why is this an issue? (f vs m charries)

Well, actually on STC all the characters are mainly male due to the setting, there are no rules that specifically enforce gender ratios from what I see and know (I can be wrong) because it's pretty much assumed that the character joining would most likely be male - if they are female, there is still a place for them on the ship as a traveller, I think, or a citizen elsewhere. I don't think the site needs to count the genders present though, if they do then it would make sense why!

I honestly don't see gender ratios anywhere on the sites that I am on and if there are any, I generally ignore them as I am not a fan and possibly also because they're handled maturely. Sites like BTM and STC handle the genders maturely, gender ratios or not. But I wasn't talking about sites that would require mainly one gender like an RP site based around a Navy ship/monastery or church/nunnery, etc. I was talking about other sites where more than one gender is generally welcomed as a part of the plot in my last post =)

To be honest our board does have one, but our reason for doing this is that the future post-apocalyptic setting is such that in the environment there are more men than women. So it wasn't like really done as a way of limiting people, but to adhere to the setting. Maybe we shouldn't have opted for that setting, but it seemed to make a whole lot of sense at the time. On boards, I personally like it when the numbers are pretty even just because I feel like it allows for more possibility in plot, but it's definitely not a deal breaker if the ratios are off. I don't actually see too too many boards ratio-ing the m to f, buuut granted, I spent a while on a hiatus from rping.

Oh hell do I belong to an elusive minority, being a male roleplayer who plays primarily female characters. In fact, my last male was well over a year ago. My reasoning is simply a stronger muse toward one gender. I have an idea and far more often than not, it fits a female character better, thus I create her. When I last staffed, this was also true and became a running joke on the site; a few members took bets to see if I would ever play a male on that site (I did not.) I never ran into issues and nor should anyone else.

While certain genres are the exception, people should play whatever is comfortable. I have come across a few sites that did outright ban one gender and frankly, it did appear to be so they could push romance. A shame really because these sites tend to be what gives romance plots a bad name but I digress. If I bother to keep count, it's to appease my OCD love of statistics tracking, not because I care about the gender ratio. Members and staff (because dammit, we all count here) are there to have fun. If you do so by playing x gender near exclusively? More power to you.

Yeah, exactly. Agreed! There are a lot who do that like for historical sites who need male characters considering the circumstances for back then and there are a lot female applicants on sites like those. It makes sense to put gender ratios and bans to keep harems or reverse harems from happening, lol. But then I don't think it's absolutely realistic because parts of the world or even smaller scales like universities, there are more women than men or more men than women, too.

I'm aware of what a cis man, cis woman, and gender spectrum are. But lumping all of those people (intersex, transgender, or "gender changers") as "in betweens" like it's a label does not come across as right to me because I don't think it's simple as that or that a label like that appropriately portrays what they are really about. It even suggests some things that could be considerably detrimental as not all transgender or intersex individuals are "in between" male or female, that would depend on their gender identity. Some identify as solely male or solely female or neither at all and this isn't just limited to them because it extends to cis people, too.

Intersex and transgender are not genders. Intersex people can have any gender and be on any spectrum of gender expression. So can transgender people. The idea that they are 'in betweens' is not only inaccurate but dehumanizing. Try not to lump us into one category. Not all cis people are on one end or the other of the gender expression spectrum either.

I used to have a gender ratio thing, but it's just so silly and pointless to me that I'll never use one again. Some places have more women than men and vice versa, and these ratios tend to not include non-binary folk anyway. If it's romance people are bawwing about then they can go somewhere else.

I never been really fond of gender ratios unless, as some have said already, it gets way tipped to one side with 10 girls to 1 boy.

I personally prefer to rp female characters as that is what I am most comfortable with. Out of my nine years of roleplaying I have only rped -one- male character on site. Sure, I've rped some guys on one x one im rp's but, I just don't feel comfortable rping most of them on a site. Normally I need a good idea and feel for a character before I make an application for them, the girlies just win out for me. My previous co-admins did the 'for every two female characters you need one male character' rule.

It was a rule they both liked from a once upon site we were on. Okay, on a once site makes sense because of the fairy tales and all that jazz, but for a marauders era? Not so much. It also made me feel like a crummy rper as I just couldn't come up with things for a guy as easily as they could and I also felt they wanted me to branch out more.

Safe to say it was a rule I had gotten rid of once they left the site, especially because I felt like it was unneeded.

I agree with this, wholeheartedly.

Now, on to keeping track. I do the standard m/f count on my board, but not for romance purposes. It's not listed anywhere obvious, but it is in my tribe roster. At one point, I had it broken down to m/f in each tribe as well, but it is just because I'm crazy and like to keep up with stats on the site. Now, it just says a number of characters by each tribe (with the characters listed), than at the top it's got a spot for over all m/f counts.

Honestly? I've only considered banning certain tribes, not genders. It's always been pretty even, and usually we've had more males on the site. Once, we lost a few guys all at the same time, and 5 or 6 new girls were created, and it ended up where we had 3 guys and 11 girls. Without me really getting involved, our male population exploded again, and a few days later we were back to having more males than females, and it's been that way since.

Also, I've also noticed that people only ever complain when someone only makes girls. So what? If it doesn't bother you that a player only makes guys, why should it bother you if someone makes only girls? I understand where some sites have plot issues that need a relatively even number (or more of one than the other), but other than that, does it really matter?

EDIT: *temp-banning certain tribes. I know, it sounds bad either way, which is probably why I've never done it. Anyway, I'm tired, and apparently can't figure out how to type what I was fully thinking. Haha. (so sorry about double posting! I massively fail today, apparently...)

EDIT: *temp-banning certain tribes. I know, it sounds bad either way, which is probably why I've never done it. Anyway, I'm tired, and apparently can't figure out how to type what I was fully thinking. Haha.

EDIT 2: AHHHHHHHHHHHH! Sorry. I fail.

I really don't see why the idea of romance is so disparaged in this thread. It is a little boring as a genre in it's own but there is no reason to bash those who are interested in it as part of any other genre we all play - also romance is not limited to het, hence it isn't even that closely related.

But as we are talking about het romance: personally, I won't play the guy in het romance with people who only play one gender. I understand others may find this petty, and it has nothing to do with the idea that women are "lesser" - but if someone only plays women interested in het romance but aren't willing to fulfil that need for others, I find that selfish. And yes, that has to do with the fact that i find it more difficult too, to branch out and play men but I do it because I don't want to stick my rp buddy with playing all of them. That is hardly fair. It has nothing to do with women being lesser by the way, it is simply consideration. And I end up loving my male characters as much as my female ones, but the females I can play hardly conscious and the males require more thought, more effort.

I don't keep site-wide gender ratios partly because I do find that discriminating and focussing on the wrong thing but I know what people play.

In admins, the only time I care is when they ban new females but predominantly play females themselves. But not because they are women, simply because an admin should practice what they preach. [Having said that, I believe bans are never the right thing to preach but it's no business of mine, really.]

I find it beneficial to try to pursue some diversity and balance throughout a game in all aspects, whether it be in the genders represented, the races represented, the age groups, etc. However, I recognize that people will create the types of characters they want to play, and if they find something is lacking in the experience that they want more of, they'll introduce more of that. I don't see any need (in the vast majority of games) to focus on gender, specifically, and treat male and female characters as things which absolutely must exist in equal numbers.

Would it be lovely to try to represent a population intended to be approx. 50-50 with a character base that's approx. 50-50? Probably . . . but it's very possible that your game's story just focuses more on the men in that community. You're only dealing with a portion of that community, anyway. I don't see why that's so bad.

On a member-specific basis, I don't see why anyone could be thoroughly annoyed (within reason) based on the simple fact that someone gravitates toward characters of one gender, whether they're exclusively playing characters of one gender or there just happens to be a notable majority. Sometimes I play mostly female characters (currently), sometimes I play mostly male characters, and at other times it's perfectly or almost evenly split (with non-binary characters being a rarity, unfortunately). Sometimes I'll think to try to boost my personal minority group a bit, but usually a character idea comes to me with a gender attached, and I just roll with it. I'm playing what interests me at any given moment, and sometimes I take an interest in one gender over another. . . and I'm not horribly slaughtering a game in the process. There's plenty to do with my characters, regardless or because of their genders. BUT if- for some reason- someone needed me to pick up a female or male character to help them with a plot because the gender of their required character is seriously lacking in the game, I'll happily lend a hand if I can.

I just don't see a reason why this would be a serious, functional issue in many games-- especially to the point of forcing some kind of ban on everyone. If someone wants to play all male characters-- Go for it. All female? I'm not bothered. It would be awesome if everyone could mix it up, but I don't really care if people just stick with what's interesting for the most part. Have fun. Woo.

I dislike bans, not because I have a problem with them on an RP level, or feel outraged morally by the idea of anyone being forced to play the Ken doll (stealing someone else's analogy from another thread) but because I'm horribly contrary and the second someone tells me NO MOAR GURLZ I'm like U CAN'T TELL ME WHAT 2 DO! WHATEVA, WHATEVA, I DO WHAT I WANT!

Never mind that I play dudes far more often than girls. I AM A FREE SPIRIT! I CAN NOT BE CONTAINED!

The way I view it, and this may pertain more to the genres that I enjoy, is that your board represents a world. Your players represent a bit of the population that actually inhabits this world. So it wouldn't matter if you had inequalities in gender, because the npc population just would generally equalize it for you, or even do the opposite for you if that's what your need is.

So while it is nice to have a diverse character base on your game, it isn't truly a necessity because in the gray vagueness there are all those npc men and women to have relationships with and what's nice about those is that unless you disappear, they don't.

I don't really care if there are more males than females or females than males or what. But I have noticed one thing, and I'm not sure I'm the only one or not. Male characters can thread/talk to each other just fine. Male and female characters can thread/talk to each just fine. And they can be related, lovers, best friends, or complete strangers. But when you get to females together, unless they are already connected somehow, it's really awkward and hard to get them to actually communicate. At least that's been my experience.

It just reminds me of the rules some boards have in place that for every so many female characters you make a male character. Some people just don't like playing guys. Some people only play guys. Some people only play girls. Some people only play... well you get the drift. I'm one of those admins who have like 8 girls and 4 guys, and I'm perfectly okay with that. I'm also okay with my other admin playing like a bajillion guys and a few girls. I'm also okay with the guy admins who play quite a few guys and a couple of girls. I'm okay with members playing all girls or all guys, it's their personal preference. I'm okay with girls playing guys and guys playing girls. And then you just have the people who make both males and females evenly and that is all find and dandy for them as long as they are having fun creating and playing the characters. I don't see what the point is, but that's just me. I guess I'm just in that place where I'm like "If you don't like the fact that I play more guys than girls as a staff member then just don't join." It's the easiest way for me to deal with it, because why does it really matter what characters the staff chooses to play? Why not look around the board at all the characters in play and decide from there if you think you and your characters can fit in not "Oh the admins play more girls than guys I hate that I don't want to join" Why because you want to make more girls and I'm supposed to balance that out for you?? Why does it matter? I'm not going to judge you on playing all girls or guys or an even/uneven mixture of both so why judge me because I'm an admin on what characters I choose to play?

Side note on the ratios thing:
We do have a statistics/ratio up on our board but it's more for the fact that everyone asks in the c-box if there is a certain species/character type that we need and instead of me searching I can just point to the sidebar and be like voila we have this many of each species whatever one you feel like making go for it. We will take you no matter what really even if all you want to make is girls, guys, humans, werewolves, vampires, angels so on and so forth.

Well... I play on SS with Dr. Bear, Kiss and Stains. So woo hoo no gender bans!
I also play on an asylum board that seems to have everything people hate on the 'D Lately: a 300 wc and an understanding that once one gender of patients hits 60, we're not making more beds until the other gender catches up.

It's not done to spite the players or to make stores, but simply for this reason: in an adult mental instution unless we're only going ot serve one gender it's unfair and causes IC uncomfortability for the minority gender.

As someone who DOES primarily plays minority females it Does piss me off when people assume the playing females means you are a Mary-Sue factory and that all you want is romance. No one ever says that of players who primarily play males. It's blatant, unvarnished, soaked in the idea of gender privilege and male superiority, RP sexism and it burns my toast that in in a place where I least expect to encounter it, I see sexism.

*gets off her soap box*
Everyone should be allowed to play what they want without getting crap for it.

I think because some people just need something to complain about. I don't see how this would be an issue.

I think the only times I've legitimately raised my eyebrows at an admin having unequal gender ratios in their own characters are the times when they require equal gender ratios of their members. This is especially true when, say, the admin plays six females and goes around saying that they need more guys, but don't actually set a good example to make more guys. Sorry, but if you're going to expect one thing from members, the same standard should be upheld for staff. How do I know they won't exempt themselves from other rules that are far more important if they go against something as simple as that? I don't and it just sets them up as a bad example.

Not that I usually join sites that require a gender ratio of my own characters anyway, but seeing something like that just makes me run away farther and faster from such a place.

I actually prefer to play male characters over female characters, but I want the option of playing whichever gender I want. I will almost always try to make characters that are in a needed category though (like gender, rank, race, etc). I'd never ban people from making a certain gender on my site because I want them to have the freedom to do what they like, but my site is also not based on romance. I much prefer systems that encourage a certain gender or rank rather than systems that ban one completely.