Forums » RP Discussion » Rp partner gender preference

I had an experience a while back where someone told me they preferred only to write with a particular gender of player. To be clear, they made clear it was the actual writers gender that mattered to them, not the characters. They didn't give me any real reason for it, if I recall just marking it as preference, so I have been wondering since then.

Why exactly? Being someone who doesn't really concern himself with my rp partners state of being as far as gender or what else there may be (mental states do in fact concern me but that's a whole different topic) I guess I don't really understand the difference and was wondering if there were helpful opinions out there to help me understand this. Are male/female/other writing in different ways? Are there different expectations when writing with different gendered players? I'm not sure, so I decided to make a topic to explore the idea.

I want to be clear that I'm certainly not calling anyone out in this way or otherwise diminishing a desire to rp with particular categories of peoples. We all have our rp preferences and we're entitled to them as far as I'm concerned, I'm just looking for some insight into understanding.

Well, that could depend on the rp genre. If it was a romance rp, it's possible the other player grew up in a conservative household, and would only want to do romance rp's with the opposite sex for character and player because other wise would make them uncomfortable.

Not to throw shade, but there's also the possibilty of sexism, but I'm reluctant to say that was the intent or case since I know very little of the other rper nor the rp in general and it's entirely possible I'm missing some line of reasoning I just haven't considered.

It's also possible they've just had bad experiences rp'ing with one gender over the other, and have preferred to do rp with the other gender. I'm in a similar situation with romance rp's, as everyone I've done died within a few days of starting. So I could see a similar or worse scenario with the person in question.

Most likely, they have some concept that writers of a specific gender are better at writing that gender often enough that they don't want to chance things, or some part of them gets squicked if there is to be any romance and the writer's gender doesn't match their preference, even if they honestly have no intention of pursuing the writer with any OOC stuff. Even squick aside, they might just plain have trouble getting into the right headspace.

There is also a proven tendancy of style, enough that writing style gender predictors have been created. Obviously, these are far from always being right, but again, it might be a consistent enough thing in the person's experience.

I'm not defending these, mind you. I find them a bit silly and too based in toxic ideas.

One that I still find problematic, but can better understand, is sort of a defensive thing. When I was younger... several times, if I played with a guy, he developed a crush on me personally. Once, a guy who'd assured me that OOC and IC were separate still got aggressive at me when my character persued someone else. The only times I had such problem with female players was 1. once when I was playing as a male and she didn't realize I'm not (she got upset when I told her), and 2. when the girlfriend of a male player I was friends with thought I was getting in the way. None of this drama has ever been an issue when I play with people who aren't male and know I'm not either, even if the people I play with are still attracted to females. I'll still play with guys, but I'll often feel a little better about playing with women and enbies.

I am biased towards female writers because male writers tend to hit on me, cross boundaries and generally give me a bad time. There are multiple men who only RPed with me for the hopes of getting into my pants and then stone cold dropped me and our roleplays when they realized they weren't going to get anything out of me.

I want to put my energy into people who don't do that, and it's never been women who do it.

I have a similar situation to Sanne.

I have mostly she/her gendered partners and female bodied partners because of my experience with men and male bodied partners making me uncomfortable, hitting on me, being very inappropriate and in general making me worried that they are interested in getting something personal from the intimacy scenes in the RP, I've had them tell me they are aroused in very specific manners, where as I haven't really had that problem with she/her and female bodied partners.

Currently I do have 5 male and he/him writing partners out of like 13 partners right now but what I have noticed is that when I do RP with male bodied and he/him partners they tend to be older. 4/5 of my male writing partners are 30 or older, and one is mid twenties.

I have a much better experience with them than I have had with 18-25 year old he/him and male partners.

Where as my female bodied and she/her writing partners range from 19-35 years old.

I don't really purposefully turn someone down because of their gender but I tend to be way more cautious. In general I vet people fairly well and female bodied and she/her gendered people also just come to me with interest more.

For me, I vastly prefer to write with women. In fact, I can only think of one or two men I've written with, but tons of women. This all comes down to a couple of different factors.

I mainly do romantic RP and I just feel more comfortable with women when it comes to intimate thoughts and emotions. This is probably because I never had a strong relationship with my father growing up, so my mother did and still does everything for us when we need a parent's help. I grew up expressing myself to women and finding women to be more compassionate and understanding than men. I know that's probably not fair, but there's an element of uncertainty and anxiety when I RP with a man. Most of my friends are females for the same reason, as I'm an incredibly empathetic and emotional person.

Maybe they're like me. Maybe not. But that's why I prefer to write with women.

In general I don't usually take into consideration the gender of the writer when picking an rp. Just the character as they relate to my own character. I did a bit of counting and currently I'm at 11 1x1 rps, 5 with male partners, 5 with female and 1 who identifies as female-sexed agender. Now that you've all got me thinking about it, I think I've ended more rps with males where as females and I are more likely to stick together long term, but I always considered that due to a difference in writing style not necessarily related to gender. I will say the first person to introduce me to smut rp was a woman. And the first person to make me feel used/uncomfortable during a smut rp was a male. But in general I prefer to take each person on their own merit rather than prejudge due to previous experiences. I'd hate to miss out on something amazing because some jack *ss in the past ruined things for their gender in the present.

(Edited to be more honest with myself, and with others.)

I want to say that I've had an equivalent amount of good and bad experiences playing with both genders, but... Males seem to flock to me more often, and I've had a far better time with them as opposed to females.

Males have always been cool with me, and not all that strange. Some of my best roleplay experiences have been with a man. I will admit to having more than a few experiences that left me jaded and creeped out, but it hasn't swayed my opinion that they're very good roleplay partners.

But I've had more terrible times and negative impacts with females than I have with males. From what I've noticed, issues with females tend to translate into OOC more often. The first person to introduce me to smut was a female (which is a good thing), but a female also made me uncomfortable, used, and terrified for my own safety. However, I've had one or two female partners that were fun to play with and I didn't have any issues with them at all.

Regardless, I remember it as this: Everyone, no matter the gender, has a capacity to be creepy, biased, and judgemental. Most people just tend to handle their bias and weirdness better than others. It's all based on each person's individual experience.

Overall, I feel more comfortable with males, but I still love giving females a chance because I have seen some really good female roleplayers that I do want to play with. It depends on a lot of factors, to be fair. A LOT of factors. And males are not exempt from those factors.

But why would people want to roleplay with a particular gender? I think it's for most of the reasons listed above. I've also noticed that reasons involving bad personal experiences in real life tend to crop up far more often than reasons of romance, OOC or otherwise.

Great topic! People don't really talk about this.

I feel like those people you are referring to may be biased (to their opposite gender) because they want to experience something rather romantic or intimate. It doesn't even have to be explicitly said. That is sort of their unspoken rule. That may be the reason why they want genuine male/female writers because they know for a fact that their experiences are validated because of their gender. Also because they think that they don't have experience in playing the opposite gender. I personally have no bias when it comes to my partners as I do seek role plays I can enjoy.

I have seen cases where people have taken upon themselves and make characters whose gender are counterpart of their own and their enthusiasm were usually torn down because the one asking wants a role player play their own gender. I don't have a problem with that as long as I can trust that the person is capable of role playing their character.

I tend not to look at gender identity when taking a look at a person's profile when 'vetting' them for RPing; I look more at writing style, how much / little they have on their profile / characters, etc. etc.

That being said tho, I'm pretty sure out of the 5 RPs I have going right now, only one of them is male / male gendered as far as I've been made aware.

Actually, for the longest time, my only RP partner(s), and the people who got me into RP in the first place, were dudes, oddly enough.

However, I feel like I've had more negative experience with male RPers when it comes to quitting RPs; I've had two negative instances, and one actually wasn't too bad, it just made my anxiety go nuts, but the other was a guy who, over the course of three days, declared that we were going to end up together, he was going to fly me up from TX to see him in Canada, bought me several digital gifts, and then got mad at me when I said, "Hey, look, this isn't at all what I'm looking for here" and proceeded to call me... ah, several expletives.

Honestly, while I'm more nervous about the consequences of stopping an RP with a guy / male gendered person, it's less about my RP problems in the past, and more the fact that I'm female-sexed, so I've been raised to be paranoid around guys in general

TL;DR I tend to have more fem!/Fem!gendered RP partners, tho I'm not sure why b/c it's not actually something I focus on when choosing new RPs.

For me, and it seems others as well, it’s a matter of trying to feel safe. I rarely, rarely RP with men because the vast majority of experiences I’ve had playing with men brought me into awkward positions, even positions where I feared for my safety.

Many times I was faced with men who would behave inappropriately and/or demand more from me than I was ready or willing to give in the relationship (which was meant to just be an RP thing to begin with).

I know it’s unfair to knock points against a potential partner because of their gender, but I’d much rather set myself up for comfort and success than risk opening myself to unnecessary stress.

Of course, I’ve had my share of less than positive experiences with other women…but the nature of those experiences were never cases where I feared for my safety.

I just want to have fun, and there’s many fish in the RP sea! There’s no terrible loss either way!

I'll rp with either gender with no real preference either way. I've dealt with a few...undesirables from both genders so it's not like bad behavior is only limited to men or women.

However rp is a hobby and if someone doesn't feel comfortable or enjoy rping with partners of a certain gender, then that's up to them. No one should feel coerced to change their preferences as long as they are not breaking any rules with them.

I'd love to read about the outliers, but 99% of "Rp partner gender preference" is men avoiding men because they've been raised to fear showing each other the openness RP sorta requires, and women/nb avoiding men because they make them afraid to log on. The stories volunteered in this thread are the tip of the iceberg; eventually it's just easier for them to say "no thanks".

There are certainly gendered elements to writing, but gender preferences are almost always to do with OOC baggage that "I don't care either way" sorts of men like me or the OP don't have and aren't expected by society to put up with. For everyone else, there's a real choice to be made about how much time they're willing to vet partners from among a minefield of pushy, needy, and potentially violent men.

It sucks when I meet an interesting guy I can tell I'll never connect with because my (character's) chest isn't big enough, or some other creative person who would rather play it safe than find themselves doing unpaid emotional labor yet again, but that's life. I've had great partners from all genders, and disrespect from all genders (that disproportionately came from men).

Tbh, I don’t have a preference in terms of gender. Personally, I prefer to remain anonymous as a writer and my gender is a part of that anonymity.

Some of these stories where people have gotten varied responses depending on their gender is a little disturbing though. I guess when your online persona identifies as hot garbage with several pronouns it throws the creeps for a loop.

At the risk of getting burnt on the stake for this, then I am one of those players.
It’s not a hard and fast rule for me, but I prefer writing fxf and I generally find that other women are better at writing women. I have met too many female characters that were very clearly written by men and sexualised women in a way that I did not care for.
I’m not saying that this is true for everyone, but it’s a trend that I’ve spotted and thus it seems life a safer bet to just go with other women writers.
Disclaimer: I’m not saying that all women are better at writing than men. This is a personal observation and a personal preference.

This thread has been terribly insightful for me. I'm very sorry for all of you who had negative experiences with particular genders, particularly the women who have been seemingly victimized (or in some attempt of the word) by men. That's an incredibly tragic thought for rp to be weaponized in such a way.

My personal experience was the other way around actually, and I have since now recieved some insight into why it may have happened thanks to this discussion. While the gender of my partners in rp will remain irrelevant to me as far as my desire to roleplay with them, I am glad I can now try to understand what they may be thinking when they say they'd rather have such n such an rp partner.

I also can see why I haven't encountered a lot of this myself. My personal rp preferences seem to avoid any romantic inclusion in rp, and I had no idea the bleed through effect it could have on IC/OOC relations. As a former performance artist I've been separating character and player (or actor) almost my whole life, and I guess its jaded me in some ways at the difficulties in separating the two may have. Either that or the wool has fallen tightly over my eyes on that, but I prefer to believe the former myself

@iamcrystalqueer I never opened this thread to bash anyone or make anyone feel bad about their choices and given the positive feelings I usually get with the rpr community I dont think you're getting burned for your preferences, as I've said we all have them, just some I dont personally understand and wish to learn more about. This is the goal of this thread for myself actually.

Edit: just wanted to say thank you to everyone who posted here, you've helped enlighten me quite a bit. Feel free to continue posting to your hearts content rpr! I'll be back to read if there's more that come in!

Nowadays it doesn't really matter to me anymore, but I have refused to role-play with males, in character and in real life for years. I think it is known that I nowadays don't have an issue with either gender anymore and it wasn't so much hatred or unwillingness to as it was "feeling uncomfortable with". I had a very hard time trusting males and I have a hard time role-playing with people that I don't trust in general. In hindsight, I feel like I probably rejected a lot of great role-players that could've become great friends of mine and while that saddens me, I have no regrets. I made that decision and choice based on my own feelings and level of comfort, protecting myself and my own well-being. However, many people have many different reasons for this. Was it fair of me to prefer one gender over another? Probably not, but I felt like in that moment it was the right choice for me to make and it's probably the reason why I'm so comfortable and easy-going about it these days.

I have had a hard time in my time as a writer with both female and male writers.
I have had male writers be some of the best writers and some of the worst, however, my most traumatic experiences have come more from female writers.

I have been denied writing partners for being male and being gay by both female and male writers.

I gave up writing male characters for a very long time as female writers treated me and the characters horribly. I had one single case where a female writer refused to care for my stories with her characters if I did not write my characters taking on adult situations with her characters. This took place on tumblr with multiple female writers who refused to reply to my stories or pay any attention to them unless my male characters made it loud anand clear that they wanted them romantically and more so sexually. I love writing all sexuality types, aside from cisgender fxf because it just doesn't appeal to me personally or the characters I write, but when it came to female writers... I was having my male characters used as praise machines and sexual gratification means. It didn't even matter if I said no... they still insisted on it. A lot of them did and it was awful. I felt so gross that it's taken me years to want to write male characters again.

Male writers have pushed smut or other storylines on me, but no where near as aggressive as female writers have on me.

That being said, I still don't care what my writing partner's gender is or what they identify as in any shape or form. I have found female writers who write males better than other male writers, and I have found male writers who make better stories or are more willing to plot and work on details. It's been a mash up on all genders for me, but I think it is easiest to say that not all writers are the same and no one should be preferring any gender over any other but if something makes you uncomfortable for personal experience reasons then that is okay too.

I'm not gay, but I've had quite a similar experience with females, so I usually prefer to rp with males, but I'm very careful in general tho with whom I rp. Its more of a "get to know someone first" kinda thing. I rarely rp with people I'm not yet friends with, and usually if I do, it doesn't turn out well.

Note: I've only skimmed the thread, as I have limited energy. Also: Use of general 'you'. Please note that this post is aimed at no one in particular but are simply my thoughts on the topic. I'm seeking to change no one, nor to call anyone out.

I'm of the firm opinion that, aside from folks avoiding men due to trauma / abuse / etc as has been discussed by some folks here, your RP partner's OOC gender shouldn't matter to you. Here's why.

If you're RPing romance or erotic natured things.. you need to separate your characters from you and your partner. OOC = / = IC. Thus, your partner's gender IRL factoring into your IC interactions is highly inappropriate. You're crossing boundaries of IC and OOC at that point.

If you're worried about your partner's OOC gender in some regard to your RP, you should take a step back and ask yourself why it matters. Are you projecting onto that person? Are you making an inappropriate connection to them that they might not necessarily appreciate?

This is on top of the fact that there are far more than two genders, and even the 'male' and 'female' gender, aside from oppressions and such stuff IRL, are nothing like you're imagining them to be. Women can RP men perfectly well. Vice versa. A well intentioned and thoughtful cisgender person can even RP a transgender person with grace and dignity! So why does their OOC gender matter? It simply doesn't, unless you're seeking some kind of relationship with them OOC that crosses boundaries that RP is supposed to set.

This is my opinion as someone who's had romance / erotic RP where a partner had inappropriate intentions and crossed boundaries. I find the focus on someone's OOC gender (aside from avoiding abuse and emotional labor - I myself avoid cis men and will be slow to trust them due to these very things) to be inappropriate and, again, crossing boundaries that should not be crossed without discussion.

Basically their gender shouldn't matter unless you intend to use RP as a conduit for your real feelings toward that person. In which case, please be open and honest about it.

Sorry for the rambling and poorly constructed post. Again, limited energy, not a lot of focus.