thread: 2006-04-10 : I roleplay like a little sexually-irrelevent nerd
On 2006-04-11, Ninja Monkey J wrote:
Boy, it hit me the other day: by Jewish law, I've been a man for just short of 20 years. By US law, I could have fought and died as a man 15 years ago, and I elected a President instead (though I haven't had much luck since).
I went to look at pellet guns the other day (I love machines, I love target shooting, and I consider the NRA to be an organization worthy of deep suspicion, so it's a logical choice) and the guy told me I had to be 18 to buy one. I thought, "Boy, that was a long time ago."
When I was, oh, probably 19 or so, something clicked with the characters I was playing. They very suddenly stopped being machines of vengeance and became avenues of moral exploration. That's not to say that "vengeance" is necessarily off the table, but it very, very suddenly became one color in a subtle spectrum. Coercion (the cause of the vengeance) remains a hotbutton issue with me, but other things are usually more interesting: religious orthodoxy, pragmatism, violent solutions causing their own, larger problems, placing family above all else...
I could see, the moment my character was a Taoist monk instead of a vengeance-soaked cowboy, that something changed.
But look! See how gendered these options are? It took me time to understand women (insofar as I ever did) to be able to play one. And that took actual sexual maturing to make it happen. Like, actual, long-term sexual experience. And because it's me, the largely-straight male, having those experiences, it makes it a different experience than if I were a woman. Just like it's a different experience if I were gay.
Gender is really close to the core of a person, I think. I don't know if it has to be that way, but I think it usually is. So when you play a game where you're kinda trying on variations of yourself, you'll necessarily play a character that's gendered in a particular way (in addition to having input from every other aspect of your personality).
So now I roleplay as a man. "Adult" has other implications that maybe I don't want to imply when I say that. "Man" says some specific things, given the nature of manhood I've inherited, internalized, and grown into my own. It means a particular perspective on child rearing, on violence, on skill and knowledge. I think Vincent said "man" because it's what he meant. But I know for goddamn certain that he didn't mean that there's quantitative value to it over roleplaying like a woman or something else.
This makes RaC go "No."
"But look! See how gendered these options are?" Nope, can't say that I do. But that's just me.
This makes NinJ go "You don't see the gendering in Taoist monk and cowboy? The fuck?"
