Shave and Long Hair, One WISH
What do you think about cross-gender characters (i.e., men playing female characters and women playing male characters)? What about GMs playing them as NPCs?
To be perfectly honest, I don't get the controversy. Much of the POINT to role playing is to take on, for a time, the role of something you're not.
Heck, that's where the name derives from.
I'm largely of the school that if a human who's never been off this planet can be safely trusted to play a Vrusk Space Marine, then someone who has known people of the opposite gender *all their lives* can probably handle it.
OK, yes, I can see the point that people are going to have more suspension-of-disbelief problems with something they're more familiar with than with something completely fabricated. It's a little harder to jump up and say, "But Vrusk don't DO that!" (Mind you, Gamers WILL, it's just a little harder.) But you might as well say no one should play games set in the modern world, because we know it too well. (At least, we think we do. "I'm sorry, you say the President authorized shooting down *commercial* airliners filled with *American citizens?* I hardly think so, Bob. That would be political suicide under ANY circumstances - you just can't go blowing up your own electorate." Yes, well, apparently sometimes you CAN, but if it had come up in a game, I wouldn't have bought it.)
To be sure, it could get annoying if someone used it as an outlet for whatever frustrations they may have with the opposite gender. E.g. a man who plays all his female characters as vapid sex-kittens who only think about shopping and gossip, or a woman who plays a string of male characters all as obnoxious beer-swilling jerks who go adventuring in their underwear.
But I get annoyed with tree-hugging elves and dwarves obsessed with gold, too. Even Orcs are being given real personalities these days. There's even a case that RPGs are a better way to get out that kind of frustration than most of the alternatives, but I won't push it - that doesn't make it any less annoying for the rest of the group.
Still, I think that, even on the rare occasion I've seen that actually come up, it can be dealt with without having to throw out the whole concept. This is the first time it's even been suggested to me that the GM shouldn't. Unless you have a male GM and you're playing HoL, it doesn't sound very feasible to me. I think even badly played NPCs would be less distracting to me than a whole world where everyone you meet is the same gender.
One thing I will say is that, when I am playing a female character in a face-to-face game, I do make an effort to minimize the disbelief factor. I'm the only one in our current group playing cross-genders - at least, we're *pretty* sure about Jelica - and I do, for example, make a point of shaving before each session. I don't know if it really makes a difference, but what the heck.