I was thinking of my past experience and several posts that I have read.

How does Gaming, where you can play different genders, help and/or affect you explore your own gender?

By gaming I refer to any type of game where you can take upon a gender role, even other than your apparent current gender role (either fake or real), sometimes as a character, or a "pretend". By a pretend I mean it could even be how you really would like to be, even though you may be taking an opportunity to almost act like you have to only do it  for the game, though you may really doing it for yourself.  By gaming I mean everything from a pretend story, play along game, dolls, play teacher, pretend story, Roleplaying game, Online game, videogame, play house, theater/drama, play dress up with family/friends/neighbors/relatives.

My Experience
Dolls was the first games that I played when I was allowed to explore the feminine (and masculine) sides of me. I remember having a doll set of male and female family set, with a mother, father and baby and a house. I also had some Star Wars male and female action figures.

Before age 5, I can remember early playing teacher and house with some neighborhood girls.

I have played dress up with my sister where I let her dress me up fully female, as a girl. I have also pretended to dress up ultra masculine like ninja's, wrestlers, and military war gear.

There are several experiences where I have played both male and female gender roles in roleplaying games throughout my life both paper and computer. Both in Solo game play and social multiplayer games. Everything from Dungeons and Dragons, Final Fantasy, Star Wars, Everquest 1 and 2, Mortal Combat and so on.

These gaming times, I normally played very similar personality characters very similar to my current real androgynous personality. I have played some more extreme polar characters, but those didnt last long, since I find more comfort in being a more blended person, unless I had a very opposite polar other character to help balance out the one polar character.

Secret times to Explore
These times have given me brief windows to explore things sometimes hidden or suppressed with less fear of discovery (after all hey it was just a game, or so they might have thought). I could explore both male and female under the shadow of such activities.

I'm not quite sure how to reply to this so please let me know if there's something I didn't answer.

When I was younger I used to play girl games with my sister and her friends. We used to play hopscotch, jumprope, Mother May I, and a number of those games. I also used to play boy games like street football and "kill the guy" (whoever tackled the guy who was "it" got to be "it" next). I don't remember feeling like I shouldn't have played any of those games.

I have also played some games with strong female lead characters as those characters. I like more balanced characters. The lead characters in The Longest Journey and Syberia were great (I can't remember their names off-hand). Julie from Heavy Metal FAKK 2 gets a little much sometimes but I don't like really strong male characters either. It hasn't seemed to make much of a difference when I play female characters in Dungeon Siege and Neverwinter Nights instead of male characters, but maybe that's just me (I solo off-line). I do know that I enjoy playing the game through their eyes though. All of these characters are people who let me be a different version of me.

Actually, the Marvel Superheroes RPG ended up giving me a good look at myself once I realized what was going on. I never played the character(s) but I spent a lot of time tweaking their powers and creating their backstory. There were these two people, a man and a woman, who were fused together by a "bad guy" to become one person who was also given powers. A good magic user seperated them and took the two uinder his wing. Because they had once been one (neither could now remember who they were before they were joined) they could communicate telepathically or even temporarily assume control of each other's bodies if one of them had knowledge or something that the other didn't have. Now, if that doesn't sound like an explanation of androgyny I don't know what does. 

So in general I think that games and playing give us a safe, defined area to just be someone (or ourselves) and see what happens. I actually do the same thing with my stories. I'll create female lead characters and make them come alive mostly by digging deep within myself and giving them part of my essence. That more so than games has let me grow and explore parts of me I had tried to keep hidden.

OK you folks in this forum I'm looking for info for the article in the wiki about this very issue.  Maybe Marq&Mia can have a look at this and see what they can come up with.

Steph

Steph, is this the article you were looking for?

Quote from: Casey on December 27, 2006, 07:52:25 AM
Steph, is this the article you were looking for?

Sure is.  I started it in July but kinda hit a blank.  I would really appreciate if you folks could come up with some facts to flesh it out.


Steph

You bet steph. I'll get this article ablazing.
This topic holds a lot of value to me as well since one of my realizations of being bigendered occured because I kept creating defined extremely complicated female characters in Role playing games and thought how is it the character is so well defined already unless.....hmmm.


I'll start collecting data immediately.

Marq and Mia

Quote from: Marq and Mia on December 27, 2006, 10:26:04 AM
You bet steph. I'll get this article ablazing.
This topic holds a lot of value to me as well since one of my realizations of being bigendered occured because I kept creating defined extremely complicated female characters in Role playing games and thought how is it the character is so well defined already unless.....hmmm.


I'll start collecting data immediately.

Marq and Mia

Thanks a bunch Marq & Mia.

Give me a shout when you're ready.  I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with as I totally sucked when I did researched the topic.

Steph

I think it's brilliant, and a great way for people to explore parts of themselves that aren't exacty the definition of their physical sex. I'm knee-deep into FinalFantasyXII right now, and sometimes I play as Ashe or Fran, sometmes as Balthier or Vaan (that rhymed!). In my opinion, it's a great outlet for both growth and exploration.

I don't know if I did some of the responses justice, but I added some stuff on how gaming is an excellent means of self discovery and safe self expression. This coming from personal experiences of myself and some of those who I have derived comments from. I think a lot of the information in that entry also helps to fill out the topic. Let me know what you think steph.

Marq and Mia

Quote from: Marq and Mia on January 09, 2007, 02:47:00 AM
I don't know if I did some of the responses justice, but I added some stuff on how gaming is an excellent means of self discovery and safe self expression. This coming from personal experiences of myself and some of those who I have derived comments from. I think a lot of the information in that entry also helps to fill out the topic. Let me know what you think steph.

Marq and Mia

Hello there.

Thank you so much for your input, I had a quick look and it's really great.  I'll get Helen to wave her magic grammar wand over it and I'll finesse it, then we'll make an announcement.  Thanks again, it's really good.  If you have any other ideas to add to the Wiki, let me know, we need articles that discuss the androgynous side of life

Thanks again.

Steph