I was going to post this in my "pregenerated characters" thread but thought this deserved its own topic.

In short, my group of two years started a new game with pregenerated characters and I gave it a try, and it went very poorly.

One of the most hurtful things that was said before I left the group was that I shouldn't be allowed to play a female character because I "do so really badly."

This shocked me, and ever since it happened I have been wracking my brain trying to understand what was meant by it. I could just ask the person who said it, but I am A: embarrassed to have that conversation and B: know that if I reach out to open talks with the group I am going to get sucked back into the game rather than making a clean break.
So, in short:

How does one play a female character badly? What are some common pitfalls associated with cross-gender roleplaying?

Now, if anyone wants to know a little bit more about my personal situation:

I have been playing with this group for a little over two years and played the same character the whole time. I felt very comfortable in the RP, but apparently I was doing something that was cringe-worthy or offensive the whole time without me realizing it or anyone else pointing it out to me. Now keep in mind, this is the ONLY character that this person has ever seen me play.

I am the "specialist" type of gamer who likes to play similar characters in every game. In the past 20 years of RPing 9/10 of my characters have been female, and I am personally a lot more comfortable playing a female character than a male one, and I always thought I was fairly in tune with my female side. When I was in college I had creative writing professors tell me I was good at a female voice, software that analyzes the gender of an author usually pegs my writing as the work of a female, my parents are always mad at me for not acting "manly" enough, and in high school when I asked my friends for dating advice they always told me that my problem was that I approached relationships like a girl and needed to learn to see things from a man's point of view.

So, this has kind of shaken my confidence in my ability to RP, and I am now wondering just how bad I am at not only playing a woman but as playing any character at all.

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It's probably that the particular person that said that to you didn't agree with your portrayal of a female character. I've always been of the belief I can write any type of character if I try, I just like to stick to a certain type, namely men. It's just what I'm comfortable with.

How does one even unrealistically portray a human being, anyway? women are people, after all. Maybe the person who said that, in actuality, didn't like your writing style, and attributed that to your character and by extension her gender. There are a number of factors to consider.

If you really are super competent in how a female sees things as you claim, and have even been role playing female characters your entire life, can you really ask for tips on how it's done? I realize you're embarrassed (as you said) to just talk to the person, but in all honesty I would really stop and consider the legitimacy of the claim being made. Even if you somehow have some writing issues you're unaware of, how would that be attributed to the type of character you role play as? it wouldn't. If that is the issue, just try improving your writing skills.

It's hard for me to make a judgement without writing samples. I could easily make one of two assumptions without: that you wrote the character too many of a Macho Woman Ronda Savage or 1960's A-typical B-list house wife.

Samples.

If the other people you met seemed to like your writing, though, could be that the person's just being an ass and doesn't know a damn thing about what the topic is about. Wouldn't be the first time.

I am under the impression that male and female brains look the same. ... We're all human, after all, and a statement to a male brain should look alike to the statement to a female brain. All authors ever play characters of both genders, assuming the book isn't co-written by a male and female writer and they let each other do the parts with the male and female characters, and that's just stupid.

I'm going to say what said person told you was stupid. There's no "way to play a female character". It's the same as playing a male character. You know how their personality is, and you amount all their experiences up until that point to factor into the situation at hand. This makes every character unique. Sure, female experiences and male experience usually differ in a specific way, but all-in-all this is just a generalization and not fact. You can't say "you play a character badly", because that could just be how that specific situation that character would react. The only time this isn't necessarily correct is if you're playing a character you didn't create.

Just keep playing as you like. They can't tell you how to play your characters. I play both male and female characters as I please, both as GM and as player, as well as a writer. I've not noticed any particular problems so far, with perhaps the exception that many of my characters share my morals a little too exactly. Nothing about gender. So, I'm going to say there's nothing wrong with how you play females, even without samples.

And that's that. Just wanted my word in there.

Samples

I'm more interested in your character than the drama surrounding the RP.I do NOT believe that it's "Impossible to play a woman poorly." A lot of men get too caught up with the "features" of a woman and end up defining the character by their sex, which is just as dangerous as defining a character by their race, sexual preference, religion, etc.

A writing sample would be appreciated to make a better assessment.

However, I'd like to state my own view on the topic. I don't feel this is a gendered issue, and from first look it seems like the accuser attempts to make this the case. But, I can't make that judgement either so I will stay away from whatever fierce discussion that ensued with your ability to write the female character.

Focusing on the looks of a character is not exclusive to female characters, as I've seen plenty of samples where male character looks are overly emphasized. Most of the time, if not all of the time, I'd say that's a novice writer's mistake and one I make myself at times due to laziness if I write far too quickly.

I don't find there is a bad at writing 'male', 'female', 'black', 'white', 'gay', etc. type of character. There is only the writing of a poorly developed character.

My advice? Try not to get too prickly with the opinions of others. They may be strong, and they may say things about your writing regarding female characters as 'cringeworthy' or 'offensive'. The implication of offense rings hollow to me as there are many who consider the depiction of female characters on Game of Thrones to be 'offensive' when I'd say they're some of the most rich and intellectually diverse cast of female characters within fiction.

Read more books, watch more films, look into advice columns (and other types of media) about writing different types of characters. It's your creation, your imagination, and your character. You will encounter various opinions about your work: NOT ALL OF THEM ARE VALID, including mine. All I care about is whether I find your writing to be of quality, not whether your characters fit my pre-determined biases of what a character of a specific type should be.

Well, unless you overexaggerated her femininity or basically just made her a man with a vagina, I don't see how exactly you could do it wrong. Dinh said it pretty good. I've always thought that crossgender roleplaying wasn't particularly complicated, but I could be wrong because I've rarely roleplayed as a guy.

Well, unless you overexaggerated her femininity or basically just made her a man with a vagina.

Where would the middle-ground be? Not being difficult, I'm legitimately asking, because I think that is probably going to be the answer to OP's question.

I always felt it would be awkward to focus too much on referencing physical differences ("She felt the weight of her breasts as she jogged") for the same reason it would be awkward to overuse male differences ("The jungle was so humid his testicles stuck to his legs"). Actually, this reminds me that there is a women who writes historical fiction short stories from the perspective of a gay military officer in the 18th century (I forget her name or the name of the stories), and when reading one of those I was pulled out of the story when she used a line sorta like "As he climbed on the horse for battle, the fear made his scrotum pull tight". It was weird because, though I've been scared of shit plenty of times in my life, I don't think i've every consciously thought about what my scrotum was doing while I was afraid. I feel like it was one of those things she wrote because, as a woman, the idea seems like it would be pretty noticeable and worthy of mentioning, but for men it's sort of a tertiary thing. Likewise I always figured over-focusing on female physical traits can end up distracting.

And I also think too that the line for femininity is kind of complex. There is a line that I figure we all kind of know, but it's difficult for me to try and put into words, so it is difficult to know when I've breached it. I've also, like the OP, been told before that my female characters didn't seem very female (by a woman as it turns out), but she couldn't tell me why, and I can't exactly pin point it either.

For OP, I agree with everyone that a sample would help.

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Where would the middle-ground be? Not being difficult, I'm legitimately asking, because I think that is probably going to be the answer to OP's question.

I always felt it would be awkward to focus too much on referencing physical differences ("She felt the weight of her breasts as she jogged") for the same reason it would be awkward to overuse male differences ("The jungle was so humid his testicles stuck to his legs"). Actually, this reminds me that there is a women who writes historical fiction short stories from the perspective of a gay military officer in the 18th century (I forget her name or the name of the stories), and when reading one of those I was pulled out of the story when she used a line sorta like "As he climbed on the horse for battle, the fear made his scrotum pull tight". It was weird because, though I've been scared of shit plenty of times in my life, I don't think i've every consciously thought about what my scrotum was doing while I was afraid. I feel like it was one of those things she wrote because, as a woman, the idea seems like it would be pretty noticeable and worthy of mentioning, but for men it's sort of a tertiary thing. Likewise I always figured over-focusing on female physical traits can end up distracting.

And I also think too that the line for femininity is kind of complex. There is a line that I figure we all kind of know, but it's difficult for me to try and put into words, so it is difficult to know when I've breached it. I've also, like the OP, been told before that my female characters didn't seem very female (by a woman as it turns out), but she couldn't tell me why, and I can't exactly pin point it either.

For OP, I agree with everyone that a sample would help.

I don't think there is any strict line. I'm just saying she should act like a human instead of just 100% femininity and female stereotypes. The middle ground is to write a woman the way an actual woman acts. She can be girly or a tomboy, but making a character that is nothing but pure girly-ness or so tomboy that there's absolutely nothing female in her behavior are simply unrealistic characters to play as. The same pretty much applies to male characters as well.

The middle ground is simple and fairly large: any character that has focus beyond just its gender. Like you said, focusing too hard on the body parts of the character's gender ruins some of the effect. (although that has more to do with the narrative then the characters themselves) Don't base the personality solely on the gender. Take the personality and apply the gender to it. If that is done, then there's likely to be nothing to worry about. Don't be afraid to make a girl act girlish or a guy act macho. Just make sure that they are still represented as people and that their personalities are more then just whatever matches their genitals.

I really doubt the OP really messed up all that badly to be honest, sounds like the critic was more angry about something else or simply had a different opinion on the "right" way to play as a female character.

As complex as the line is, one thing that is a hard and fast rule is that both genders of humans are people and should should behave like such.

Including one or two REAL stereotypical behaviors (that are actually common behaviors that do happen from time to time) doesn't automatically make them bad, as long as that isn't all the character is. But if you include unrealistic stereotypes that are mostly fictional and designed to insult the opposite gender, then what you've created is not a normal character but instead a mockery of whatever that character's gender is.

And about the last line about your characters not seeming very feminine, then perhaps it wouldn't hurt to think about what they are like to see if they are perhaps a bit too manly in some ways. I've had similar troubles back when I tried writing a male character, but to this day I'm uncertain on how to fix it. The problem comes from the fact that occasionally people compensate too hard to not make their character stereotypical at all. That often ends up blocking the gender aspects of said character. So keep that in mind.

"Jim walked down the street, it looked like it was about to rain. He sped up his pace, not wanting to get his new woolen sweater wet. He thought about what he was doing with his life, and got disappointed. Here he was, no wife or family. It looked like things weren't going too well for poor Jim. He picked up a comic book on his way home, and quickly arrived at his doorstep. Jim sat down on his couch and watched television. He was excited to see that there was a wrestling match on."

Jim likes wrestling, which is usually seen as a male stereotype. However, there is more to Jim then being a man. He wants to take care of his clothes and read comic books and raise kids. He doesn't like wrestling because he's a man, Jim likes wrestling because he thinks it is cool. That was an example if a character who has a gender, but it doesn't fully define the character. And yet at the same time, things males sometimes like to do aren't denied altogether. I'm not afraid to say Jim likes wrestling and thinks it is cool. Because that's not his defining character trait. And some men really do like watching wrestling on TV, so it's not an unrealistic or insulting stereotype. No mockery of men was made. That's how I crossgender RP. Whether or not it's the right way is based partly on interpretation.

we couldn't care less where a character's "plumbing" is. Outside or inside doesn't matter. There are physical and/or mental traits more commonly found in one gender or the other, but as with so much else, such is not exclusive. The only way we can think of right now to incorrectly portray a gendered character is to have a thin, waiflike female character lift cars with the same ease as she would lift a book without any supernatural or technological aid to explain how. But that's not really specific to a female either, though average strength is quite often a little lower in female characters on account of average body mass being lower.

Two characters can be virtually identical in background, appearance and personality, yet have completely different genders. Or they can have the same gender and virtually nothing else in common. Granted, in a general population, the individuals of one gender who have a majority of the physical traits normally considered to belong to the other are fairly rare.

To support theories of people above, we can also mention that we have come across players who thought they knew better than character authors how a character ought to behave and react to a situation. Suffice to say, the ones owning the characters generally do not agree with the kind of person that "know better". That kind of player generally doesn't accept being told "no" when they try to rectify play style, so we personally lean towards the fault not being on your end, @helenedwards.