Demographics 03: Character Genders Poll

[Brovo]

@Staff: Keep in mind that (with Diana's permission and Astaroth overlooking it) I'm posting threads in GC first, leaving them there for a week, and then moving them to RP Help & Discussion after! This way, my demographics threads can have the widest breadth of community input without asking for unfair administration favouratism. Thanks.

Demographics

Demographics threads are, essentially, an attempt to record the community's thoughts and feelings on RP-related subject matter via a series of votes. Iwaku's tastes, habits, et cetera. If you want further information on prior demographics threads, you can find the demographics hub thread here.

Demo threads are not an appropriate place for hardcore multipage debates. You can ask questions about each other's positions, but keep them professional in tone. Otherwise, the spirit of the demographics threads will be lost. They're meant to sample the community and put it into an easily digestible form of numbers that anybody can look at later when creating their own RP threads or when curious about Iwaku's general demographics. If you're really interested in discussing the subject matter, create your own discussion thread. I would be delighted if demographics threads started to spawn further topics of interest by the community itself.

Previous Community Choice Poll

• C. Pace/Longevity: 3
• B. Tone: 2
• A. Genders of Characters: 3 (Winner! Coin flip.)
• D. Surprise me: 2

For those wondering why the poll is still single choice only, it's because Iwaku fantastically fucks up percentages and vote count when doing a multiple choice poll, which makes pulling accurate demographics from it a lot harder. (Seriously, you can end up with statistical averages of over 300%, which, is... Nightmare fuel for trying to get something accurate from it.) You can, however, always change your vote, and there are additional questions below you can answer to further illuminate how you roll.

Also, if I don't list an option which accurately reflects your preference, I apologize. Pick the one closest. I added more poll options than I normally would already, and inflating it with 50+ options will just disseminate the options to the point that it becomes a pointless poll. You can always describe further your position in a post below.

Poll Question: Which gender do you most often play in your characters? (IE: "Most Often" being what you think you most often play as.) The poll is gendered: It adds the additional layer of getting to know how often those who identify as male or female or non-binary play as their own gender, or a different gender. The poll is also anonymous, to ensure you can vote honestly without anyone knowing what your vote was unless you volunteer that information below.

EDIT

And for further clarity, yes, the poll is asking for your (you, the person)'s gender, and then what gender your characters most often possess. IE: "I as a male, most often play X in my characters." Apologies if there's any confusion.

Additional Questions!

• Q. What did you vote for on the poll? (Ignore this if it makes you feel uncomfortable.)
• Q. How often would you say you stray from what you play as most often?
• Q. Do you feel confident playing as characters who possess genders other than those which you identify with? Why or why not?
• Q. (GM's): Do you often create worlds featuring NPC's who possess gender identities different from your own? Do you think it matters to the stories of the worlds you create?
• Q. (Players): Do you often look for worlds or 1x1 requests which feature diverse genders as part of the story? Why or why not?

Community Choice Poll: Vote for the topic of the next poll! (You can vote for more than one option.)

• A. Longevity. (How long RP's last.)
• B. Pace. (How fast RP's go.)
• C. Tone. (How "light" or "dark" something feels. For lit majors: Comedy vs Tragedy. History majors: Not in the sense of commons vs elite. )
• D. Sexuality. (As a follow-up to "Genders.")
• E. Surprise me. (None of the above.)

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

Q. What did you vote for on the poll? (Ignore this if it makes you feel uncomfortable.)

Male playing as male characters. Not out of any concious reason, it's just what I naturally gravitate towards.

Q. How often would you say you stray from what you play as most often?

Subjectively speaking? I'd say about 20-30% of the time. It usually has to be a character created for either a specific purpose, or the female gender/sex just feels that much more fitting for me to do the switch.
I've never done any non-binary gender people, I fully support different gender identities but I lack enough understanding of it to pull of such a character properly.

Q. Do you feel confident playing as characters who possess genders other than those which you identify with? Why or why not?

If they seem to be treating it seriously as part of the character then I'm completely fine with it.
But I don't react well with it if they're simply doing it in a "Look my special snowflake of a character" manner, cause that's disrespectful of people under that gender and intrusive to the roleplay.

Q. (GM's): Do you often create worlds featuring NPC's who possess gender identities different from your own? Do you think it matters to the stories of the worlds you create?

Gender Identities aren't often high on my priority list, I more try to fufill roles and personalities. That being said though, my only GM experience in the last few years has been tabletop. That involves a lot of improvising on the fly, which has resulted in a vast majority male cast (something I failed to notice myself, my players had to point it out to me).

As for if it matters? Not really, cause the main reason I don't make genders much a priority is because I prefer just seeing people and people, stuff like gender, sex, orientation is something personal. It's something everyone should acknowledge and respect, but I don't see much sense in treating people differently over it. And the stories I've created have usually not been the kind where such things are that big a deal, cause the universe also works as a "People are varied a lot, so we're just used to differences and don't think much of it" deal (at least it's intended to be that way, as mentioned above I unconsciously end up making male dominated worlds).

Q. (Players): Do you often look for worlds or 1x1 requests which feature diverse genders as part of the story? Why or why not?

No, it just isn't high on the priority list.

If anything I'll avoid RP's that seem to actively advertise or push it. Not out of any fear or dislike, but because generally if someone feels the need to say "This is a Non-Cis RP!" it probably means they're focusing too much on the gender aspect, and not enough in anything else that matters in a roleplay.

Community Choice Poll: Vote for the topic of the next poll! (You can vote for more than one option.)

Longevity, Pace and Tone all look pretty interesting.

Sexuality would just get the same responses from me as this thread did.

 

[Minibit]

Additional Questions!

• Q. What did you vote for on the poll? (Ignore this if it makes you feel uncomfortable.)

Female, as male characters

• Q. How often would you say you stray from what you play as most often?

Now and again, but anyone who's roleplayed for a while knows that the vast majority of one on one-ers play female, so I don't often run into trouble when I say I prefer to play a dude.

• Q. Do you feel confident playing as characters who possess genders other than those which you identify with? Why or why not?

Yeah, relatively. Most of my male characters aren't stereotypically masculine people (buff, gruff warriors etc) and I feel like I'm a flexible enough writer that my dudes don't 'read like girls' - at least not enough to be distracting in the story.

• Q. (GM's): Do you often create worlds featuring NPC's who possess gender identities different from your own? Do you think it matters to the stories of the worlds you create?

Though my player characters tend to be dudes, my NPCs are a pretty even split! Mostly because they fade in and out of the story, so it doesn't matter terribly much if I get bored with them or something

• Q. (Players): Do you often look for worlds or 1x1 requests which feature diverse genders as part of the story? Why or why not?

For a heterosexual person, I'm not terribly into straight pairings, so I tend to stay away from one x one requests from people who only play female and are looking for someone to play a male character - but only because this is usually a flag that this person wants/needs a heterosexual romance in the story. So that's more to do wtih sexuality than gender selection

 

[The Mood is Write]

• Q. What did you vote for on the poll? (Ignore this if it makes you feel uncomfortable.)
  Female with mostly female characters.
• Q. How often would you say you stray from what you play as most often?
  Fairly often, though not more than 50% of the time.
• Q. Do you feel confident playing as characters who possess genders other than those which you identify with? Why or why not?
  I do, because everyone is people. I only have to worry if things like sex and gender come up.
• Q. (GM's): Do you often create worlds featuring NPC's who possess gender identities different from your own? Do you think it matters to the stories of the worlds you create?
  I do, because otherwise the worlds would be really dang boring.
• Q. (Players): Do you often look for worlds or 1x1 requests which feature diverse genders as part of the story? Why or why not?
  I do, because it indicates that the player behind them is confident and capable.