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Glyph
Logic and emotion are not mutually exclusive traits, nor are they exclusive to one gender or another. Overall, it is possible that women are more emotional, and that guys are more logical. But like any generalization about gender traits, you will find a lot of overlap within males and females - you can have weepy, emotional men and cold, logical women. In other words, the variance within a gender is more than the variance between genders.

I still think the best way to do a female character is not to set out to make one, but to go through the questions that you would ask for any character. And for those questions, decide on a case by case basis whether she will be typical or atypical. Maybe she played with a ball and glove instead of a Barbie, but still likes wearing a dress on dates. Maybe she has a close relationship with her mom, but misses her old clique of friends in her home town and hasn't seemed to be able to find a new group of friends where she's living now. Maybe she can be ruthless in a fight, but falls apart afterwards. Maybe she likes hanging out with macho jocks, but is attracted to pretty boys. That's the thing. Few people are going to have nothing but purely (societally defined) "masculine" or "feminine" traits - everyone has a different mix of them.
Blade
I've been thinking about that topic recently, and was surprised that people have so much difficulty with people playing character of another gender while they have no problem with them playing character of another race, or even non-human characters.
I think it's much easier for me to roleplay a female my age in the same cultural mindset than a male troll ganger mage who lives in 2070. I guess the difference is that there are no male troll ganger mage to compare me with.
Heath Robinson
QUOTE (Blade @ Jun 2 2009, 09:53 AM) *
I've been thinking about that topic recently, and was surprised that people have so much difficulty with people playing character of another gender while they have no problem with them playing character of another race, or even non-human characters.
I think it's much easier for me to roleplay a female my age in the same cultural mindset than a male troll ganger mage who lives in 2070. I guess the difference is that there are no male troll ganger mage to compare me with.

Most people don't think of other species as being all that different. Elves, Dwarves, Orks, Trolls, Halflings, Gnomes. All I hear these days is "forehead alien".

FUCK YOU, TOLKIEN! FUCK YOU!
Fuchs
With regards to different races, the "they are so different, play them different" stance often clashes with the "don't play a sterotype" stance.

Personally I think that the difference between a "homicidal mercenary" (Shadowrunner or atchetypical fantasy hero) and myself is much bigger than the difference between myself and a woman from my own culture.
GreyBrother
Logically spoken, it all comes down to Biology. Or as i said to my mother yesterday "You loving me is a biological imperative to you, unless you have an anomaly or similar." Females are attracted to males and vice versa, the male is the hunter, the woman is the nurturer. It's how humans are built. But as said, this is a generalization and the specific cases don't tend to reflect statistics.

Emotionally spoken, we adore certain traits in one another we find positive and disdain the traits we find negative. I perceived that many guys look for physically weak girls, probably (!) because they need the feeling of protecting someone. And this is just one example...

Isn't live wonderful and full of choices? grinbig.gif
nezumi
Firstly, counting pregnant women is completely unfair. Pregnancy does some WEIRD stuff to your physiology. My wife, who was going through college at the time, started forgetting words to basic things, like 'spoon' (not to mention, started throwing up on everything), and only years later did she fully regain her capacity for three-syllable words. She's not stupid, it's just when you pump your body full of hormones, there's no telling what the results are going to be. I doubt males would be much different.

As for the general male/female thing, there are some traits which can be pretty fairly linked to physiology. Look at chimps and bonabos and note the different roles and behaviors between males and females. While both may be both violent and nurturing, males, on average, are more likely to show signs of unprovoked violence, and females, on average, are more likely to show strong nurturing drives.

Like so many behaviors, these can be magnified or results through nurture. In my environment, women are expected to be as aggressive and rational as men and, in general, I think they meet that standard (or fail to succeed). In the office-working world, men are oftentimes given more leeway in acceptable behavior, and so we see a wider range of behaviorisms. (You can argue whether this is women reacting to expectations, or an intentionally limited set as women aren't going to choose that career path knowing it conflicts with their personality, but for the sake of examining it for playing Shadowrunners, it's not especially relevant.)

I don't know that women suffer when they suppress their emotional or intuitive side any more than men, except insofar that they are in violation of social expectations. I know I am very rational at the expense of my emotional side, but it rarely comes up because I have chosen a life path that avoids those sorts of confrontations, and because my wife realizes she works better with me like this. But it is sometimes a serious conflict for me, which I have to deal with.

In the world of Shadowrun, this brings up an interesting question. There aren't a lot of nurturing positions in the SR world. It's very muchso a male-oriented society, based on the ability to exceed at the expense of your comrades, of destruction, domination, paranoia and distrust. I could see nurturing personality types either really suffering, or completely inverting as a psychological defense.
Chrysalis
Biopsychosocial

Biological

Being physically female or male define who you are. Specifically as we become aware we also take on biological characteristics. This an also be attributed 0-1 age in development

Psychological

Being personally defined as being a girl or a boy. This is a personal definition. The definition of personal sex can manifest itself as early as 4 years old.

Sociological

Being defined by the surrounding society as being a woman or a man. This is a definition which is not defined personally, but its surroundings. This definition can already be defined before birth.

The three definitions above define the construction of gender.

As a note gender differences are sexualized, but you should not fall into that pit when defining a character's gender.

I just bought Edwards Said's book, Orientalism and simone de beauvoir's The Other Sex. Once read them do I feel on some level qualified to start defining gender through a heterogeneic matrix of man/woman self/other.
Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (Blade @ Jun 2 2009, 03:53 AM) *
I've been thinking about that topic recently, and was surprised that people have so much difficulty with people playing character of another gender while they have no problem with them playing character of another race, or even non-human characters.


That's because metahumans, modrons, and Klingons don't really exist. So it is much simpler to portray them because all you can do is fall back on sterotypes or variants on sterotypes and nobody gets offended.
Snow_Fox
I believe in dragons, unicorns, good men and other fantasy creatures. wink.gif

Seriously I like what glyph said above. To look at it from the other side of the fence, I do not think on a biological level women are more emotional than men, but socially we are allowed to be more emotional. We see a weepy film, and it's ok if we tear up. but a guy needs a klinex and other guys say there's something wrong with him. Heck in Stripes Bill Murray makes a point of it being a big deal "Who cried when they shot ol' Yella'"
I tear up at the end of "The Ghost and Mrs' muir" and my husbaand knows I enjoyed it. He admits to buddies if a film moves him like that and it seems to break the guy code.

But it cuts both ways. often an assertive man is 'assertive' and assertive woman is' trying to prove herself.' assumes acceptable levels aof action and not some Hillary Clinton/Rosie O'donnell over the top wack out.
Glyph
QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Jun 2 2009, 04:18 PM) *
That's because metahumans, modrons, and Klingons don't really exist. So it is much simpler to portray them because all you can do is fall back on sterotypes or variants on sterotypes and nobody gets offended.

Plus, in SR3, all of the metatypes are essentially variants of homo sapiens, and have grown up in a culture created by humans, except for a few groups that have formed their own enclaves. So you're not really trying to model an alien culture and mindset.

Just like male and female, though, metatype should make some difference. How would you go through life if everyone was two feet taller than you, or if you were huge, and things like cars and computer screens were not designed to accommodate you? How about if you were ostracized by your home culture, or venerated as a superior being? What if you were considered attractive and special because of your pointy ears? What if you matured physically much quicker than you matured mentally. Metatypes are not completely alien races, but their different appearances and physiology should make some difference in how they are played.


Another thing to consider is level of magic or augmentation. Things like hormones and energy level can make a big difference in personality. Now imagine someone who has perfect recall, learns languages from being exposed to them for a few hours, and can watch four trid shows simultaneously. Or imagine someone who is superhumanly fast and strong who only needs three hours of sleep a day. How would such people interact with the world?
shuya
QUOTE (Chrysalis @ Jun 2 2009, 12:59 PM) *
I just bought Edwards Said's book, Orientalism and simone de beauvoir's The Other Sex. Once read them do I feel on some level qualified to start defining gender through a heterogeneic matrix of man/woman self/other.

good call on both said and de beauvoir! i've always been intrigued by de beauvoir's concept that being (or becoming, to stay in line with the philosophy of The Second Sex) a woman is essentially (small "e" essential) deviance, and the implications that such an idea has for male-female transgendered people in any setting. i personally am a male who has a tendency towards affinity for female characters in gaming settings, be it role playing or video games or what have you, as well as a transvestite and radical gender anarchist. staunchly postmodernist, i would rather embrace the concept of femininity as deviant than transcend it, of course, and i'm terribly fascinated by the overt social deviance/defiance of a biological male who chooses to be seen as female on any of the three axes of the biopsychosocial scale you mentioned...

OMG post modern gender rambling... thanks Chrys for saying something far more insightful than "emotions/logic," i think there needs to be more psychosociological discussion of the incredibly complex phenomenon of role-playing smile.gifsmile.gifsmile.gif
Snow_Fox
You guys just realized this? So much of the world is designed for men with women being the next design. Ok underwear and clothes excepted, but for example only recently did the AMA realize that the basic dossages for adults was based on adult males. Even then it becomes: basic does is X, is a woman Y if child Z.
We aren't 'adults' we're women' and by that definition they treat us as less. (end of feminist rant)

There are lots of other examples I can give but I don't think the thread would be helped by them. Let's just say, I'm amused, that you've had the revelation. lol, I guess was can say this proved RPG's have an educational value.
Now if we can only get Hcus Pocus on board with this,
shuya
QUOTE (Snow_Fox @ Jun 2 2009, 09:23 PM) *
You guys just realized this? So much of the world is designed for men with women being the next design. Ok underwear and clothes excepted, but for example only recently did the AMA realize that the basic dossages for adults was based on adult males. Even then it becomes: basic does is X, is a woman Y if child Z.
We aren't 'adults' we're women' and by that definition they treat us as less. (end of feminist rant)

There are lots of other examples I can give but I don't think the thread would be helped by them. Let's just say, I'm amused, that you've had the revelation. lol, I guess was can say this proved RPG's have an educational value.
Now if we can only get Hcus Pocus on board with this,

not really JUST realized it, no. de beauvoir's book is about 60 years old now (i think), and the real importance of it (for me, anyway, your mileage may vary) is her appropriation of the Hegelian "other" to describe women, as opposed to the idea of "less" that even you used in your feminist rant. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you that the world is/has been male-centric for a long time, but what is important AFTER you understand that fact is to break free from the idea of more/lesser or dominant/subordinate (or empire/colony, as a nod to Said and an implication of control in male/female relations and the propagation of concepts about "women's roles" and the like) and create new conceptualizations for sex and gender and promote them as subversive epistemological memes outside of the entrenched dichotomies--a kind of academic "flanking action" as it were.

one of the major obstacles in portraying a character of the opposite gender convincingly (in any situation, not just roleplaying games) is storytelling's reliance on stereotypes (it's really more of a problem with how humans "learn" or create knowledge and how they "understand" things than it is a problem of storytelling as an act) to fill in information which isn't directly conveyed - as such, breaking from overarching societal norms in one's own portrayal of "the other" will create in many people who observe it a type of cognitive dissoance which is often interpreted as a "non-convincing" portrayal.

that is to say, a woman portraying a sensitive man (and sensitive men do exist) is more likely to be seen as a woman who is too sensitive to be manly, and lets her sensitivity seep through in her portrayal, as opposed to accurately portraying a man who breaks from the stereotype (this is a very over-simplified example, obviously); many male-female transgendered people and transvestites are forced to wear overtly-feminine clothing in order to "pass" as female, despite the fact that i'm sure we all know many women who wear pants; etc...
Dwight
QUOTE (masterofm @ Jul 27 2008, 07:13 PM) *
Mr. Wounded Ronin I appreciate your topics, but do you think you could refrain from typing in all caps? It hurts my eyes.


It's part of the meme from bullshido.net of "HOW DO ARMBAR?!" that got started when some hapless and clueless fellow asked that question.

hyzmarca
QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Jun 1 2009, 11:52 PM) *
On another forum, I've been PMing people trying to learn about social interaction with females. One person sent me a very long and thoughtful message, and one paragraph in particular seemed relevant to role playing in the context of a table top game.



This paragraph blew my mind, because I felt that the issue of women and emotionality is one of those things that was alternately embraced, discredited, and them embraced by the feminist establishment, while at the same time touching on the idea of logic and masculinity in females. It also made me recall some personal interactions I'd had over the last couple of years.

That is because I once had a good female friend who I'd really liked, and who is in med school now, who was very very logical and intelligent. I'd met her in Micronesia and some of the most fun I'd had out there was sitting with her on some random evenings having random abstract debates about various topics as they came up. (Haven't seen her since I got back to the US.) And the thing is that she was METICULOUSLY logical. I consider myself a pretty logical person, because I feel like logic is the only way we can ever really strictly speaking know anything, whereas emotion tends to mislead, but if I ever made a non-logical statement of feeling for any reason she'd jump on that and I felt delighted whenever she did that. (I actually did something with her I had never done with any other female either before or since, which was I asked her out to dinner a few times, but she kept telling me she couldn't because she had diarreah.)

But, this is the thing. People have told me every now and then over the years that when I articulate the kinds of things I'm attracted to that even though I'm a heterosexual male that I seem to be attracted to male-type personal qualities, rather than female-type ones. Was my aforementioned female friend in fact "dude-like", as the PM quoted above puts it? Would many males in fact be turned off by her exhibiting a supposedly masculine trait like ruthless logic?

Okay, but setting aside my acoustic-guitar-summoning personal boring story, there's the other topic of women, emotionality, and the ideas in US society that sort of fluctuated back and forth concerning those. Basically, before the feminist movement you had the idea that women were all emotional and nice whereas men were logical and mean. Later, you started to have the idea that that was totally wrong. However, I think as early as the 80s (as I've encountered in my reading), you basically had some people calling themselves feminists who put forward the idea that yes, women are emotional and nice, and that is good, because our society is masculine and crazed with sex and power, and that is why all sorts of abuses occur and why we're going to destroy ourselves in nuclear war. I read some book written by some female doctor from Harvard in the 80s saying that nuclear arms proliferation was symptomatic of male obsession with sex and power and that female emotionality and nurturingness needed to enter society to bring us back from the brink. And then if you do a Google search you find people critiquing that sort of viewpoint when talking about Abu Ghraib.

Do these viewpoints have any elements of truth? Or are they merely reflections of intellectual orthodoxy and social expectation in the United States bouncing back and forth between today and the 1950s?

I recall encountering some hispanic females who explicitly claimed to be emotional. There was one pregant hispanic female who was telling me that because she was pregnant she was more emotional and that she'd therefore started crying when someone close to her suggested that the father of the child had another wife in Mexico. So this would suggest cultural orthodoxy rather than quantifiable fact, I suppose.

Is logic masculine? Is emotion feminine?

If any of this is true, then what the heck does it feel like to be emotional rather than logical, or vice versa?

Are the above statements just entirely cultural constructs?


A relationship between division of labor, evolutionary psychology, and sociobiology probably plays into it. Pregnancy can increase the difficulty of spearing a buffalo to death, already a rather tough proposition. In ancient hunter-gatherer societies, men went out and killed stuff while women stayed in the village. The result was that women did tend to be better adapting to dealing with social conflict, while men were better adapted to dealing with physical conflict. This division of labor served early mankind well, and led to our dominance. But what that means is that groups of men deal with things differently than groups of women, in general. Men don't address emotional issues publicly because stopping to address emotional issues can get you killed when you're being dragged by a mammoth that that you've just driven a sharp stick into. Women do address emotional issues because failure to do so can lead to dangerous social conflict that threatens the stability of the tribe.

But evolution also has made us adaptable, and we do adapt quite easily. A women in a hunting group, a goal-oriented group, will adopt behaviors that are generally considered masculine, not because they are denying their femininity or their femininity is oppressed but simply because accomplishing specific goals quickly, safely, and efficiently requires certain behaviors. A man in a social group, a stability-oriented group, will adopt behaviors that are generally considered feminine, because diffusing social conflict without creating the conditions for even greater conflict to arise requires certain behaviors.
Kerenshara
As a complete aside, I thought I would share something germane to the thread and what a lot of people have said. Many males have observed that they don't perceive that much difference between men and women and how they think and act. I am not going to argue one way or another on the statement. What I AM going to do is share some insight a professional psychologist of my aquaintaince shared with me. It was facinating.

There are standardised protocols for determining a generalized personality profile, and one of the "measures" is what we might call "gender identity". Her observation to me was that what she has seen in her work with patients is that the higher the "intelligence" or "IQ" of the patient, the higher they scored on that particular measure, to a point. If the measure goes beyond a given point, you deviate into having what might be termed "gender identity issues". As you probably have surmised from my description, going higher on the "measure" indicates an increased tendency or occurance of traits and behaviors typically categorized as belonging to the opposite sex. (How many idiot transgendered have you run into?) Put simply, she said that highly intelligent people tend to be able to think a lot like the other gender. Or, in political terms, something like a conservative Democrat or a liberal Republican. You haven't crossed over into having conflicts with your own biological identity, but you're a lot more feminine/masculine than most men/women with an IQ of 100 - flat average.

Now, to put that all in perspective, compared to the general population, most gamers display significantly above-average intelligence. Most fall at least one standard deviation out on the curve, with a disproportionate number falling into the second deviation - or beyond.

So, logically, that would mean that smart gamers should have less trouble crossing genders because they already understand (Grok to those of us who have read a certain book) intrinsically many aspects of the other gender. Now, there are always going to be differences and misunderstandings, or there would never be divorce or make-up-sex. But I think that is why so many people think there's not much difference mentally or emotionally. Ask somebody with a 80 IQ if they think there is a big difference, propose it like it was here, and the answers would likely be a lot different.

Assuming there's anything to what she says. Personally, once she explained it, I looked more closely at a lot of things, and a bunch of things suddenly made a lot more sense to me.

I want to think about it for a while before I put my own spin on the actual OP question. But as to chocolate... if you have to ask, you're never going to understand. I don't know if the "studies" I have heard about are genuine or urban legend, but supposedly there is a chemical that interracts in a subtly different way with the nuanced brain/hormonal chemistry of a woman that produces an enhanced effect not typically reported by men. In either event, I know where I happen to stand on the issue. And as it applies to Kerenshara, there are two ways to buy your life back if you ever anger her to tears and you're male: walk away and hide, hoping she forgives you (she doesn't forget); Or you can bring her REALLY good chocolate with your tail (yes, that too) between your legs and express your contrition. I will let you work out which one probably works better for yourselves.
Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (Kerenshara @ Jun 3 2009, 11:57 PM) *


So, logically, that would mean that smart gamers should have less trouble crossing genders because they already understand (Grok to those of us who have read a certain book) intrinsically many aspects of the other gender. Now, there are always going to be differences and misunderstandings, or there would never be divorce or make-up-sex. But I think that is why so many people think there's not much difference mentally or emotionally. Ask somebody with a 80 IQ if they think there is a big difference, propose it like it was here, and the answers would likely be a lot different.

Assuming there's anything to what she says. Personally, once she explained it, I looked more closely at a lot of things, and a bunch of things suddenly made a lot more sense to me.


OK, this is the thing though.

Back when I was in 3rd grade, I took an IQ test. I didn't know I was taking it but a number of years later I found the old paperwork from it and my IQ was either 128 or 130. Which is pretty high.

But the thing is that I'm really good at standardized tests; for example I got 800 verbal and 710 math on my SATs many years ago. So I believe that if I, as an adult rather than a third grader, were to knowingly take an IQ test while being "serious" about it, I could likely score higher than my original score back in third grade.

So, if I've got more IQ than average, why do I feel so much difficulty with the "roleplay across gender" thing? Wouldn't that seem to contradict your statement?
Snow_Fox
QUOTE (shuya @ Jun 2 2009, 11:04 PM) *
not really JUST realized it, no. de beauvoir's book is about 60 years old now (i think), and the real importance of it (for me, anyway, your mileage may vary) is her appropriation of the Hegelian "other" to describe women, as opposed to the idea of "less" that even you used in your feminist rant....

seperate in inherantly unequal.
nezumi
First of all, statistics do not apply to every case.

Second of all, IQ tests are weighted by age. If you answered identically to how you did in third grade, your IQ would come out very low (because you're older). It's probably worth retesting, to verify you're still so far above 100.

Thirdly, this will be modified by your real-world experience and understandings, I imagine. If you have trouble playing an average guy from Omaha, playing an average girl from Omaha won't be very much easier.
Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (nezumi @ Jun 5 2009, 08:05 AM) *
Thirdly, this will be modified by your real-world experience and understandings, I imagine. If you have trouble playing an average guy from Omaha, playing an average girl from Omaha won't be very much easier.


Wow, holy crap. You're right. I hardly know anything about Omaha. I didn't even think about that. The only material in my head that references Omaha is that old rock song about being a musician on the road in Omaha.
martindv
QUOTE (Chrysalis @ Jun 2 2009, 02:59 PM) *
simone de beauvoir's The Other Sex. Once read them do I feel on some level qualified to start defining gender through a heterogeneic matrix of man/woman self/other.

Lucky you. My French isn't good enough to read the original version and the American translation is shit.
Glyph
Personally, I think a lot of the problem with traits that are defined as "masculine" or "feminine" is that it is too much of a generalization. Not that there are not gender differences, but the differences are usually that a female is more likely to exhibit slightly more of a given trait than a male, say, liking chocolate, and from there, people extrapolate "liking chocolate is a feminine trait". Which is nonsense, because obviously, there are females who don't like chocolate, and males who do like chocolate.
Snow_Fox
QUOTE (martindv @ Jun 6 2009, 12:15 AM) *
Lucky you. My French isn't good enough to read the original version and the American translation is shit.

Try Vera Britton's Testament of Youth. An early 20th century british feminist. lots of women praise this book but 30 pages in I would have been happy to have used the volume to beat her about the head an shoulders.
no writing style, no sense of pursuasion just beating you about the brain with her world view, no sense of humor. She was a trend setter but her achievment was in setting the trend, not writing about it later. She is the sort of writer who drives away people unless they already agree with her.
Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (Glyph @ Jun 6 2009, 02:11 AM) *
Personally, I think a lot of the problem with traits that are defined as "masculine" or "feminine" is that it is too much of a generalization. Not that there are not gender differences, but the differences are usually that a female is more likely to exhibit slightly more of a given trait than a male, say, liking chocolate, and from there, people extrapolate "liking chocolate is a feminine trait". Which is nonsense, because obviously, there are females who don't like chocolate, and males who do like chocolate.


See, this is the thing.

I think I went on a big circle in terms of my beliefs about this over the years. First, I imagine that I had started with the social default that assumed certain differences between men and women without necessarily articulating those differences. Next, I had wanted to believe that men and women were totally the same. But now I'm thinking there may indeed be some gender differences. It's this sneaking suspicion I've had over the years being gradually filled in by observations, things I've read. It's like glimpsing the matrix or something.

Here's a link to one such experience:

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...t=0&start=0

QUOTE
So, the whole gender influencing roleplaying and gameplay styles is a painful cliche exemplified by Sara Felton from Knights of the Dinner Table. (Although, supposedly Sara is based on Jolly's wife, who from her photo *looks* like she might be one of those character-interested players...) There's probably been a thread about it before. But, I wanna tell a story in which the cliches were totally exemplified by me (the male player) and two females who were playing. Don't worry, I'll tie it into Shadowrun.

So, first, The Story:
===================================
A friend of mine, knowing my love for 1st edition D&D and the orientalist cheesefest known as Oriental Adventures, ran a one-shot 1st edition D&D game for me. I was using an overpowered Oriental Adventures sohei, and we were all using 1st level characters. Because it was 1st edition D&D we actually rolled up 6 characters apiece, a la a Paranoia 6 pack, because we accepted that there might be PC blood flowing tonight.

Anyway, we start the adventure and the GM, in the spirit of 1st edition, is letting the dice fall where they may regarding weather conditions and encounters and so forth. But, like a good GM, he dosen't just name the monsters, but rather describes them without naming them.

So me, the male player, is classifying each monster in my mind as its entry in the D&D rulebooks and as a first level character my uniform response to most encounters is, "I run away." The women, however, are getting all interested in the creatures based on their description and are trying to see how they react and all this kind of flavorful character based stuff.

The GM, to his immense credit, didn't just make the monsters eat everyone, but rather had them react to the characters in interesting ways, which actually made for a more interesting game. But my character was running away the whooooole time.

The kicker was when in a dungeon setting the party encountered some zombies. He described the walking corpses so vividly that the women's characters were, like, shying away in revulsion. (He was really a terrific GM.) Of course, I thought, "FINALLY! Something I can kill!", and my character leapt forward like a hungry toddler to a plate of spaghetti.

So, the moral of this story: REAL MEN ROLL PLAY! RAAAHHHH!!!
============================

The Shadowrun connection:

I've noticed that in Shadowrun novels, generally speaking, novels about downtrodden Barrens kids becoming shamans or diffident teenage deckers becoming involved in something dangerous with a group of pros and manages to make it seem to be written more by female authors. On the other hand, high-powered troll fests with vampires and lesbian physads and dual wielded SMGs seem to be written more often by male authors. The same trend, see, but in even more comical contrast.

As a result, I've decided to write a short story representing what would happen if a female writer ever collaborated with a male writer.

Barrens kid: Man, my life is hard. I'm sure suffering. But I'm plucky.
*a team of shadowrunners erupt from the ground, wailing on guitars. Miniguns are slung on their backs and belts of ammo criss cross across their torsos in a stylish Vietnam War fashion*
Sammie: All my delta grade cyberware made it easier for me to erupt from the ground. I, uh, know kung fu, also. For when I shoot so many ninjas with my minigun that I run out of ammo.
Physad: I'm a lesbian elf!
Decker: I actually suck at combat, but I take advantage of the minigun's high rate of fire and the Cannon Companion suppressive fire rules to help the team. And to compensate for my lack of action hero-ness, I automatically win in the matrix.
Barrens kid: I also want to care for my baby brother, who is the last memory of my dear passed away mother. Oh my, what's this? I've been chosen by Cat. Yay, I'm a shaman! How comforting! I draw strength and faith from my totem.
Sammie: GEEK THE MAGE!
Physad: Hey cutie, I'm a lesbian!
Decker: I'LL NEVER GET WOMEN IN MY WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE BECAUSE I USE COMPUTERS! RAAH, FIRE MINIGUN IN RAGE!
Barrens kid: Nooo, I don't know how to cast invisibility or Physical Barrier or any of that crap because according to storyline I wouldn't have any reason to have any of these tools yet. But I can't die now, I have so much character development to undergo. Quick, I must appeal to the storyline!
Shadowrunners, in unison: WE HAVE A BIG KARMA POOL! REROLL FAILURES! REROLL FAILURES!
Barrens kid: Hmm, multiple hits for D damage, and I have Body 2 and Karma 1. *explodes into an unappetizing blend of Cat shaman goulash and swordfish mustardball*
====================================


Gender examined:

More generally, when reading fiction, I feel like in many cases I can sort of guess whether the author was male or female. It's hard to put my finger on it, and it's more of a gut feeling, but I'll try to characterize it. The female authors tend to have characters who are, well, nicer. You read about them, and you like them more. You feel more like if they were your friends you'd feel good having lunch with them.

I guess a good example of this would be the Ellis Peters character Brother Cadfael. Brother Cadfael is a medieval benedictine monk in England who solves mysteries using forensics. He's supposed to be this rugged badass veteran of the Crusades who has pwned countless people in battle before having his fill of violence and becoming a monk.

So, he could have been written in a number of ways. He could have been emotionally distant from everyone due to trauma. He could have been a juggernaut of visceral desperation, kind of like Howard's Conan. But instead he's at peace with himself, nice to people, helps young lovers escape, benevolent, and only clever and badass when he needs to be. So, like, if he were your neighbor, you'd feel warm and fuzzy about him, which wouldn't be the case with someone like Howard's Conan. A lot of times, when reading about male characters created by female authors, I find them to be ever so slighly on the effeminite side.

On the other hand, I think that male writers are more likely to be "turned on" by rugged badassery. Just look at the portrayal of Conan by John Milius in the film "Conan The Barbarian"; Milius was inspired by Zen-inspired ideals of rugged and individualistic martial strength. Conan, Rambo, and Dirty Harry appeal strongly to the imagination because of their combination of physical dangerousness but also mental fortitude in the face of danger or adversity. These are the characteristics that are articulated for these characters by the storyline the most. At the same time, there's nothing warm and fuzzy about any of these characters. They don't help young lovers escape, and if they were your neighbor they probably wouldn't be very comfortable dinner guests.

If you think about it, it's absolutely roll playing versus role playing. Cadfael presumably has really big stats because of the heaps of people he pwned during the crusades but he dosen't spend that time actually rolling his combat skills. Instead, he spends most of his time on inter-character interactions that largely wouldn't require dice rolls. In contrast, Dirty Harry spends a huge amount of time making Intimidate and Pistols (signature .44 magnum) checks.

This, of course, begs a question. Perhaps "roll playing" is not correctly conceptualized as an absence of character development. Perhaps "roll playing" is rather the representation of a certain masculine aspect of our collective cultural mythology, as portrayed in popular films and novels. Many people look down on straight up "roll playing", but is it really right to look down upon a certain archetypal cultural construct? Do we look down on the myths of Hercules because they're basically about him being big and strong, and say that the myth about Persephone is better and more correct because it has a lot of emotion but not a whole lot of combat rolls?

Perhaps "roll playing", which I define as munchkinization and systematic statistical analysis of in-game possibilities to chose the character's action, can be seen as the persuit of the perfect representation of a rugged masculine character. It's easy to *say* that your character is being rugged and tough, but how can your character truly be rugged and tough compared to all the other characters who were created with the same amount of resources? Perhaps you refine the rugged toughness of your character to a higher level of perfection through careful management of statistics, so as to portray the archetypal Clint Eastwood style hero better than the other people at the table are doing. And so, perhaps "roll playing" is not the absence of character development, but rather the refinement and perfection in the portrayal of one character type.

Here is an example. Suppose that in a role playing game I want to portray the hero of the Illiad, Odysseus. Odysseus was supposed to be a pretty powerful hero, but he was also supposed to be cunning, sly, and ruthless towards his enemies. So, in order to portray Odysseus, I first munch out in chargen to make him as powerful as possible. Next, any time my character makes an in-game decision, I have Odysseus make the best possible choice at any given time because I statistically analyze all possible outcomes. Am I not portraying Odysseus better than if he were only of average strength and made typical (but not optimal) decisions?

I maintain that roll-playing, done to a systematic and painstaking extreme, is anything but the absence of a developed character. Rather, it is the path to the refinement of the perfect portrayal of one part of our archetypal popular culture mythology.


It was gaming that in the first place made me start to think there might indeed be insidious differences between men and women.

Also, Harry Potter. Eating choclate is supposed to make you feel better after a Dementor pwns you, in Harry Potter. But who eats chocolate? I don't. I don't even like it that much. The only time I eat chocolate is if I have some very high-quality European chocolate available. Otherwise, it actually tastes sugary and gross and it's not worth the negative health impact to actually eat. I'd rather do some booze instead and actually get something from it. The only people I see eating chocolate a lot are women. That also made me begin to wonder if somehow, for some reason, women are attracted to choclate, which of course would be another emotionality related thing...
knasser
QUOTE (Kerenshara @ Jun 4 2009, 05:57 AM) *
[font="Lucida Console"]As a complete aside, I thought I would share something germane to the thread and what a lot of people have said. Many males have observed that they don't perceive that much difference between men and women and how they think and act. I am not going to argue one way or another on the statement. What I AM going to do is share some insight a professional psychologist of my aquaintaince shared with me. It was facinating.

There are standardised protocols for determining a generalized personality profile, and one of the "measures" is what we might call "gender identity". Her observation to me was that what she has seen in her work with patients is that the higher the "intelligence" or "IQ" of the patient, the higher they scored on that particular measure, to a point. If the measure goes beyond a given point, you deviate into having what might be termed "gender identity issues". As you probably have surmised from my description, going higher on the "measure" indicates an increased tendency or occurance of traits and behaviors typically categorized as belonging to the opposite sex. (How many idiot transgendered have you run into?) Put simply, she said that highly intelligent people tend to be able to think a lot like the other gender. Or, in political terms, something like a conservative Democrat or a liberal Republican. You haven't crossed over into having conflicts with your own biological identity, but you're a lot more feminine/masculine than most men/women with an IQ of 100 - flat average.


That's interesting. I can contribute my own experience to this. I have a very high recorded IQ. Also, during the 'I Must Seek My Identity' phase in my teenage years, I read quite a bit on psychology and at one point came across a test that was obviously related to the area of research your acquaintance studied. The test was an assessment of how "male" or "female" your psychology was. Now this was in the early Nineties so I don't know how research has moved on from there, but it told me that I had a female brain. Fortunately, I considered this a good thing, desirous of the World judging me unusual, back then. wink.gif. A second test years later added support for the results, although it was a much less formal test. It was an online quiz to determine if you were male or female. You had to do tests such as clicking the odd image out of a series. They were ambiguous, so you could pick an odd one based on colour, or shape, or whatever. It was a fairly long test with a lot of variety. Tens of thousands of people - at least - took the test and at the end of it you were told whether you were a girl or a boy and you confirmed if it had guessed correctly. There must have been something to it because you could see the results on a scatter chart with blue dots for boys and pink dots for girls (yay, gender-role reinforcement!). There was a large roughly lozenge-shaped cloud of blue on side and a pink one on the other, and the occasional stray dot in the "wrong" cluster. I was on the male side, but only just, a definite outlier for my sex.

Relevance of my personal experience? Well obviously not a great deal in terms of statistical significance, but it offers me some insights.

Firstly, my sexuality is hetero. I'm of the opinion that sexual preference is not tied to masculine-feminine psychology except in so far as social treatment and culture might influence one. If there is a correlation between thinking "like a male" and being attracted to girls or thinking "like a girl" and being attracted to men, then it's certainly not a requirement because I've seen too many exceptions. So anyone trying to role-play a different gender should not feel the need to conflate sexuality with mode of thinking.

Secondly, I think there are two prime factors in relating high intelligence (we'll leave aside whether IQ is actually a good measure of that conglomerate of attributes we call intelligence) with stereotypical gender-thinking. The first is that the smarter you are, the more you are able to adapt your thinking and behaviour to different circumstances to achieve the best results. Logically, that means that if a stereotypically male or female mode of thinking is more suited to a particular circumstance, then of course the more intelligent someone is the more they'll appear ambiguous in their thinking. The second prime factor is that if you're generally smart, you have probably been (a) the sort of person who is willing to be different as you grow up and (b) analyzed and judged behaviours that society gave you on their own merits before integrating them into your own self. Both these factors lend themselves to a correlation between being smart and a freedom from stereotypical gender-behaviour.

Of course circumstances influence things. If most of your friends are male and they like to play football on a Sunday morning, you're a great deal more likely to play football yourself than you are, for example, go shoe shopping together. Thus can tendencies within gender can reinforce themselves. Of course the question of why you mostly hang out with your own gender then arises and the answer to this is probably a collection of reasons ranging from just associating more with people who resemble you and have things in common with you to, I think, the much more significant factors of social conditioning and later on, sexual desire. From a terribly early age, boys and girls are segregated and treated differently. Boys where one set of outfits, girls another. Boys go to one loo, girls another. They change in different changing rooms, they can't see each other in states of undress even before the age where sexual desire becomes a significant factor (note I separate desire from sexuality itself), they play different sports. I think it's probably impossible to actually separate out the immense conditioning of this on people's modes of thinking in the general case and we have to turn people who separated themselves from such conditioning early on, but even then such people have usually been subject to a lot of negative feelings of exclusion which tend to manifest in exaggeration and pride in the traits that caused them to be excluded (which is an understandable reaction, quite frankly). Once you hit puberty, there's also no getting away from boys and girls looking at each other from a sexual point of view, also. And this also reinforces gender separation. Your girlfriend goes out shopping with female friends, no guy cares (and a lot are grateful for the opportunity to let their standards relax and slob about on the computer for a morning). But if she goes off to play football then there's no complete getting away from knowing there's going to be a lot of guys running around with her in her shorts, fancying her and having the sort of fun time that could lead to other fun activities. It takes a lot of trust in a relationship to deal with circumstances like that which reinforces and maintains established gender divisions. So when you're role-playing across gender, it's useful to start not from "I'm a girl so I probably don't like football", but from "if I play football, my boyfriends going to be in a snark with me. Also I might flirt with that striker again who looks so cute in shorts, so I probably shouldn't go." Pay more attention to the environment and how it shapes your behaviour and how people behave toward you and a lot of behaviour of the other gender will become more natural to you. And apply it the other way around. Imagine society rewards and is proud of you for sleeping with someone just for fun that you just met, rather than calling you a slut. Imagine you don't have to worry about a prospective partner being bigger and stronger than you and getting pushy and that you're physically in control of the situation and whatever happens or doesn't.

QUOTE (Kerenshara @ Jun 4 2009, 05:57 AM) *
Ask somebody with a 80 IQ if they think there is a big difference, propose it like it was here, and the answers would likely be a lot different.


Again, I think this may be because of a lesser ability to look at the different factors affecting other people. If it doesn't occur to you that a woman putting herself in the middle of a mostly male football team isn't putting herself in a position of probably sexual interest which she might not want, then you might just think "girls don't like football - they're different." (Not that there's necessarily something wrong with being in a position of probable sexual interest wink.gif ).

(Note to US readers: football = soccor to you).

Anyway, these are just some thoughts that might help prompted by Kerenshara's comments above. Some people are male, some people are female, and they tend to get treated differently which if you're really going to role-play, you have to be aware of. The internal stuff is a spectrum, a range, not a binary attribute you fall into one or the other of.

That's all the essay I have time for on a Sunday morning, anyhow. My high-IQ, sensitive female brain appears to have been dumped in a 6'1" 220lb body so I'm elected to go and move furniture now. Just another example of gender-oppression, I'm afraid. wink.gif

Peace to people of all genders, wink.gif

K.
Wounded Ronin
That gender test you mentioned sounds interesting. You wouldn't happen to have a link would you?
Critias
QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Jun 7 2009, 12:42 PM) *
That gender test you mentioned sounds interesting. You wouldn't happen to have a link would you?

Step One: Look down.

Step Two: Innie or Outtie?

Step Three: Test complete!
hyzmarca
QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Jun 6 2009, 11:23 PM) *
See, this is the thing.

I think I went on a big circle in terms of my beliefs about this over the years. First, I imagine that I had started with the social default that assumed certain differences between men and women without necessarily articulating those differences. Next, I had wanted to believe that men and women were totally the same. But now I'm thinking there may indeed be some gender differences. It's this sneaking suspicion I've had over the years being gradually filled in by observations, things I've read. It's like glimpsing the matrix or something.

Here's a link to one such experience:

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...t=0&start=0


I do believe that this does demonstrate the difference goal-oriented behavior and social behavior. In the example given, you were treating the game as a hunt, your goal was to kill stuff, that which you couldn't kill and which didn't help you kill served no useful purpose. The female players were treating it more socially, their intent was to engage in novel interactions in order to better their understanding of the monsters and the monsters' understanding of them, possibly forging social bonds in the process. Men tend towards hunting behavior, women
knasser
QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Jun 7 2009, 05:42 PM) *
That gender test you mentioned sounds interesting. You wouldn't happen to have a link would you?


It was about six years ago. Sorry - I looked but could not find. Unless you're referring to the more formal one I found in a book in which case I definitely couldn't find it.

If you're particularly interested in trying to understand women, I would suggest you start by trying to understand woman. I.e. pick someone you know well enough to talk to about a wide range of things and then just learn in what ways she is different from yourself and try to identify where that is due to her being a different sex. If you want to separate out circumstances and social conditioning from inherent differences (keeping in mind these differences are generalisations anyway), imagine or seek out the circumstances that a female friend goes through that you normally don't and examine whether you would behave the same way and if so why and if not why not.

Just some thoughts, anyway.

Khadim.
ElFenrir
You know, I look on the surface at some of my characters and they seem out-and-out male. I'm a female, who, as I said a few times around these forums, cross-plays almost exclusively.

My current character has some traits which sort of point him both directions. On one hand, he's pretty. I made him specifically so. The picture I have of his refrence is a classic manga-prettyboy with long, white hair and wire-rimmed glasses.

But he's also pretty exceptionally tall(2.1 meters as an elf), and incredibly strong(strength 9 at the moment), being the muscle-guy of the party by a decent margin. He's a close-combat specialist; unarmed first, blades second. He's an armorer of great skill, loving to tinker with weapons-both melee and firearm-and armor. He can also be exceptionally violent-he killed several people over the course of the game so far, and more in his past, being ex-military. The men who killed his best friend he disposed with in a particularly painful fashion, even curb-stomping one of them to death with the premise that when the guy was found, he was utterly brained.

But then there's his charge-his friend's 10 year old son, whom he takes care of (dependent 2 flaw.) He doesn't have the whole 'mom' thing down-the relationship between him and the child are more of good friends than a father and a son. He knows he can't replace the father. He's taught the kid some martial arts for fun on his spare time(he's an active fellow), gets him home-schooling via trid, and does maintain a very high-security lifestyle, taking great pains to not let any more know than a couple that he trusts that he'd known for a long time that he has a kid in his care, for his protection. He has taught the kid Even though he seems to lack a motherly(hell, or even fatherly) nurturing instinct, one can tell when they interact there is something there. He is very protective of him(killing those men who killed his father as much for the kid as for him. He never told the kid, but he had figured it out-just not saying anything.) It's got some air of a Leon: the Professional thing going on.

But again, he's like Papa Wolf to the kid-mess with him and things will get extremely messy. Deep down he DOES have a caring instinct, but he's just not used to it(having the kid for maybe 2 and a half years so far, almost 3.)

Now, I've been told this character has a few 'feminine' traits-the pretty looks(though he's stronger than hell), and the kid-caring instinct, but then i've been told he's got plenty of masculine ones as well. I dunno if you could tell this character was played by a man, a woman, or if it's just actually a balanced enough character you couldn't tell.

I dunno how caring for a child is all a female trait, but I seem to keep reading it is, more than a masculine one. Though the fathers I know would also pretty much go ballistic if you tried to mess with their child. Kael(my guy), also tends to take people who can't fight so well as him under his wing and sometimes look out for them; more of a guilt-thing to himself of not being there when his friend was killed.

I brought him up simply because i don't think you can really tell if a man or a woman makes a character-be it same-sex,different-sex, or...well, both. biggrin.gif Not knowing I was a woman, would you be able to tell if the character above was designed by a man or a woman? If so, how?

(I ask this because I do play a lot of videogames. There has been times where I've seen a particular character-and we played a guessing game to see if they were designed by a man or a woman. We were correct most of the time-but a few times we were thrown off.)
Blade
QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Jun 7 2009, 06:23 AM) *
That also made me begin to wonder if somehow, for some reason, women are attracted to choclate, which of course would be another emotionality related thing...


I heard that it was physiological: the female body reacts differently to chocolate and it's more "effective" on them. But I'm not sure if that's a true scientific fact or just some urban legend.
nezumi
Knasser, you bring up some good points there I hadn't considered. Thank you for sharing.


WR, I was pointed to this test:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml

A transgendered friend of mine took it and it revealed that he had a very female identity. His mom took it and also revealed a female identity nyahnyah.gif

(Oh, also, still looking for CoC. I think I saw some old video games in the attic, but got interrupted. I'll keep you posted if I find anything!)
knasser
QUOTE (nezumi @ Jun 8 2009, 02:49 PM) *
Knasser, you bring up some good points there I hadn't considered. Thank you for sharing.


WR, I was pointed to this test:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml

A transgendered friend of mine took it and it revealed that he had a very female identity. His mom took it and also revealed a female identity nyahnyah.gif

(Oh, also, still looking for CoC. I think I saw some old video games in the attic, but got interrupted. I'll keep you posted if I find anything!)


Nezumi - That. Was. Fascinating. biggrin.gif Thank you!

According to this test, I come out at 25% male (the average male is at 50% male and the average female is at 50% female). So I'm not quite as in the middle on this test as I scored on the old one (and definitely not on the female side as the one I tried when I was 16 put me). Still quite girly though. biggrin.gif Reading the analysis of the questions reinforces my earlier hypothesis that the more capable you are mentally, the more you wander from category to category as needed. Many of the questions in this test were 'positive indicators' (for want of knowing the technical terminology). I.e. if you answered a question that men were normally better at and did well, then it added a point toward your being male. This breaks down if you are adaptable. For example, I did very well at some of the tests for both sides. Say you took a kid who scored 70% on a maths test and 80% on a language test and said they're more a mathematician than a linguist. And then compared them to someone who scored 50% on the maths test and 30% on the language test and then said that the second kid was more of a mathematician then a linguist. Well that may be so, but can you then compare the two kids and say kid A has a greater linguistic tendency than kid B or that kid B is more mathematically inclined than kid A? No, you cannot correctly do so. But this is the principle I see used in both this test and some of the ideas on the subject of male-female modes of thinking.

I don't want to spoil things for others who might take this test, so some comments spoilered:
[ Spoiler ]


Because most of the tests were these positive indicators, what it indicates to me is that the different genders tend to have areas they are better at, rather than (and this is the very important thing) being at different ends of a spectrum. It is incorrect to put two poles up as some do and say women are usually better at empathising and men are usually better at systemising as if there is a spectrum between the two. A talent in one area does not preclude a talent in another. But a general tendency may emerge when some portion of a population has limited talents.

Or to put it in Shadowrun terms: If you have a 300BP character there's a tendency to just have a couple of prime areas of focus and for men and women these tend to be different. But the more you accumulate karma, or if you've been blessed with more Build Points, then there's less need to specialise and you can be a more rounded character. This goes back to kerenshara's comment about smarter people being less confined to a gender role. (Caveats about use of IQ as a general measure of intelligence assumed).

And of course regardless of tendencies, many individual characters are either inclined to play against type or choose to, and never underestimate them - not only are they the most interesting and attractive characters, but they tend to be pretty effective too. wink.gif

Again - thanks for the link to the test, it was very interesting to take.

Khadim.

post script: I have a friend who has a formally verified IQ of 173. A very analytical person and a good friend for a long time. It's a 'she', by the way. I still recall her proudly showing me when we were kids, how she had programmed her Amiga home computer to produce Fourier Transforms at a time when I didn't even know what one was. Come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure I do now. wink.gif biggrin.gif
Heath Robinson
A gem from my attempts at the test:

QUOTE
Your empathising score is 0 out of 20. This is an indication of your ability to read and respond to others' emotions.
knasser
QUOTE (Heath Robinson @ Jun 8 2009, 08:39 PM) *
A gem from my attempts at the test:


eek.gif

Wow! How does that make you feel?








Do you know? grinbig.gif

-K.

p.s. I was going to write that the above was meant as friendly humour, because the tone of online text can be ambiguous. But then I realised as I started typing that, that it would sound like another jibe at your score and then I'd have to qualify that qualification and the moment I did that, it would sound like an even bigger jibe. So I'll skip all that and just assume you have a sense of humour. smile.gif Out of curiosity, where did it place you on the male-female scale?
Chrysalis
I did the test yesterday (you prompted me to go online look for tests, Khadim), and I got between both genders. I was amused that it could tell if I had siblings or not, even if I am the eldest. Some of them though are social expectations.

I have been wanting to take apart the ideals of women in this thread. The image is a very strangely skewed one of an overemotional chocoholic - possibly even pregnant and yet going through PMS.

I mean if you are going to talk about women like that (the thread not you, individuals are unique, but when you make generalisations you end up with a model upon which people's gender is judged) then the archetypal man is no better. My view on the archetypal male character is that of a lone wolf character who has no emotions, or at least only enough to make quips, he has no family, his life seems to revolve around being invulnerable from everything. He may have ripped body, but he does not acknowledge its existence. The closest movie reference would be Arnold as the Terminator.
ElFenrir
Well, I'm 25% toward the male brain, it looks like.

I scored female brain on a lot of it, that's the funny thing-but apparently the scores I scored male on it really counted(I got 11 of 12 of the rotating pieces; it said that this is more male, for example, and their average was only 8.)

I'm 11/20 Empathy, 8/20 Systemizing. I scored pretty average on most things, except for the rotating pieces, and the words(I don't say too much there I guess. Though I can talk tons. nyahnyah.gif)

I prefer more feminine faces in my guys. Given the characters I make-no surprise. (Oddly enough, my favorite guy in the world, my hubby, is rather manly. biggrin.gif)

Here's a question that I do wonder:

It's been discussed here that some folks play a lot of guys, some girls, and others either.

What do you think causes this? Why do some men have a preference for mainly playing male characters-while others always play female, and others yet really don't have a preference? What about women? I do know for some reason that women seem, IME, less likely to be cross-players like myself-but what is it about some females who prefer playing males-and yet again, some have no preference once again?

Does it have anything to do with being male or female brained you think?

(For the record, I have one female character I play-my alchemist/scientist. I haven't had any urges to make anymore PCs after her for girls. They come out as male 95% of the time.)
Apathy
I'm willing to believe that our behaviors are influenced by lots of different things, including biological sex, and social imprinting. How about hormone levels? In some ways this could be treated as a sub-component of biological sex, since there's a strong corrolation between high levels of some hormones (i.e. testosterone) and being biologically male. But different people have wide ranges of hormone concentration compared to others of their same gender. How much of my typical 'male' behavior stems from high quantities of testosterone, and how would my behavior change if those concentrations were reduced (i.e. chemical castration, etc)?
Summerstorm
Hm, yes... very interesting. I didn't knew some of those facts in that test... It placed me at zero (i am a man, heterosexual), even if i completely destroyed some tests. I placed myself at 5 emotion, 15 systemizing, but had 9/10 when spotting emotions. (I think i am very perceptive) Also i seem to like woman (whoa... wait what... i knew that *g*) Also i was excellent at the rotating objects, but veryvery bad (surprised me) with the angles. Also i crashed with word association, but i blame that on the facts, that english is not my first language... i mean really find more words for happy? I found two.... sigh (really need to work on that)

But to give something of worth to the thread:

In my old group we were exclusively male. We had ONE attempt at some one playing a woman in about six or more years (multiple rounds). It failed horribly. You know, if a man plays a woman mostly two things happen: Ice-Queen or loose Slut. We had a loose one. After he tried to seduce a guy in a bar for informations (as a Charisma 9 Night One woman) with the words: "Hey, how about we fuck in the restroom?" We forbid him to ever do that again *g*. Also it is very hard to roleplay any kind of sexual interest or relationship as a man to another man, i think. Of course if you are a exceptional roleplayer this might get easier... but you always have this dudes face in front of you.

The other side i experienced once or twice too: I was at a convention, playing a round of World of Darkness. (yesyes, sorry) And a very attractive, young, asian woman (and it was summer, she wasn't wearing too much) was helping out the GM and played a NPC: One hardcore young vampire man with a beard. NO ONE on that table could do something against that (or with) NPC as we didn't know why he reacted in the ways he did, and what we should do with him. (He was a guide for us in an investigation... and HE WAS the murderer!!! (what a twist)) I couldn't help to think: "Well this is one hot girl, i mean guy... dammit!!!" It just confused the crap out of me... all the mannerism were strange. This girly, yet tough man. With his muscles and the cute voice. It just irretated me so much.

So, i haven't met anyone, until now, who could get it right. Something is always a bit "off" with those characters. I myself never tried it, since i am really uncomfortable with it. But i have played many characters "not-human" and had little problem with that. This i think is because you don't have this hardwired expectations for such a character, and tend to read it more like your own gender (or the gender of the player of course). It's like the robots and the uncanny valley: If you try to be something you are not and do a few things right, it is cute and you are loveable. If you do too much right, your glaring flaws, the discrepancies in your behaviour, become obvious... and you are an abomination.

Also: Runners or adventurers who are always together... there is always sexual interest, even if only half-serious... except the woman is some kind of insane monster, or horribly disfigured. (Yesyes, we men are pigs)
Heath Robinson
QUOTE (knasser @ Jun 8 2009, 08:46 PM) *
eek.gif

Wow! How does that make you feel?

Do you know? grinbig.gif

-K.

p.s. I was going to write that the above was meant as friendly humour, because the tone of online text can be ambiguous. But then I realised as I started typing that, that it would sound like another jibe at your score and then I'd have to qualify that qualification and the moment I did that, it would sound like an even bigger jibe. So I'll skip all that and just assume you have a sense of humour. smile.gif Out of curiosity, where did it place you on the male-female scale?

I have a sense of humour. You needn't worry.

In the end I scored about normal for a guy (50 towards Masculinity). Mostly because I got a rather feminine score on a couple of later tests. My shape rotation score was 12/12, but it's always been one of my strongest points (noted in my school entrance tests). I got 5/10 (I think there were 10 of them) on the eye interpretation test, which probably offers a counterpoint to the empathising result (which is entirely self-reported, and therefore rather suspect).
Wounded Ronin
OK, I've gone and taken the test. My score was 50 male points, which appears to be exactly average for men who take the test.

Well, here's the interesting juicy stuff. I'm just pasting the relevant stuff as I read them...hopefully I don't end up getting humiliated in public for scoring below average in something. wink.gif

QUOTE
Angles
This task tested your ability to identify the angle of a line by matching it with its twin. This is a spatial task, which looks at how you picture space.

Your score: 16 out of 20
Average score for men: 15.1 out of 20
Average score for women: 13.3 out of 20

You found this test neither hard nor easy. This suggests your brain has male and female traits when it comes to spatial ability.


Ugh, I honestly think that back at the beginning, when they showed a flat line, I clicked on the wrong flat line, not realizing the line was supposed to correspond to a certain position on the semicircle. Although a score of 17 would have given me the same evaluation. Still, this here kind of makes me experience embarrassment since I was only slightly above average.

QUOTE
Spot the difference
This task tested your ability to identify which objects changed position. You lost points, if you incorrectly identified objects.

Your score: 14%
Average score for men: 39%
Average score for women: 46%

If you scored between 0 - 33%: You may have more of a male brain. Scientists say men tend to under perform in this task. The corpus callosum, the part of the brain that links the right and left hemispheres, is a fifth larger in women. This means women can process visual and other signals at the same time more easily than men. There is also a theory that oestrogen levels in women give them an added advantage in spatial memory.


I pretty much got pwned here. I felt like I was going fine for the top half of the picture and then my mind went blank when I panned across the lower half. Damn, I totally fail.


QUOTE
You said your left thumb was on top when you clasped your hands together.

Right thumb on top: This suggests the left half of your brain is dominant. Many studies have tried to establish whether there is a relationship between handedness and brain dominance. Some scientists believe that if you are left brain dominant, you would be more verbal and analytical.

Left thumb on top: This suggests the right half of your brain is dominant. Some studies theorise that as a right brain dominant person, you may excel in visual, spatial and intuitive processes.

However, these theories are debatable and leave much to be said about the small percentage of people who are ambidextrous.


Whatever. I totally discount this because they called attention to the fact they'd look at my thumbs as they told me to put my hands together, so it got me all weirded out. Also, last Saturday I was operating a pistol on an indoor range and using a isocoles grip ( http://www.azccw.com/grip.gif ), and I probably just built up muscle memory to put my left thumb on top of my right.

QUOTE
Emotions and Systems
This task looked at whether you prefer to empathise or systemise.

Empathising

Your empathy score is: 5 out of 20
Average score for men: 7.9 out of 20
Average score for women: 10.6 out of 20


What does your result suggest?

Empathisers are better at accurately judging other people's emotions and responding appropriately. If you scored 15 and above, you are very empathic and would be an ideal person to comfort people in a time of crisis. Women in general are better at empathising.


Systemising

Your systemising score is: 17 out of 20
Average score for men: 12.5 out of 20
Average score for women: 8.0 out of 20

What does your result suggest?

Systemisers prefer to investigate how systems work. A system can be a road map, flat pack furniture, or a mathematical equation – anything that follows a set of rules. A score of 15 and above suggests you're good at analysing or building systems. Men in general are better at systemising.

Scientists are keen to learn more about people who score high or low on both tests. They want to find out whether or not empathising and systemising are linked. Is a possible to make yourself more empathic?


This is the first score I felt okay about in that it co-incided with self-image. Seeing as I spam this forum with crap about how I like an actual game with rules and strategy more than "role playing" and fudging dice rolls so your PC can be a precious little snowflake.

QUOTE
This task tested your ability to judge people's emotions.

Your score: 5 out of 10
Average score for men: 6.6 out of 10
Average score for women: 6.6 out of 10

What does your result suggest?

If you scored 0 - 3: Do you think you're good at judging how another person is feeling? Your score suggests this doesn't come to you quite so naturally.

If you scored 4 - 6: Your result suggests you have a balanced female-male brain and find it neither easy nor difficult to judge people's emotions.

If you scored 7 - 10: Your result suggests you are a good empathiser, sensitive to other people's emotions. Women generally fall into this category.


NOOO I'm below average for everyone. Sniffle.


QUOTE
We asked you to measure your ring and index fingers. Your ratios came to:

Right Hand: 0.98
Left Hand: 1

Average ratio for men: 0.982
Average ratio for women: 0.991
It's thought that your ratio is governed by the amount of testosterone you were exposed to in your mother's womb. The ratio of the length of your index finger to the length of your ring finger is set for life by as early as three months after conception. Even during puberty, when we experience intensive hormonal changes, the ratio stays the same.

Men generally have a ring finger that is longer than their index finger, which gives them a lower ratio than women, whose ring and index fingers are usually of equal length.


I was using a crappy plastic ruler that wasn't long enough so I take this with a grain of salt.

QUOTE
This task looked at how you rate the attractiveness of a series of faces. The images you looked at were digitally altered to create slight differences in masculinity.

Your choices suggest you prefer more masculine faces.

Highly masculinised male faces possess more extreme testosterone markers such as a long, broad and lower jaw, as well as more pronounced brow ridges and cheekbones.

Interestingly, women's preferences are said to vary across the menstrual phase. A more masculine face is preferred during the 9 days prior to ovulation, when conception is most likely.

A typical 'attractive' female face possesses features such as a shorter, narrower, lower jaw, fuller lips and larger eyes than an average face.


This was actually interesting. Seeing as they kept bombarding me with the same sets of faces over and over I was able to figure out that the only difference between the faces is that one version was a bit wider and the other version a bit narrower. Amusingly enough, though, I kept thinking the wider version seemed more masculine and the narrower version more feminine, 'coz women are smaller, right? But it turns out that was exactly wrong. I think I more frequently selected the narrower faces as being preferable but there was a bit of intellectualization there as well, in the sense that I started to think about the body that would accompany the face and thought that a rounder face would indicate more body fat and therefore could make it more likely the person is overweight or something. Then, I thought, "Well seeing as they're just trying to guage sexual attraction I suppose if you put me into some kind of freakish sick gameshow where I had to pick a face and subsequently was forced to have sex with the person I picked I ought to express my slight (I usually picked "only just prefer" or "slight preference") preference for the narrower face so that I wouldn't theoretically end up being forced to have sex with some really overweight person." But I also think I was more attracted to the narrower face anyway on some emotional level.

QUOTE
This task tested your ability to mentally rotate 3D shapes.

Your score: 10 out of 12
Average score for men: 8.2 out of 12
Average score for women: 7.1 out of 12

What does your result suggest?

If you scored 0 - 6: Do you find yourself having to physically rotate a map to point in the direction in which you're travelling? This might explain why you scored in the lower range in the 3D shapes test. Twice as many women as men score in this category. Previous studies suggest that those with a female-type brain or with an arts background fall into this range.

If you scored 7 - 9: In past studies, 50 per cent of the people who scored in this range were women and 50 per cent were men.

If you scored 10 - 12: Are you an engineer or do you have a science background? People with these skills tend to score in this range. Past studies have concluded that people in this range have a more male brain.


WOOHOO! I finally did something right and scored significantly above average. Goddamn it was about time. But, no, I'm not an engineer. I hate math, and on the SAT I scored 800 verbal and 710 math suggesting the relative weakitude of my math brain.


QUOTE
This task looked at your verbal fluency.

Your score: you associated 6 word(s) with grey and you named 9 word(s) that mean happy. We are assuming that all the words you entered are correct.

Average score for men: 11.4 words total
Average score for women: 12.4 words total

What does your result suggest?

If you produced 1 - 5 words: You are more of the strong, silent type with a male brain. You probably find it easier to express yourself in non-verbal ways, preferring action rather than words.

If you produced 6 - 10 words: Most people in this range have a female-type brain.


Okay, I take this with a big grain of salt. Because I am one of the most verbose people I know and I have got a large vocabulary. The reason I didn't squeeze out a lot of words is because I kept revising in my mind to strictly fit within the criteria. They'd asked me to come up with words that are always grey, and all kinds of images of grey things came into my mind but I had to reject them because they weren't strictly speaking always grey. Things I did come up with were "sebum" and "corpse" though among others which I think is amusing.

For "happy" again I deleted a lot of words that didn't very narrowly have exactly the same definition as "happy". In desperation as the timer climbed down and I started to freak at not having squeezed out "enough" words my mind started throwing out French words which of course I had to delete.

So basically I could have come up with all kinds of words but my sense of following rules kind of screwed that over and I erased a lot of stuff that popped into my mind on the grounds that it was incorrect. I guess I assumed or felt that they'd run my strings against a database of acceptable matches or something.

QUOTE
This task asked you how you would divide money.

If you had to split £50 with someone, you said you would demand £25

So far on the Sex ID test, men have demanded 51.6% (£25.80) of the pot and women have demanded 51.0% (£25.50), on average.


What does your response suggest?

Sex differences are small in this task. Demanding less than 60% of the pot (ie £30) is more typically female. Demanding more than 65% of the pot (ie £32.50) is more typically male.

Scientists believe that people with lower testosterone levels tend to take fewer risks so they are probably more willing to keep less for themselves. Those with higher testosterone levels tend to drive a harder bargain and are less compromising.


What? I just did fifty-fifty because it seemed fair. I didn't even really think of the whole risk aspect.


Hmm. Now I have to go and stew over what these test results mean or imply, and how it can help me understand females.
Warlordtheft
QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Jun 8 2009, 07:46 PM) *
What? I just did fifty-fifty because it seemed fair. I didn't even really think of the whole risk aspect.


Hmm. Now I have to go and stew over what these test results mean or imply, and how it can help me understand females.


Me, I took 40. He or she can be happy with 10. It is better than nothing.


I ended up at 0. WTF....though I am left handed and I know that means I'm in my right mind. In any event-be wary of genralizations-they are just our mechanism to cubbyhole things....
Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (ElFenrir @ Jun 8 2009, 04:20 PM) *
What do you think causes this? Why do some men have a preference for mainly playing male characters-while others always play female, and others yet really don't have a preference? What about women? I do know for some reason that women seem, IME, less likely to be cross-players like myself-but what is it about some females who prefer playing males-and yet again, some have no preference once again?


In the past I'd created and played some female characters in SR3. Kind of weird isn't it, given my creating this thread? I think I did it because I had a character concept I thought would be fun or interesting to play, but in retrospect I don't think those characters were very realistic.

Why did I do it? To do something a little different, maybe. To add some variety to the body of player characters, maybe. To articulate a fantasy, maybe.

The last two female character I either played as a RPG character or wrote about in stories was definitely abnormal. I think this character appealed to me because she was something of a fantasy. A cold, calculating, sadistic alcohol-abusing woman. Based on the discussion in this thread she is un-realistic because she is not empathetic, but she could be realistic in the sense that she gets emotionally riled up and then wants to torture you to death. She has a lot of built-up anger or rage from her life but this is normally suppressed by her drinking and intellectualizing but it tends to explode out and cause torture and destruction when she gets excited or worked up for some reason. I deliberately put a little bit of myself into her in that I tried to make her be an abstract thinker, and at the time, I really liked and drank a lot of booze, although I've seriously cut back nowadays. Now that I think about it she is still in my general age bracket so maybe on some subconscious level I was projecting some part of myself to create her character. Or maybe for some reason, on some level, I have a fantasy about a smart attractive woman who is also absolutely nuts. I honestly don't know. Link to a story involving the character which I wrote: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...hl=janitor+doom

I remember at the time I'd been asking if the character was realistic or not in terms of gender behavior. Well, what do you think?

Anyway, that character is not the only female character I'd used in SR3 campaigns. I remember one character I'd used years and years ago was a female physad who did drunken boxing. Hmm there is that alcoholism theme again. I know there were a couple others but I can't remember them at this time.

The rest of my characters were male and they were usually either some variation on the ex-military tough tatctical taciturn guy, or a ninja. Or a suicidal honorable samurai physad. My all time favorite character to play was a troll who was pretty much a direct ripoff of John Milius' Conan. I had him run around in leather underwear wielding an Atlantean claymore weapon focus (which I guess I never saved up enough karma to bond) and in order to be true to the character never let him use armor. He was the most fun, the most goofy, and the most tactically rewarding to play.
knasser
WR - I did similarly badly on the vocabulary test as you did, and for the same reason. I actually only scored 8 on 'happy' because like yourself, I was crossing off words that didn't quite fit. On Grey, I had to pause to consider whether steel was acceptable because if it were, I'd just rattle off every kitchen utensil I knew. The test was inadquate here, unless it was assessing not vocabularly, but lack of stringency.

Regarding which gender is preferred to play, I tend toward male characters for my PCs, but I mostly GM and seldom get the chance to play. I therefore get to role-play quite a lot of female characters and I enjoy it quite a lot. I like playing different characters. For playing a character that another character might be attracted to (when they're played by a male), I try to tone down how present I am physically in the character to make others more comfortable through being able to disassociate me from the character. I.e. I'll make less eye contact with the player, I'll keep my voice slightly less of an impersonation of how the NPC talks and gesture less. Basically, whatever diminishes attention on me, the person playing the role. If the other player were a girl and discomfort were less of an issue (note there can be other reasons for discomfort than male-male, e.g. a boyfriend in the game that considers PC-NPC flirting to be a substitute for player-GM flirting), then I might be slightly more engaged. It's dependent on the people involved. But I thought this was worth mentioning and not something I had really considered much until this thread, although it's what I've done as a GM.
xsansara
I scored 50 % male, which is pretty accurate, as I am currently pregnant with a boy. No wait, got my math wrong smile.gif

Fitting this I feel more like playing a fake when I am playing girly women than when playing regular guys. Not that anyone complained so far either way, but I scored so low on the empathize and eye test that I might have missed something (2 out of 10 on the eye test, that is below statistical probability).

We used wo have a guy in our round that played almost exclusively women, some people complained about that, especially as they tended to be young and slutty. Sometimes very young. Even playing a guy, I never got myself to hook up with one of those. Never felt weird about it, too. Actually, I was very puzzled when another woman, who was playing a guy (I did a girl that time) felt compelt to hook up with that little slut, as this was what she felt a guy would do.

One more note on the word test:
As far as I know, it does not mainly test how many words you know in the category, it measures how many you throw around without thinking and how comfortable you feel with the category they give you. Boys do score higher on boys topics like sports for example. That women talk more does not necessarily mean that they convey more information to each other. They just use more words as part of regular socializing and by that they tend to be more trained in social situations. However, women are notoriously bad at communicating much information in short time.
So asking yourself, whether a certain word really fits the category is typically male.

counterveil
QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Jul 28 2008, 01:21 AM) *
3.) Chocolate! WTF is it with females and chocolate? I don't even like chocolate anymore very much. I've never heard a male discuss chocolate unless he's a chef. But females seem to bring it up all the time.

This one is pretty straightforward. If you play a female character she should eat chocolate given the opportunity during times of emotional stress.


Hey now, I'm a non-chef male who loves chocolate so much that I only really like eating the brown M&Ms. The others are kind of just...well...not chocolate.

And I eat chocolate at all spectra of human emotion. And often substitute it for dinner.
Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (counterveil @ Jun 9 2009, 07:27 PM) *
Hey now, I'm a non-chef male who loves chocolate so much that I only really like eating the brown M&Ms. The others are kind of just...well...not chocolate.

And I eat chocolate at all spectra of human emotion. And often substitute it for dinner.


On the other hand, whenever I make the above statement, some guy honestly goes and says something very similar to this.
Blade
Ok, so my brain is asexual, or bisexual... I got 0.

Oh yeah, and I'm better than the average at everything except the angle thing (guess I'm not really an engineer after all) and I'm an asshole when it comes to negotiation (seriously, I give you 10£ take it or leave it... So what I'm getting 40? You want something or not? It's free money, why refuse it?)

Interesting test anyway.
knasser
QUOTE (Blade @ Jun 11 2009, 07:47 PM) *
Oh yeah, and I'm better than the average at everything except the angle thing (guess I'm not really an engineer after all) and I'm an asshole when it comes to negotiation (seriously, I give you 10£ take it or leave it... So what I'm getting 40? You want something or not? It's free money, why refuse it?)


Because neither of us did anything to earn it. We get it by co-operation. Anything other than a fifty:fifty split is inequitable. I would turn you down and you'd have just lost £40 through being too greedy. wink.gif Meanwhile, I would have only lost £10 so I come out ahead. wink.gif
Inncubi

Chocolate-Female thingy is, by my record, somthing from the States. I had /never/ in my 27 years or existance, having had lots of female friends seen an affirmaiton so vehemently enforced, so accepted as an inherent part of female character and so a priori recognised as deffinitively feminine. Hell I love chocolate, make it swiss and I drool (american chocolate is not so good, Hershey's sucks. Bad. All sugary, bleh).

My female friends do not eat half the chocolate I see my male pals munch on. If you want my 2 nuyen.gif this could an issue where advertisement, cultural and educational issues, in the U.S specially or at least that do not happen in Colombia, has influenced pretty hard on certain population.

On the other hand, of you don't like chocolate, you are nuts. Its one of the best drugs ever, and *trivia* I read somewhere its as addictive as cocaine. biggrin.gif

I back Counterveil completely on this issue.

Now, if I were to go for statistically, in my country, adequate difference between males and females, I'd have to say, sadly, that female submission to male authority is like chocolate in the previous examples. Lack of independence in women, except in the mid-high to high social classes and even then you notice it 6 out of 10, the need for a male to feel complete. It is, very sadly, a very common denominator. Most end up as housewives, whose life is limited to the kitchen, changing diapers and having a warm meal for their hard working husband for when he comes home. You see it every time, hell my grandmother says that she doesn't like my girlfriends because they're "Como fuertecitas, no?" --("A little bit too strong, don't you think?")--

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