New DM Made Fun of Me For Playing a Woman.
Hello. This story happened a few years ago and was online, but it recently came back to my current memory and thought I'd share. I had been playing with this group of people over discord for 4 years at this point. We're all open about our personal lives, incredibly tasteful when we joke (usually), and are just generally good friends. The old DM, who I'm going to call Eric (not a real name), after the last session of his campaign asked if anybody wanted to DM. Literally eveyone said they'd rather be a player, but were willing to be a DM if needed. May I reiterate: WE ALL SAID WE WERE WILLING TO DM OF NEEDED! After hearing about this, Eric told us that he had a friend who wanted to learn how to DM anyways, so it would be fine. We cut to a week later, we scheduled a night to play, and I was exited. I had just discovered that I was gender fluid at the time, so I was exited to play my first Female DnD Character. Her name was Haldiphe Cassia. She was a Neutral Good Hill Dwarf Circle of Spores Druid that was based on Magical Girl Animes like Sailor Moon. I came up with a backstory, thought about her voice and unique lines she would say, and even made art (which isn't something I usually do for characters).
I entered the call and met the new DM. For the sake of this post, we’re going to call him Alex. Alex was... fine. Nothing about him seemed inherently off at first. He talked about the home brew world he created and it was genuinely interesting. He made a post apocalypse style fantasy world with differing factions that your character could be a part of. (Think Fallout but with Magic.) The DM asked us to introduce our characters, and with me being ignorant and excited, I went first.
I was getting into describing her backstory of her Noble parents selling her to a hag in order to save their own hides, but the Hag ended up loving her and training her in the ways of Fungus. Alex, after I was done describing, asked me why I used words like "her" and "she" to describe Haldiphe. Note! He didn't ask in a genuine or curious way. He asked with with a mildly aggressive tone. I can't mimic it through text, so just imagine how a Christian mom would point out how you're smoking. I, in confusion, just said the truth. That she was a girl. Alex than proceded to ask why I would play a woman when I presented myself as a man in that same tone. I explained what being gender fluid was and how, sometimes, I wanted to act more like a woman than a man. He proceeded to laugh in my face and say
"OH! You're playing a joke character." I explained to him that it wasn't a joke, and he didn't understand. He said that it had to be a joke, otherwise I was a "Liberal Gay Tranny." Eric then proceeded to kick him from the server in less than 19 seconds.
I understand that this isn't the worst thing in the world to happen, but it really stuck with me and made me feel insecure about playing Haldiphe or any other woman at the table for a long time. I did eventually start playing a female Half-Orc Storm Herald Barbarian named Gura in the following campaign, but that happened after my old character died in a boss fight, which helped me re-ignite my passion for female DnD Characters.
Now, I must talk about the reason why this came back to my current memory. Well, that's because Haldiphe may come back! My group is starting to learn Pathfinder 2e, and I may try to convert Haldiphe into that system and play as her in the new campaign.
Again, I know it's not the most spicy story or the most dramatic, but I wanted to vent it out somewhere. I hope you enjoyed reading this story and that you have a pleasant rest of your day.