This thread is inspired by this other one: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...t=0&start=0

That thread has got me thinking about ways to convincingly role play across genders. I guess it's a question that I personally have thought about on and off for many years. Although I don't play Shadowrun right now, I played it every week for many years all through college and grad school with some pretty consistient groups. I only stopped when 1.) the group I'd been playing with fell apart and never came together again after years of interaction and 2.) I left the US for 2 years and since then I haven't been able to get on the wagon again, especially with 4th edition coming in and being all new and difficult to master. Over the course of these years I played both male and female characters, and I noticed that some other people tended to play either characters of only their own gender, and I knew one guy who almost always played characters of the opposite gender.

I remember back when I was in high school and I guess the early years of undergrad I had the idea that if you're role playing a RPG character it shouldn't actually make that much of a difference whether you're male or female. I imagine that this was probably colored by gender equality idealism given my age and a college setting. Simultaneously being a gamer I didn't interact with that many females in the depth that I might interact with my close male friends. Perhaps there was a certain element of abstracted fantasy in my portrayal of female characters, as well; a projection, as it were. For example, this piece of SR fiction I wrote actually has one of my earlier female characters as the protagonist: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=13334

But now that I'm a little bit older, and that I've interacted with more females, I actually feel like I have to go back and revise that old idea. Like it or not, it seems as though females do not behave in exactly the same way as males. While this may be partially explained by socialization, I've also seen distinctive gender behavior in a variety of cultural settings and so I am inclinded to believe that there may also be a biological or "evolutionary" component to behavior differences. On the flip side I believe that I've seen cultural settings where women's behavior is socially mandated to be very different than men's behavior, so far be it from me to minimize or trivialize in any way the role of socialization.

From my perspective, if I wanted to portray a "realistic" female character (as opposed to one so oddball that it would be more of an eccentric character rather than a 'realistic' female one) I might actually role play slightly differently than I would for a male character. I almost hate to articulate this because I don't want to sound like I'm rehashing tired sterotypes, but there are a few things I believe I've noticed over the years.

1.) In my experience, both males and females have emotions, but in cultures where discussion of emotions are socially acceptable, females are more likely to discuss their emotions as a central and 'interesting' topic of conversation. The discussion itself may not be goal-orientated or pragmatic but the discussion of the emotions is in and of itself an 'interesting' activity. NB that most *people* aren't very articulate, so sometimes an open-ended discussion of emotion can sound dumber than it really is, if that makes sense.

From a role playing perspective, if I were playing a female character, that could actually be helpful because I could simply broadcast to the other characters from time to time the emotions my character is feeling, which would simplify role play and enhance emotional nuance attached to character portrayal.

2.) This may be heavily influenced by socialization, but I've noticed that in general when women talk about the abstract possibility of being physically victimized in a crime (i.e. a mugging) they often are always talking on the social level about what they would do. Two things I've heard from females include how the female in question would try to talk to the perpetrator (operating on the social level), and a second female once said that if she and another person ever ended up stabbing each other that the key would simply be to stab as much as possible but get to a hospital afterwards so as not to die (operating on the social services level with an internal or self focus). I don't think I've ever heard any females talking about nihilistic physical rage or Conan-esque kamikazee attacks on the enemy, but I have heard males talk about that. Actually, I have, but only once, and only one very special female who had a lot of anger issues and even then her statement had more to do with what she wanted to be doing than what she was imaginging would be happening to the enemy. So I think that perhaps by default males are more likely to get excited about the details of how they can jack another person up, whereas females don't seem to think about that in detail but rather seem to be thinking more about violent situations in relation to themselves and what they'd do in a more self-referential framework. Did that make sense?

I'm not sure if that would come up in SR roleplay or not, though. Since if you give someone combat training that would ideally overwrite their default ways of thinking about altercations. Probably if you gave a female combat training she'd think more about jacking the other guy up on a mechanical level and less about the above.

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.




Well, I'm curious to hear what people have to say about this. In a sense I feel like I really walked out on a limb since it's basically politically incorrect to discuss gender differences without writing some effeminate "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" crap which made me throw up in my mouth a little. I feel like I've probably opened myself up to flames.

Be that as it may I'm curious to hear what people have to say about my appraisal because it's possibly a measure of the accuracy of my social observations concerning females, and as such a measure of the extent to which I may or may not conform to the sterotype that gamers would never ever be successful with females in any way, shape, or form.

I'd also be curious to hear what females may have to say about what they believe a female player must be cognizant of when portraying a male character. I personally believe that a lot of times when I read female fantasy authors (even good ones like Ellis Peters) they write most of their non-villanous male characters as acting like gay men, honestly.

The thing about female shadowrunners is that they are atypical. Not of shadowrunners perhaps, but of women. Most of the girls you know probably don't suit shadowrunners, it's not exactly a feminine job.

So I often find that if I play female characters then they portray more masculine behaviour. They don't focus on emotions as much as a stereotypical woman because they're focused on the job and on staying alive.

But on the other hand you're right. In my current game where I play a shy, female hacker, I notice that in the IC posts she internalizes emotions. How she feels about the other characters. I originally started doing that to emphasize that she is shy, new to the team and threatened by their opinion of her ability as a shadowrunner, but I suppose you could put it down to a feminine trait as well. But then again I find myself to be similarly neurotic in real life, so perhaps I've based a feminine trait on my own.

Honestly, my first three real characters have been male, and the last three have been female. I haven't had a problem role-playing females, but that might just be me personally. Throughout my formulative years I spent a lot of time with females, only having one or two close male friends, so I suppose I might be acclimatized. But then again, perhaps I am atypical, as your 2nd point describes my approach to violent situations pretty perfectly.

And that is probably the easiest way to run a female character - Pick a girl you know and transform elements of her into a shadowrunner. That works for me as well.

Mr. Wounded Ronin I appreciate your topics, but do you think you could refrain from typing in all caps? It hurts my eyes.

caps makes you speak up so you can be heard. For truth.

as far as roleplaying a woman? sage advice


Receptionist: How do you write women so well?
Melvin Udall: I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.

So just playing a completely erratic, emotionally unstable, weight fluctuating, chocolate binging cyber-girl as she runs by night and by day looks for a razor guy for hot (and the hijinks that ensue) but ISN'T a slut, no matter what that corp girl keeps telling everyone isn't enough?

I wonder if that's on the trideo in the 2070s...?

First you have to answer how do you roleplay a man?

Boobies, beer, and barbecue! AMIRITE?

Females are different than males, true. But the differences within a gender are greater than the differences between the genders. I'm not saying ignore them, just don't make them more important than all of the other details of the character - their views on religion, sex, and politics; their relationship with their families; the circumstances that led to their unusual career choice.

And don't get too hung up on making a "realistic" female. Remember that it's a game, where you step out of the real world with its petty rules and harsh consequences, where you can play someone who is wilder, tougher, crazier, and more uninhibited than you could be in real life. Have a good background, sure, and avoid Mary Sues, slobbering levels of detail about your lesbian elf's romps with twin catgirls, and glaring stereotypes. Other than that, though, just have fun.

I have a female in my online gaming group, and her portrayal of a male is hilarious. He's basically constantly staring at the face's chest and has IC voice-overs about it. Cracks me up every time.

I'd say take Lone Wolf McQuade and start from there. But what's your answer?

(Here's the Lone Wolf McQuade trailer to get you pumped up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2gwuokBtTY )

Personally, I think that the best way to roleplay across gender lines is to roleplay as you would any other character that is different from you. Anything else has the potential to be condescending .

Of course, one could get some ideas by looking at statistics about how people of the opposite gender engage in violence, but that will just provide generalizations and generalizations aren't always applicable to individuals.

Generally, females tend to be more indirect and passive-aggressive with their violence than males are, for some reason. Bullying is a good example. When boys bully, they tend to take the direct route, calling people names to their faces, occasionally beating the crap out of them or threatening to do so. Girls, on the other hand, tend to go for something called relational agression, which is passive-aggressive social maneuvering and politicking and occasionally overly elaborate plans to drive former friends to suicide using transgender internet roleplaying.

Female killers are also substantially more likely to use poison in a passive-aggressive manner than male killers are.

But, I think that this is more cultural than biological. With the action-girl archetype becoming more and more popular we're seeing a surge in the number of girls who just beat the crap out of people whom they don't like.

From what I've seen, boy fights are far less dangerous and violent than girl fights.

As for playing someone from the opposite gender, I'm not sure that's more difficult than playing a metahuman or someone who's spent all his life in the Barrens. At least, we can see people from the opposite gender everyday, we can read books written by them with characters written from their point of view. That's more than what we have on metahumans.

I'm a female that mainly plays male characters. Perhaps because I've always been a tomboy-type, I tend to turn toward male characters. I do play a female now and again, but I find they are more like myself in personality often. Dunno why. I actually end up enjoying playing males a bit more, for some reason. Now and again I get a female concept in my head that I run with.

Never had a problem playing cross-gender, myself. Always felt right at home.

I seem to miss the point here. I find you largely overemphasize the gender difference here. I play females just like males. The differences arise from character and most of them stem from the reaction of other chars/NPCs towards my PC. Just imagine the difference between a 1,70m slender human male walking into a dirty biker bar in Renton and a 1,70m petite female doing the same. Charsheet and the outlines of your character will all be the same, just the reactions from the drunks inside will be all different.

btw: Is this strangeness to girls just a DSF thing?

Fortunately, almost all of the people i know wouldn't make good runners...it's not exactly a job for remotely sane people.
Among those few whom i could imagine to be loony enough to be violent criminals for hire, males are the majority, but only slightly.




So true.

Plus, i'm absolutely certain there is a difference between genders, but can never exactly pinpoint what it boils down to because of the vast differences within a gender.

There are tons of points where gender differences might come up- the character's sexuality, social behaviour, self-perception, attitude towards violence, whatever.
But in all cases, it would be unjust to break it down to a simple "girls are like that".
It just wouldn't work out, as in every of the abovementioned aspects, i'd imediately come up with an example of a female behaving atypically in said aspect without appearing less feminine.

Also, i have repeatedly and regularly seen examples for mentioned forms of female behaviour among my male friends- i know many -probably too many- men who will fall for the relational aggression stuff mentioned in a previous post, i've experienced talking about emotional problems becoming more and more widespread throughout my circle of friends (even though males seem to be a bit more whiny on that issue) and so on.

Curse you, you beat me!!

WR, overall I would say the differences between males and females is primarily going to be in inter-party interactions during downtime. Women are just as capable of being goal-oriented and getting the job done as males (at least if they've survived long enough for a second job in the Shadowrunner community). Overall the best crossplayers I've seen are those who just don't stress about it and don't do anything 'special' for females. The only real substantial difference on a run is they have to sit down to pee.

However, when doing lots of character interaction, I have noticed a few traits I'd consider distinctly feminine. That isn't to say all women do them, or that they'll come up in game, but perhaps it's worth mentioning.

Women seem to be more aware of their effects on others. I think this is partially a result of socialization. Girls are told to have tea parties and be nice to each other, while boys are given footballs and told to run into each other at full speed. But girls seem to be more aware of, and concerned about, the feelings of other people. I think this is why girls are more likely to use passive aggressive methods like poison to kill people. That isn't to say that women can't be stone-cold killers. They're just less common than they are in the male community. My aunt is a Marine, so I suspect she's gotten to that 'I will kill a man if I'm ordered to'. She didn't seem any more or less intuitive and concerned for other peoples' feelings than anyone else.

On the flip side, women have this weird thing where they talk about what's bothering them just to talk. It's like they want people to be aware of them. It's completely baffling to me. I talk about what's bothering me to find solutions, and I think most males are similar in that regard. I've learned when this behavior arises I should just shut up or agree emphatically.

For those women who take a genuine interest (i.e. beyond a passing interest), in things like combat, they seem to be very good at appreciating and understanding the mechanics of it. One of the best karate practicioners I knew was female, and my wife has a strong appreciation for how to operate firearms, but only in that it gets her shot through the target and not because they're naturally pretty objects. I would agree that I've not seen a woman go into a testosterone-fueled, kamikaze rage, or talk about how cool it would be, but most men I know don't talk about this either.

This sort of feeds into something specific to you, WR. I've noticed you post a lot about some extremely masculine subjects. Most men, in general, don't get pumped up watching kung fu flicks. Most men don't get excited talking about jacking other people up. That isn't to say that stuff is wrong, but it is simply an uncommon behavior. Lone Wolf McQaude is not the average man. The angry commissioner is more like the average man. So it may be worth considering that, if you're having difficulty playing a woman, it's because you have an odd starting point. Women are very similar to men, however, most men are not very similar to Lone Wolf McQuade. Consider playing some less combat-oriented, 'get pumped up and die in an honorable bloodfest' characters, and female characters will probably become easier too.

I am not saying it's impossible for men to cross-game, I just haven't seen it first hand.

To me, crossgaming means one of my fat loser gamer friends is putting on a bisexual nympho supermodel ninja/samurai/pirate suit and playing the character just like every other character the cretin plays.

...and then they brag about their great roleplaying ability to their other friends...

Yeah, an acting job that would get you kicked off a Sci-Fi Pictures set is really something to brag about.

Heh, I crossgamed well enough online that when I said I had to disappear for a few weeks for the birth of my first child, when I got back one of the players said I was allowed to be a bit late on getting back since I'd just squeazed a baby out. Is it bad of me that I declined to correct him?

I think DireRadiant just said one of the most pertinent things in this thread.

I also think that so long as you're grasping for how to play a particular sex, then you're doomed to fail. When you decide to play a person of that sex, then you're suddenly heading in the right direction. If you're really struggling, think of a person of that sex that you know, and play them (but whatever you do, don't let them find out).

You can account for half the differences not in how people of different sexes are, but in how it affects their environment. The other best advice in this thread was It Troll's: imagine how differently people are interacting with you. Maybe you're a little subtle about your sexuality because you're a girl... or maybe it's because all the guys in the place keep looking you over like they want to get inside you and it's a little intimidating or unwanted. Consider your interactions with the world around your character more thoroughly and your characters behaviour will come more naturally.

Suggested reading:

Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons (http://www.amazon.com/Pink-Think-Becoming-Uneasy-Lessons/dp/0393323544) - this is a Women's Studies book that should be required reading for all men IMHO.

- Scope_47

The reviews suggested that the focus of the book was popular culture in the 50s and 60s?

Actually, the focus of the book is on gender norms in America and how they developed toward what they are today - it makes a good bit of reference to the 50s and 60s, but that is hardly the focus of the book. Beware though, it is written by a hard-line feminist.

(if you want to discuss it more, PM me. I don't want to jack the thread)

- Scope_47

lol@topic.

Fundamentally I play RPGs as escapism, so characters I make are fundamentally jason bourne/indiana jones clones with few weaknesses and large capability for badassness, or machevellni schemers or whatever. But character choice is always dictated by what awesome shit I'd like to do within the context of the game.

As a result I never play women, so the question has never come up. Hilariously.

I appreciate your nuanced response. Lots of people seem to basically be saying, "there's no difference, duh!" but your response is more thoughtful. You're right about the female talking thing. I have noticed the same thing, and also have read about it. The purpose of the talk is to broadcast emotional status, and therefore any pragmatic solutions offered will be seen as invalidating aforementioned emotion. Therefore, one must talk on an emotional level when the female is so engaged and not concern oneself with solutions for the time being. Perhaps after all this is the holy grail of portraying females in role play. Just broadcast emotions from time to time, and if your INT score is less than 5, or your character doesn't have the College Educated edge, your character might in fact verbally broadcast emotions poorly due to lack of vocabulary or structured exposition. This would in turn lead to the other player characters being annoyed or baffled by your character's speech, especially when their responses which are missing the point are met with negative reactions from your character.

Kind of like a twist on how in Fallout if you play a character with a very low intelligence your dialogue options become degraded. But in this case since accurately articulating emotions using words and sentences probably requires a high level of intelligence or training (i.e. English lit classes where you wrote lots of papers about characters) your dialogue options to describe your confusing emotions are pre-degraded and only become "normal" when you are a superior character in those regards.



The best females in combative sports I've interacted with have been judoka, and they were all meticulously technical and efficient with their judo. They were actually pretty tricky to grapple with since they tended to be good at escaping holds, quick in their manuvers, aggressive with chokes, and even if you were a relatively big dude the good ones could try and trip you in standup. Tripping people isn't easy but people who are good at it are very annoying to grapple against. I personally never got that good at tripping. So, like you say, technicalism. I remember I had a very strong feeling of respect towards a lot of female judo players because their technique was just so tight, even if I was bigger and beefier than them.

I've noticed that while male judo n00bs often inappropritately try to muscle everything, female judo n00bs often try to be completely technical and fail to attempt to muscle things when doing so might be appropriate. Whereas IMO the "best" thing to do is to use technique whenever possible but also not hesitate to brute force something if you know that's going to work.

Although good female boxers do exist, I have never personally seen one in the flesh. I belive that solid female pugilists are harder to come by than solid female grapplers. Perhaps females prefer grappling over pugilism? I don't really know. Grappling as an applied discipline is probably more technical than standup pugilism.

Incidentally I've heard that women are often better shots with firearms than males. If this is true it would seem to highlight the preoccupation with technical refinement again.

What about testosterone fueled rage? I don't have any direct experience with *suicidal* samurai type rage, but I feel like I've been lucky enough to have some close encounters with some garden variety male fight rage. Where the males enter rage-mode.

I will say that especially in standup striking I see male n00bs go into rage-mode a lot, but I've not seen a female standup striking n00b ever go into rage-mode. When I say rage-mode I mean both parties have felt a little pain, and they start running together and hauling off and landing really big punches. I saw a group of wrestlers in the FSM put on some boxing gloves they found lying on a mat and just start going with the haymakers like that. I saw sweat fly and lots of mouth-blood dribble afterwards. Similarly, once I was kickboxing with a Japanese dude who claimed that he'd practiced forms at college but not sparred. When I put the pressure on him his response was to get super aggressive, burn up a lot of energy, and hit me as hard as he could repeatedly. It was actually pretty tiring to deal with that since if someone is going to direct that much of an aggressive attack at you and maintain it for a certain period of time you also need to burn up your own energy faster to "process" that style of attack as it were. I remember landing many satisfying punches and kicks during this time but that I got tired a bit faster than usual with calmer opponents. It wasn't that he was particularly technical or strategic, but it's just that there were a lot of forceful punches and kicks going through the air at me pretty quickly and I had to either react to them or absorb them.

It is true that not everyone has the rage-mode reaction. Like I said, I've never seen a female do that. I've known some males who get discouraged when you pop them a lot initially rather than shifting into rage-mode. With males it's perhaps a toss-up whether they get discouraged and back down, or whether they get steamed and go super-aggressive for a time. But I have only seen female n00bs get discouraged and back down if they have a tough initial experience. I have not seen any rage-mode from them.

I find that as males get more practice and experience with boxing or kickboxing that they're less likely to use rage-mode, since this burns up tremendous amounts of energy and basically lets your opponent have his way with you once you're done. On the contrary they are more technical and more likely to conserve energy until a crucial moment of advantage.




Hmm. You know, I really hadn't thought about this, but maybe you're right. I kind of heuristically assumed that everyone started shaking in their chair and grinning when discussing, for example, oriental voluntarism in Japanese martial arts cinema. But I guess that I don't actually have a real basis to assume this applies to all males.

Maybe a lot of the males I've interacted with during hobbies, like the aforementioned kickboxing, are effectively "screened" by the hobby to be guys who enjoy fighting and combative sports a lot. On the other hand I don't particularly enjoy or play very much non-combative sports such as volleyball or soccer, so maybe I've just been encountering a skewed male population. But when I think about it, combative sports with sparring actually don't do to well in the United States compared with milquetoast non-combative things like tai chi or ATA TKD. So maybe in fact the majority of males don't particularly enjoy punching and kicking the tar out of each other. I mean, hell, I guess it's true that there's even a lot of males who don't feel comfortable going to the front of an auditorium to give a speech or participate in a debate against an opponent, let alone taking on another male in some kind of single combat sport.

Now that you've got me thinking and reminiscing, I remember back when I was an undergrad there were lots of martial arts clubs but the vast majority of students didn't want to spar using any kind of full contact standup striking. In my 4 years there I'd only managed to get several continuous contact sparring matches, and many (though not all) of the people I sparred with would get spooked and basically cave in if you came in swinging with aggression and didn't back down. There were a couple of guys who were solid and who did me the courtesy of beating the crap out of me, though.

Your Lone Wolf McQuade analogy, I think, helped me to see that clearly now, and helped me think about the possibility of self-selection. So thanks for that.

In order to keep this boat on course, the question becomes how do I apply this realization to portraying female characters? Firstly, I suppose I should take your suggestion, about creating or playing a character who isn't necessarily a Chuck Norris/Michael Dudikoff/Sonny Chiba/Ahnold standin, which truthfully has been my long-running tradition to create such characters. Perhaps I can try and create one which is somehow nonconfrontational in some capacity? Perhaps I could spend more time carefully observing males and base a character on non-combative males in the world around me.

After having done that the next step could be to attempt to create a female character who didn't just step out of a Tarantino film, which I guess is my other long-running tradition. Food for thought, I guess. Hmm.

But what about chocolate consumption? Have you ever seen or encountered a male who explicitly will seek out and consume chocolate in response to emotional stress? In fact, when was the last time you saw a male consuming chocolate period?

I'll add something to the minefield of this topic, and I'd be interested on comments from any female Dumpshockers on what I have to say - even if it's to tell me I'm speaking nonsense. And I stress the latter because it could be vaguely contentious.

It's not so much about what women are, but something that men do. And identifying traits stronger in men is as useful for this topic as identifying traits common in women.

All that said, I'm not sure exactly how to define this, but it's the instinct toward group work and suspension or rapid establishment of hierarchy that men seem to be particularly good at in general. When confronted with a problem or crisis, an instinct kicks in that enables differences to be suspended and camaraderie to be rapidly formed. Should I be listing this as a "male" trait? Well that's why I said it was contentious and welcomed female insight. But my reason for listing it as male is firstly that in situations where I have witnessed this, it's been something that seemed to shoot through the male members of the group first; and secondly, because what it affects primarily seems to be the male rivalry-hierarchy system. I was with a couple of girls (and the only male) when they had a near-fight with three other girls. I thought it was about to become a full on scratching, kicking battle, but the other group had one male member to. There was this instant en tente with the other guy which took all of a glance and a invisible nod, and we both started getting in the way and guiding our respective groups away. It was funny to see the sudden separation and co-operation of the males from what was otherwise two opposed groups. And I'll be honest, but our respective ethnicities had been one of the sources of the tension between the girls (two slightly drunk white girls and three arab girls, neither of which groups approved of the other and I'm ashamed for both),

Ordinarily, male interaction is always informed by a constant low-level, for want of a better word, dick waving. The suspension of this mode and the extremely efficient co-operation mode is an identifiable state of mind to me which I have witnessed in more dramatic situations than the above. I wonder if other males here know what I'm talking about and if female posters feel that it's not a gender thing or have other insights. I may have described what I'm talking about badly. It has to do with competitiveness within a gender and an instinctive (it is definitely instinctive) ability to deal with this. It also has to do with why, in two groups that were closely defined, a confrontation with the other immediately separated those groups along gender division. And, incidentally, the males separating themselves from group allegiance to form a new alliance with each other was not even remotely considered wrong by the rest of the group.

Possibly I'm reading too much into this, which is why I want other opinions.


A female friend (sadly not a role-player) is one of the most insightful and funny observers of sexual differences that I know. Her diatribe about a male colleagues that felt the need to rearrange his Crown Jewels during a long meeting was one of the best. I tried to explain that sometimes you, ah, needed to adjust things for comfort. She said sometimes she needed to adjust her bra for comfort but you didn't see her doing [you had to be there] in the middle of a meeting. And indeed it is true - you don't normally see that to the degree that we actually laughed just at the shock of a woman jiggling things around publically. So many little things that aren't big issues, but such little cultural taboos and habits.

I still think the best advice is not to think about what a woman or man is like, but to think firstly of a character who happens to be male or female and just keep an awareness of the different environment they operate in. For Shadowrunning, that environment may be a lot more similar between the sexes than it is in different areas of life. After all, it's very focused, very dangerous and if you can hold your own whilst living that life then people aren't going to be basing their interactions with you based on normal cultural mores.

The Mars/Venus books are oversimplifications. Deborah Tannen doesn't claim to have all the answers, but what she does say is based on hard research, and I've found her theories applicable. Check out "You Just Don't Understand". She has some plausible theories about men's interest in status, and women's interest in connection. If nothing else, it explains the difference between complaining and hoping for answers, vs. complaining and hoping for sympathy.

Knasser, that's a good story about the two guys coming to an agreement by eye contact. As I read your story, the women had already lost perspective, and the guys were keeping cool and looking for alternatives to escalation.

Under what circumstances, if any, do two women do something similar? If they're outnumbered by males? If they feel threatened by males? When caring for children is involved? Would they try to redirect the situation - or sit it out and fix damage afterwards?

my fridge has got this giant bowl of leftover chocolate frosting that i've been eating a spoonful of every day. not to mention the giant box full of chocolate chips...

Knasser, I think you bring up a good point. I can say that, as a male, I am very aware of the sense of hierarchy among other males. As soon as I meet someone else professionally, I feel like we're trying to size each other up as superior, inferior, or irrelevant (i.e., outside of my personal structure). As a younger fellow, I always preferred the company of girls, I believe mostly because I never felt that competition (and because, as a geek, I generally ended up on the bottom of the pyramid). That isn't to say that females don't have that structure, but that, as a male, I was exempt to it.

I don't know if women have a mental hierarchy. From my personal experience, I'd tend to say it is, at minimum, weaker than that in men (again, probably heavily influenced by nurture. I know women who can wave dicks with the best of them.) For example, my wife built a business from the ground up, making and selling geekware at cons. She invited someone else in to help her. Even though my wife was pulling a 60-hour workweek, and the other girl wasn't even pulling a 20-hour week (not because she's lazy, but because she had another job already), my wife went for an approximately equal cut of the profits. I was befuddled. But even though my wife is clearly the experienced one, doing all the work, she approached it as partners. It could just be that she's very non-confrontational and was friends with the other lady though.

I also notice that, in general when running groups online, the first thing that seems to cue me in to cross-players is the role they take in the group. A person who takes a clear leadership role, even if it means leaving other people behind or bossing them around, are almost always male, while females tend to drive other people on with them.

I am male. I ration myself a set number of chocolate chip and double chocolate chip cookies each week. I also love peanut butter. If only there were a way to bring the two together.

Sick and twisted.... yet fascinating concept

Watch Smallville.

http://www.amazon.com/You-Just-Dont-Unders...8861&sr=1-1

The reviews are mixed, but I can get a used copy for like a dollar, so I may just go for it.

I've thought some more about this overnight. I think this is true at least in the United States. But the United States is a very litigious and increasingly non-physical society. When I was in the FSM young men were more likely to get into brawls, and if you terribly offended someone he still might grab a machete and come after you. I'm not sure if that necessarily vindicates a Howardian idea of rural physicality, or if this is really just anecdotal evidence which proves nothing because we don't really have any data.

But I recently wrote a big long post on the internet noting how in the US at least when there's video footage of young people being physically victimized, the people usually don't fight back, even when the time appears to be right. So is this a reflection of how people don't like to fight?



I originally posted that rant here http://www.sociocide.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50383 and I got a few interesting replies on the subject of tendencies of humans to react violently.




So after thinking about the things I've read it does indeed seem like the average man, at least in the United States, isn't mentally ready to physically defend himself, let alone mentally geared to enjoy recreational fighting.

It is interesting to note that in the aforementioned television program in many cases the perpetrators of violence were in fact female, but tying into the themes of this thread they were motivated by social reasons (i.e. MySpace comments, hazing ritual) and they were acting as a group. But for some reason the female victims chose to basically play possum. And in Knasser's story the women were more likely to fight than the men.

Maybe women are more likely to engage in violence and enjoy it than men if they feel they have a social mandate and at the same time they're part of a group?

Well I guess it is the same as domestic violence.. All you hear is men abusing their wives.. leading to the conclusion that there is no women abusing their husbands.. Truth is that although Men is overrepresentated in violent crime, the difference between genders is negible.. You dont hear about the violent females.. and you dont hear about the chocolate munching men.. oddities of life

I think that's an interesting post, WR, and something I've been considering a lot myself. People are learning not to fight back. Certainly applicable to Shadowrun, where that 90% has probably been increased even more. The sararimen can't imagine fighting back, and those who can have been recruited for security teams. Shadowrunners are set apart because they both fight back and are independent to fight as they like.

In regards to the male/female issue, I suppose the only thing I can say is to refer back to knasser's post and add an additional hypothesis.

Assuming males tend to form a hierarchal structure, that means there is competition between individual males, which may result in physical combat. If I need to get higher rank, I may need to fight you, WR, in order to prove I'm stronger and more capable than you, and therefore deserving of more respect, even if it's your respect I'm trying to gain.

Assuming females have a less rigid social structure, but rather are aiming to find acceptance by the group but not rank, individuals picking fights makes less sense. However, should the group move to fight, it would make sense for the individuals to follow, in order to maintain their sense of comraderie.

This, of course, is ignoring either gender picking fights for a particular value, such as freedom, self-protection, competition for resources, etc.

This is also building generalizations upon generalizations, so it's a house of cards, but I'll put it up and see what sort of counter-evidence people propose.

Maybe they're just bitches like Sarah Silverman in Way of the Gun who is going to have her pussywhipped man do her fighting for her anyway.


Some people are learning not to fight back. But what sets shadowrunners apart is that they generally display sociopathic or pyschopathic tendencies, first among all being a rejection of authority--especially the authority that tells you not to solve problems with your fists (or a gun)--and a lack of regard for their consequences and for human life. Shadowrunners have always been different in this game from the U2Cs because they are almost by definition mentally fucked in the head.

Anyway, the OP is hilarious. Especially since we're discussing women criminals, who are in their own right pretty different from most women as men are from women.

It's hard to think about how to answer the question because I do not really think about how I play. I just am.

What I think it comes down to is not so much how we are wired but how society lets us act. Women are much freer in our behavior. less limited by society. In an office men pretty much have to wear suits. We can get away with all sorts of things- suits, skirts, pants, dresses and still be business correct. We can mix and match colors. You are lmitied to blue, grey, black and if daring...brown!

I think the comment on feelings and talknig about feeling is hard to put into game terms, but I think I can work it into the chocolate conversation. Unlike guys who are supposed to be buttoned up tough, we can appreciate nice things. In RL I can put on a silk blouse and it feels nice. I bet it feels nice to you too but you are not supposed to think about that or admit it. There is a sensousnous to good chocolate that we can enjoy. Society lets us. If you see a guy making a big deal about 'wow what great chocolate." What would you think of him?

We are allowed to socialize in a group. You see several women out for an evening or at the mall chatting and laughing you don't give it a thought, but see guys doing that who are not talknig about sports or power tools and there's something wrong with them.

Lastly, the violence. I think women are less likely to fight, in general, but once it starts, we are more likely to get savage.

Weird. Of course, I think that of anyone remarking over how good chocolate is. Chocolate in large quantities disgusts me - I cannot eat it. Especially the "good" stuff. Chocolate is kind of like cheese - in moderation, it adds flavor & texture, almost like a seasoning. In large quantities, it makes me gag.

Of course, it could just be that I am unusual - I do enjoy drinking rice vinegar, among other things...

As a woman, who usually plays women and works in a mostly male environment, I feel like contributing to this.

First of all, the instant let's-pull-together is in my experience something that tends to come from women, they just communicate it differently, so you might have missed it (or I missed the males...). That aside, in my experience, women are more capable to hate someone else for ages with no chance of forgiveness and to the brink of self destruction than men.

Another myth I would like to destroy, is that women do have hierarchies, they just work differently and women usually do not like to formalise them. My mother likes to call it the "secret connection". The currency is social status, helpfulness and shared emotion. That is why women usually do not like to say that they are better (it does not help their hierarchical position and in fact hurts their likability), but instead you sometimes see women sharing very intimate details of their life in order to create a bond very fast. Even though female hierarchies are more subtle, they are enforced about as harshly as their male counterparts. For someone outside the hierarchy to act in a non-hierarchical way is much easier, eg. a man breaking off a fight, like you described, or a woman taking all the blame for a botched project, because the outsider does not lose status (in their head).

This is also the reason women tend be more aware of their effect on others, because it is necessary to determine their status in the hierarchy and thus act appropriately. Men have a similar instinct for "dick-length", which women tend to ignore.

In Shadowrun this hardly matters, after all, female Shadowrunner usually do not come in large groups.

If I am in doubt about the authenticity of a fellow "female" Shadowrunner I ask them to go shopping (if female myself) or start bragging with sex stories (if male). The typical female response is very typical and almost universal to culture and background. If they do not get that right I assume a sex-change operation, not so costly in 2070. That kind of explains all those kinky lesbian killers

As for playing male characters, I usually try to stick very close to well known cliches or characters, which give a tight reference of playing options. I really like to flirt as a guy, but I am shamefully bad at it. In fact, last Saturday, I didn't even get my husband into bed (who was playing a female character). Shouldn't have started with the test... Or maybe I just got careful. A few years ago, a (female) friend got really mad at me (outtime), when I started cheating her (again female) character.

I never heard about the chocolate, however. Maybe that's an american thing. Woman do tend to obsess about comfort food in stressy situations. After all, most of us are on diet.

It an interesting thought. My personal experience has been that I tend to be less emotionally involved in physical confrontations as many of the women I know. It's possible to fight with someone without really disliking them. In the controlled environment of sports competitions (boxing, wrestling, muay thai), I often find myself in hard sparring with me and a partner beating the hell out of one another but we don't get mad - it's all in good fun. My wife finds this completely inexplicable. She has a hard time with the concept that the boxers and MMA fighters we watch on tv don't actually dislike one another.

I don't know if this is typical or not - would some of the female DS'ers provide their POV?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_a8dDltfDk

Fast forward to the two minute mark.

My mind has come back to this line again, and I've been doing some more thinking about this in terms of RPG characterization.

What has come to the center of my attention as I think about this is the game Damage Incorporated by Richard Rouse, the somewhat well known game designer. I feel as though I can perhaps learn more about the mindset of the "average man" by looking into the head of Richard Rouse through his creation. Rouse himself has claimed to feel very queasy about violence and I believe that his beliefs and attitudes are indirectly revealed when you look at his NPC personalities.

Basically, Richard Rouse tried to inject characterization into that game, and since the game is about commanding a small fire team of Marines to go and Waco the crap out of domestic militia groups in the US, the NPCs with personalities are all your NPC Marines. Damage Incorporated has also got a great deal more characterization than many other games since each Marine comes with a psychological evaluation and can potentially react in unexpected ways depending on which level of the game he is used as a NPC in. As Rouse put it,



Source: http://www.paranoidproductions.com/damage/interview.html

The thing is, in spite of this emphasis on characterization, in Damage Incorporated the Marines very broadly fall into two categories.

The first category is comprised of the level-headed professional type characters, who usually verbally express some kind of regret at the killing and bloodshed that is taking place during the course of the game, and who are described as being "competent" in various ways when you read the character's file before starting a level. The NPCs usually have average statistics across the board and are likely to exactly follow player commands. Tellingly, I think that one of the NPCs in this category, Aslag, was named after someone involved with the creation of the game.

The second category is comprised of berzerker, psychotic, or non-emphathetic type characters. They usually verbally express pleasure or make sarcastic humorous comments about the killing and bloodshed that takes place during the course of the game, and they're usually described as being competent but unstable in the pre-level files. These NPCs tend to basically be min-maxed, and are also likely to disobey player commands in certain levels, usually by going berzerk and rushing ahead samurai-kamikazee style, but also sometimes by having mental breakdowns and freezing up, or suddenly sprinting away in random directions.

This suggests that Rouse sees two broad possible interactions with violence on the part of the person who chooses to participate. The first possible reaction is the level-headed professional who is empathetic and dislikes what he is doing on an emotional level, but who nevertheless participates in the violence out of a sense of duty or professionalism. The second possible reaction is to be an antisocial nutcase who likes it.

If I assume that Rouse represents the "average man"'s take on violence and professionally violent individuals (i.e. shadowrunners), that would mean that the "average man"'s sympathetic shadowrunner would be the regretful professional.

Therefore, one thing I could try and do if I wanted to make a more "believable" female character could be to start with the regretful professional cliche as a framework or starting mould, and add things or modify things from there.

Holy crap, this actually explains a lot. Like, so, so much. It retroactively describes and explains the behavior of so many females I've interacted with in various organizations. If I were the protagonist in Planescape: Torment, reading that paragraph would have given me 10,000 EXP.

That he's a man who appreciates fine tastes? Appreciating the finer things in life is not an unmanly trait, it's about class.



Okay, my opinions of Americans have hit a new low. Men are only allowed to talk about sports and power tools? How can you people live with such boring conversational topics?!


Depends on your classification of violence. I've experienced more aggravated tones in conversation from women than I have from men. Social violence is still violence, and I believe that the frequency of boys physically fighting each other is lower than girls engaging in social violence towards each other.




This was nothing really new to me. It's been depicted quite a lot in media.


Males are not burdened after mating so they can have sex with many mates and spread their genes widely on account of that. Direct competition is therefore logical as the winner gets a large benefit (in evolutionary terms). The hierarchy prevents unnecessary waste as the relative strength of the competitors only needs to be established a few times. The capacity to engage in conflict without long term impacts is a sensible development because it allows competitors to co-operate later on as necessary.

Meanwhile, females can only copulate successfully (in evolutionary terms) with a single male. Therefore, there's a smaller benefit (in evolutionary terms) to being the best. Females need to invest more in the pack because they are more vulnerable when pregnant, requiring protection afforded by other members of the species. This means that a constructive hierarchy system is beneficial. Negative acts are punished harshly to incentivise productive activities that will benefit the whole group, the harsher and more universal the punishment for these acts, the stronger the incentive to be productive to the group and the stronger the group will be.

Goal-oriented behaviour is a survival mode backup, when the chips are down you're best served by being the surviving bastard instead of the dead nice guy.


As a disclaimer, I'm not a biologist, a psychologist, or any kind of -ist. I'm a student that happens to be mildly learned.

...fascinating read.

Lots of cliches to roll out here, WR. I'll get them all out and then write the thoughtful stuff. One: why is it harder to play a woman than, say, someone from a completely different cultural background? It's because we often default to generalisations and stereotypes: the stoical Amerind, the inscrutable Asian, the ruthless, efficient German. In a sense, it's fun to do. But obviously there are exceptions to all those rules and, while violent crime is dominated by males, to the extent that special books and TV shows are made about violent women, there obviously are enough to make those shows/books.

Two: your technical thing is interesting. I'm an ex-rugby player, and found that female rugby players are often way more clued in to the technical stuff about weight training, stance etc than I was. I didn't have to be: I go to the gym, try to impress all the lycra-clad lovelies with my awesome bench press, realise again that the only people who care are the men trying to do the same thing as me and go shower. A lot of women players know exactly how often they should train, what they should be eating, the right mix of aerobic and anaerobic...oh, it bores me just thinking about it. So we are on the way to creating another generalisation/stereotype here.

Three: I think I'd be considered a "skirt". I was in a fight once at school where I basically told the guy that he punched like a p***y but just stood there and took it. Why? Well, my mother was a teacher there, so I knew she'd be ashamed if I got into trouble. The guy punched me a few times, I laughed at him and walked away. Sure, it hurt. But it would have been worse knowing that my mother was embarressed to walk into the staff-room. I have used violence on other occasions: I smacked a guy who was beating his ex-girlfriend, but only after trying to drag him off and reason first. I sometimes wonder whether I should have smacked him earlier, or harder. But the guy was drunk, probably a bit stoned too and had just been dumped.

I am currently playing a female character. I think it's going well. I try not to ham it up, and I try to let a lot of my "personality" get reflected in the in-character write-up I do of each session. I also try to let my abilities reflect gender: a small Asian woman wouldn't bother with a strength based melee weapon so she uses a mono-whip. She tries to hit first because if she gets hit, she's down (Body 3, Str 2, Agi (mod) 7). She also makes sure that all her weapons are as recoil free as possible (technical planning like you said).

I hope this adds something to the discussion.

Hm... whenever someone brings chocolate to the office. All the time at home. People bring chocolate to game sessions too. Chocolate is also a nice "small gift" for several occasions.

I don't know many males who don't eat chocolate.

I'd think he was a normal male. I don't see any difference between a man lauding good chocolate, good steaks, or a good wine. We do not consider chocolate something "feminine" over here. It's something we give men as a birthday gift, for example (among other things - it's not as if it's the birthday gift).

I'd say this "chocolate is for women" is something cultural. It's unknown here in Switzerland (apart from the binging on it, but that may be an import from Bridget Whatshername).