I honestly don't know if I respond differently to women than to men.
Ciarente is one of the the only two women I recall being in a corp of mine (the other being a director in a 0.0 corp), and Mata is probably the only one I've spoken to regularly, and I have fairly high opinions of both, given what limited knowledge one can have through the medium of a MMORPG. As for female characters, I do note that most of the females I have known of play female characters, while men will play females or males. Very rarely have I seen a woman RP a male character - although, to be fair, I know that Ciarente has at least one male as an alt.
A few of the men-RPing-women I've interacted with also post on this board, and some no longer play Eve. Lycana was an old member of White Rose, and we went on some roams, but I don't recall being interested in his character as a female as much as I was interested in the player, and his ability to put blaster rounds on target. Casiella was always fun to RP with, but that had nothing to do with her gender status.
I don't like to make the claim to being gender neutral. I'm probably not, and I don't have the tools for determining it. On the other hand, on the IGS or in The Summit, the words people use tend to impact more on my immediate actions or responses than the (character) gender of a poster. Speaking as my character, I don't particularly care now whether Desideriya (hope I spelled that correctly) or Seriphyn is male or female, I care about whether they are on my side or not. In other words, someone's gender means nothing as to whether they need to be fed through an IC shredder for the good of the State. But then, I play a very ideologically focused character, always have, and enjoy that. I do have a Gallente alt, who is much less ideological (Why? Well, I
personally feel that the Federation is way too much of a Mary-Sue-topia to be interesting RPing ideologically) but I'm not telling who. I imagine things are different when one is mainlining heavy personality RP, which seems to be a fairly addictive drug for those on it.
And yet, I know that Vikarion's (as opposed to my) feelings towards Ciarente (seeing her as a rather naive, helpless person) were definitely influenced by gender. This was partly the nature of the character, and partly the storyline I was constructing (and constructing for my own, personal enjoyment, I should note), which was of a man with genuinely good intentions and utterly horrible means totally destroying just about everything he held dear, including his fiancee, his transhumanist goals, and those he worked with (sorry, Cia!
) Part of that tragedy is that he couldn't see Ciarente or those with her as independent and capable persons: in a very real way, Vikarion had completely bought into the Sansha philosophy of others needing to be directed for their own good. Now, how much of that was caused by gender? Well, his misunderstanding of Ciarente was partly because she was a young Intaki female, and his failure to see Petra Bealer's completely lunatic side was certainly aided by the "cute and cheerful chipmunk" personality that Petra adopted. As well, he certainly has feelings for Aria Jenneth, who, as an RPer, I personally must say I have some admiration for as someone who managed to so completely merge philosophical discussion and character drama.
Now - given that I am likely not at all perfect in this regard - do I see preference being given by others to female characters? Absolutely. But I also think part of it is in how female characters present themselves. It is generally true, I think, that male characters (say, an Amarrian) tend to come off more initially aggressive and hostile in their introduction and comportment than female characters. Female characters that behave aggressively and with open hostility (Silas Vitalia, for example) tend not to be beneficiaries of the supposed female bias.
This would lead me to think that the response is less a factor than the presentation - in other words, the audience of the specific character is less likely to accord special treatment to a female than the RPer is to act differently as a female. If you examine the posts by male and female characters, regardless of the actual gender behind the character, I think this trend tends to hold true - to wit, that female characters on the whole do not approach any particular issue or situation with the same aggressiveness and, well, often tactlessness, that male characters do - and that where this trend is broken, reactions also tend to differ.
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Topic: Does character gender make a difference ? (Read 10187 times)