I'd like to hear you explain how you find this
forces you to change your mindset.
As I see it, a player may just be influenced by, and therefore imposing
real world cultural sex/gender roles--or to a broader extent,
facets of the stereotypical--into their character through that method as is.
The danger of using something as arbitrary as sex/gender to determine character traits in role-plays, especially in these made-up worlds where none of these predetermined notions necessarily have to apply, is that now the question of "What are your consistent traits across all characters" may be answered, "Well, all of my
male characters have
this trait, and all of my
female characters have
that trait." Even worse, the problem becomes apparent if you go by the more "gender-inclusive" terms of "
masculine characters" versus "
feminine characters", which ironically reinforces the idea of sex/gender roles.
The problem is now bisected by a discretionary factor.
I don't think writing for a female character has ever changed my mindset at all to be honest. I never really bought in to gender being a huge part of personality.
What I meant to say is that guys and girls have to undergo wildly differing experiences growing up simply for being of a different gender, these events will obviously shape their personality.
For example, if I want to write about a strong character (male stereotype) and I choose to do so with a female character, I can focus on outside resistance to her "unladylike-ness", and how she reacts and opposes this resistance, or I can place her in a background where that would have been an encouraged trait.
A character's personality is defined by his or her experiences, and stereotypes play a big part of their experiences, which influence the formation of any person. I guess I just don't like the idea of placing my characters in unrealistic, antiseptic backgrounds, but to expose them to both the positive and negative aspects of being part of a society, and their gender will determine not how they react to the world, but how the world acts towards them.
EDIT: To emphasize, yes, it is absolutely possible to write the exact same character as a guy or girl if you don't tie in his/her backstory and previous experiences to her personality. Also, yes, gender is not a personality trait or quirk, I didn't mean to say it was, it is just a huge aspect of how the world treats us as people, and therefore a huge a influence to a character's personality, at least the way I write characters.