Male Or Female Characters?

[shiftyglob]

Ever since I first started playing my own characters, meaning when I was like.. Five, I played girls. In fact, everything I had was a girl, I wouldn't even try to play a guy character other then the occasional bad guy here and there (Meaning they appeared and died within five minutes, no personality what so ever). Then one day, a few years ago, my sisters tricked me into cosplaying, and suddenly I was addicted to playing guys. Now  all of my characters that I a fun time roleplaying are guys... Not a girl in sight.. In fact, out of the fifty + characters I have, I only have like.. Three girls, and I never play them, they just sit and collect dust in the far corner of my character list.

I find that my main problem with playing girls is that a lot of the time my characters personalities are based off of how people treat them, and since everyone treats girl characters as such, they all end up as a 'girl'. I am trying to remedy this by putting one of my 'male' personalities on a female, but I have yet to roleplay her (Since in the roleplay she is in, she hasn't been born yet) so I have no idea if I can stay in character.. Hopefully I will succeed!

[Blue_Apples]

I, like most other girls who've replied here, lean toward having more males characters than females. Though my reasoning for this is a little different. I don't know if its just me who thinks this way but I view girls, both in game and in real life, as being snotty and stuck up and just generally being b*tchy. (I know it isn't true of most girls actually!) And guys are just the nice middle ground where they go from being rich and stuck up to down to earth, being bad to being the nicest people ever. So yeah, most of my characters are now males.

But there is another reason, and I'm sure most others have experienced this. Most packs/clans/whatever have a lot of girls in them and very few guys. So to even things out I'd usually create a male character to help beef up the guy's side.

Plus its just really funny to watch girls I hardly know fight over my character. What a sick sense of humor I have.

[~Firepool~]

I have a mix of both male and female characters (Though most of them are female). I have an easier time roleplaying female's than males, but I do try to be a little different once and a while and create a male character.

[Chapawee]

I'm a girl but I sort of prefer male characters for a number of reasons, partly because I'm a tomboy. I can relate to them a bit more and it offers a different way of expressing myself.

[Lady_Alizarin]

I play both male and female characters. I play more male characters than I do females.

[DomesticFox]

I play male characters for the most part, though I often give them "intersex" characteristics because my perception of my own gender and physical sex. (Intersex is what you mislabeled as hermaphrodite an offensive slur, but most people don't realize that...so yeah.) Intersex means that the chromosomes of both sexes are somehow present in the dna of an individual. This sometimes shows up physically, which is the way most people know of the condition. As I am probably not a real intersex (there are hospital tests for that- so I don't know for sure) I don't use the term, but yeah... I guess you can say my characters tend to be non-binary males, or just simply males, depending on the individual character.  (I am a big part of LGBPT community so I thought I'd clarify on that.)

[mossstar1992]

Yeah, I'm a cross-gender role-player so i play both genders. I prefer a Male more, even though im a she~

[anotherstatistic]

Being genderqueer myself, I make some genderqueer characters. Most of the time I make a decision on the gender of the character by role-playing it out. However, when I do make characters with clearly defined sexes, I make males, even though I'm physically female. I'm a feminist too, but the fact that I play on male characters doesn't have much to do with that.

[Sukani]

I tend to like having characters of each gender equally much.
My fursona is male, as I in real, am female.
But I don't think it should matter too much, that you are playing a different gender in-character, than you are in real. I know, however, that many are against this.

I have four characters in total, two are male and two are female. So that has simply been divided fairly. Heh~

[Smilodoncat]

I actually find this thread a bit sad. It appears the most people prefer male characters, even if they are female in real life, and that's perfectly alright.
But then you have to think about the reasons why people choose to play males than females. I think it's because in most works of fiction, male characters are allowed to behave and act like actual characters, while females are condemned to archetypes. True, male characters have archetypes as well, but they are much less limiting. There is an idea called the "Smurfette Principal". This states that your average series will have a main cast of mainly male characters, with one token female. Each of the male characters will have a "unique" personality trait (the smart one, the brave one, the shy one etc) well the female's unique trait is simply the fact that she is female. The male's characters will be developed, but the female will not be developed much more than the fact "she's a girl!".
I believe subconsciously this idea has rubbed off on roleplayers. Roleplaying a more well developed character with a deeper personality is much more fun than roleplaying a shallow character. And all this media we see ties into character creation. So people end up making complex males, and shallow females. So in the end, they prefer the males.
This is just my theory, of course. But still.

Personally, I prefer female characters over males. Why? Because I am female and I find them easier to relate too.  When I create a new (female) character, I try to break away from those limiting archetypes when it comes to designing my female characters. I try to avoid the typical "girl" personality type.

I do not play only as females, though. I have a few male characters, a few characters that would be considered to not have a gender, and I even have a couple hermaphrodite charries.