ugh. Some of y'all really do know how to leech all the joy out of a game.
I raised a suggestion. I didn't want an endless argument. When the topic blew up, in my first response, I tried to reply to as many folks as possible, but the interface limited me to ~10 name mentions, so I scaled it back. After that, it seemed a fool's errand to reply to every thing that was posted, especially because there were so many other thoughtful voices in the mix, so I didn't bother.
One person kept calling me out by name, and put up several posts asking the same question over and over. To me, that indicated a sense of entitlement... that I was somehow required to respond to him merely because he wanted attention. As a forum reader, I'd seen lots of threads devolve from rich discussions into these ping-pong parleys between just two people. It's a bad outcome.
I answered Ben's question for two simple reasons. The first was that he asked nicely. The second is more complicated, but here goes...
In my late teens I played a few sessions of Ars Magica. I was told the rules required me to take a certain flaw, so I did. During play, I was told that flaw meant there were penalties to some actions (trying to threaten an innkeeper) but bonuses to others (just try to flirt with the innkeeper.) I eventually stopped playing with those guys. But I've always been kind of embarrassed about the whole episode.
Fast forward over a decade. It wasn't until Ben's post that I realized..."wait, what if that wasn't in the real rules at all?" It's a pretty sad realization that I was not only dumb enough to play act some weird as*****s weird turnon, but I'd been gaslit into doing it. I'm also kind of ashamed at myself for never insisting on seeing the written text. And more embarrassed that I brought my misunderstanding up here.
So... since people are harping on it "Yes, I was wrong about the text in earlier editions. Yes I'm an idiot."
Does my limited bad experience still matter? Well, yes, it kind of does.
I still don't play table top games very often because that sort of stuff keeps happening, and not just to me. An earlier post'er told a really sweet story about playing with his young niece. That story got me in the feels because I grew up playing rpg's with with parents and uncles. But eleven year old girls don't stay eleven year old girls forever. They become seventeen year old girls, and twenty year old women, and sometimes even seventy year old men. And as they do, the tabletop can become less like arcadia and a lot more infernal.
The "transvestite" flaw irked me so much because I saw it as a way for some bigot to weaponize the rules against another player. I thought that was what happened to me. In fact, what happened to me wasn't supported by the rule set; but the RAW could put a butch woman or more effeminate man in the same pickle. All the while, a bigot could hide behind their supposed mastery of, and fidelity to, the core rules.
This thread has spiraled so far off the original point. For the record, I never tabbed anyone's post as inappropriate. I just tried to turn my own attention to more enjoyable threads.