Wow. I've been roleplaying for over a decade, and I've never once had this problem. Is this a new trend, or just something seen among younger, more inexperienced roleplayers? This is the first time I've ever heard of this being an issue--in fact, being a "cross-gendered rper" isn't even a term in my book. It just seems like a given, especially if you're like me and have more characters than you can sanely keep count of
My main fursonas tend to be female (Nari, Vega), but some of my male characters are perhaps the most fun to play (Byron, Kurunzi, Kazuya-chan, and Decimus who is a character that a friend gave me). I don't think it's very hard to grasp a realistic character of either gender in writing. How would an author of a book write books anyway, if he or she didn't explore characters of the opposite gender? Surely C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, Erin Hunter, and more must be complete and total whack jobs.
You know, this actually brings up a funny thing that my boss at work said once. She noticed that I kept reading the Warriors books during lunch break, and we got into a discussion of Erin Hunter and I mentioned that they also wrote Seekers, which is about bears. My boss actually said "she must be really weird if all she writes about is animals all the time." I almost fell out of my chair. The closed-mindedness of some people is really quite astounding. (So Kyugima, believe it or not there actually
are people who are creeped out by cross-species roleplayers! xP lol. Great parody thread, btw
)
That being said, I can understand how it might make inexperienced roleplayers feel squeamish, especially if they haven't properly been taught about what roleplay really is. I'm certain that many believe a character to be an avatar or representation of oneself, when really this isn't always the case (and, more often than not, just simply
isn't the case). I don't feel that they're weirdos by any means, just a little misled and misinformed about the nature of roleplay and what it means to play a character.
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