September 23rd, 2022
Posted March 22nd, 2021
354 posts
15.8 Years
I've always wondered, why do some individuals pick characters outside their gender? I see it all the time. In Pokemon, in Destiny, and in various of other games too. I've also noticed a few members putting one gender on their forum profile but they're in reality the other.

I'm in no way saying that they're not allowed to do so, but I am curious on their reason behind it. So, what's up guys? What am I missing out on lol

Her

Age 29
Seen 4 Hours Ago
Posted 4 Days Ago
expression of gender isn't rigid and all-defining of a person's 'true' gender lol

OuterTsuchinoko

Age 31
Male
New Jersey
Seen November 19th, 2018
Posted July 13th, 2018
580 posts
7.2 Years
Ever since I was little I always liked picking a girl in games, and girls in various media usually were my favorite characters. I like female characters a lot. Maybe it's also because I have liked a lot of girly things since I was a kid too, irl I like to dress as a chick too sometimes. It's hard to explain exactly why I like picking the opposite gender, I just do.

Sometimes I like a change of pace. I'm not going to be one of those people who calls themselves gender-fluid simply because despite occasionally loving things that are primarily target towards women (RWBY, Sailor Moon, etc), I tend to gravitate towards things that have more masculine tones (Metal music, shonen anime, DOOM, etc.)

That being said, sometimes I choose the opposite gender because I either a) want a change of pace or b) want something I like looking at. Take Skyrim or Fallout for example: third person view often makes you look at the back part of a character, including their ass....so if I'm going to be staring at someone's ass for hours on end, might as well be the ass of something I'm attracted to.

Fallout 4, as much as I haven't given it much of a chance because of certain gameplay changes, I picked the female character because a) the game seemed to be railroading me to pick the guy so I decided LOLNO and b) I just think the female character was better acted.

noa

sleeping cutie

Age 30
Female
Seattle
Seen November 29th, 2020
Posted July 20th, 2020
5,474 posts
7.6 Years
Because sometimes I want to see my cute male character run around and do stuff? It means nothing to me, lol. Like people said before, it's a character, not me.
I choose male characters sometimes because 1. My gender isn't exactly binary 2. I prefer the male character 3. I just.... feel like it. No reason.

Ivysaur

Grass dinosaur extraordinaire

Age 32
He/him
Madrid, Europe
Seen 1 Day Ago
Posted April 5th, 2023
21,076 posts
16.2 Years
A couple days ago, I picked up Xenoblade X. In the character selection screen, I looked at the male options and I didn't find any of them aesthetically pleasing, so I checked the girls instead. If I'm going to be controlling a character for the entirety of the game, I'm going to pick one I don't find ugly. How is my IRL gender supposed to matter here, exactly?

kendypls

Currently playing: Expert Emerald (Casual)

Age 28
Male
UK
Seen February 10th, 2020
Posted July 4th, 2017
252 posts
7.1 Years
I like to play as a girl on most games, girls usually look better and I know for sure in runescape that people speak to you with a nicer tone. Plus, I'm a guy IRL, video games give me a chance to play a new role, and I find role-playing really fun!
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Margaery Tyrell

Growing Strong

Age 24
Female
USA
Seen February 28th, 2018
Posted November 27th, 2016
335 posts
10.4 Years
Universe made a very good point in their post, because while I do identify with the binary male sex I often feel much more feminine in my gender - games allow me to express that, which I don't really get to do irl.

And because the girl's armor and equipment is usually more cute so that factors in as well.
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R O S E
Age 28
Female
Scotland
Seen May 16th, 2017
Posted January 7th, 2017
283 posts
7.6 Years
I always pick male characters in games, female characters tend to be very stereotypically feminine and kinda lame, ive always been a bit of a "tom boy" so I dont really identify with them too much, plus when theres customisation i'm way better at making good looking guys than women.
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PastelPhoenix

How did this even happen?

Age 28
Male
Seen November 20th, 2022
Posted January 26th, 2022
452 posts
7.2 Years
Ehh, I'll play female characters just kind of to mix things up. Sometimes I just want to play a female character, especially in things like RPGs. Plus sometimes a certain gender gets the short end of the stick in customization options (Pokemon X and Y come to mind).

Palamon

Silence is Purple.

Age 26
he/him
Snezhnaya, Teyvat.
Seen 8 Hours Ago
Posted 20 Hours Ago
7,789 posts
14.3 Years
Because gender =/= sex.

Jetfire

أربعة ملوك السماوية

Age 31
Male
???
Seen September 23rd, 2022
Posted March 22nd, 2021
354 posts
15.8 Years
to avoid echoing anyone else i'll say: because gender and sex are two different things.
Because gender =/= sex.
I suppose I get where you two are coming from but let's try to avoid the whole "sex and gender" talk. I was just asking what are people's reasons. Nothing serious or in depth.

Keiran

[b]Rock Solid[/b]

Age 31
New Jersey
Seen March 14th, 2022
Posted July 25th, 2018
2,441 posts
12.1 Years
When it comes to MMORPGs I usually always chose which ever gender had the most aesthetically pleasing animations and looked best in whatever armor was appropriate for the character. Back in the days of WoW, almost all of my characters were male. Female humans had fantastic casting animations that were vastly superior to the males, so my casters were female humans while my melee characters were all male. I couldn't stand the male night elf casting animations AT ALL, so my Druid had to be female.

I never really thought of characters as male or female. If each gender had 10 different body type selections, you might as well just combine them into 1 gender with 20 body type selections because that's how I think.

The only reason I choose male characters most of the time is because I prefer to play characters that look like me so I'll almost always play human races as well. If I can't play human, then I choose the next best thing. I'm pretty boring when it comes to character customization; cause the more I feel the character represents me the more immersed I feel. Maybe that's why other people choose what they choose.
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Universe

all-consuming

Seen November 16th, 2016
Posted November 16th, 2016
2,239 posts
9.6 Years
I suppose I get where you two are coming from but let's try to avoid the whole "sex and gender" talk. I was just asking what are people's reasons. Nothing serious or in depth.
I've also noticed a few members putting one gender on their forum profile but they're in reality the other.
but you used gender synonymously with sex, so i was correcting you. nothing 'serious' goin on here.

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Sydian

fake your death.

Age 30
they/them
Georgia
Seen May 22nd, 2022
Posted November 29th, 2021
33,354 posts
15.2 Years
When you bring up topics of gender, I think it's common that people want to make sure the sex/gender differences are brought up, is all. It doesn't have to get serious, but it's just something I think Pala and Universe wanted to note because of the way you worded yourself, is all. Nothing ill, but I think calling it out and bringing it up is only going to dig that topic deeper. I'm not going to go further on it, though; just an observation.

Anyway, I usually pick for aesthetics. Typically has nothing to do with gender, pronouns, or what have you. Not in my case, anyway. But I know that some people like the representation and being able to choose is nice, especially for those that might have gender issues personally and a video game might be their only outlet to express that (ex. someone that identifies female, but isn't able to present that way in person can enjoy being able to play as a female in a game and not face consequences for it like they likely would in person).

Hopefully this makes some bit of sense.
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Bounsweet

Fruit Pokémon

Seen September 17th, 2018
Posted October 11th, 2017
2,102 posts
15.6 Years
At the end of the day, does it really matter how someone else chooses to play a game? Tons of people (probably the majority) don't even use their birth name for characters in games, either, but that's never brought up. Even outside of games, it's just a matter of expression.

Dter ic

Fire Emblem....HEROES

Age 26
Male
(Un)united Kingdom
Seen December 15th, 2018
Posted July 9th, 2018
741 posts
10.7 Years
I've only done this recently in my playthrough of fire emblem. I suppose the reason I chose the opposite sex is because I like to imagine the playable character as someone else and with the customization options I can play around with what looks 'nice'.

Sammi

Age 33
she/her
The States
Seen 5 Days Ago
Posted November 8th, 2021
14,085 posts
18.3 Years
Sometimes I just want to play as a guy.

Though admittedly 9 times out of 10 when I do, the character gets named after a male OC so I don't know where that puts me. Elaborate roleplay scenario?

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