Female characters are often portrayed badly in roleplaying. I’m going to give a short explanation of some of the most common things that go wrong, and also give a few tips to those people who want to portray as realistic a female character as they can.

There are a few things that can go wrong when playing a female character:

1. This is probably the most well-known one. Playing a stereotype instead of a realistic personality. There are several key stereotypes, although you will often see a mix, sometimes even an all-in-one.

The Slut. This character acts… well… basically, like a slut. She’ll flirt with most men (and sometimes women), and sleep with them for whatever reason.
If she has a character description somewhere, it will probably describe that she has a stunningly beautiful face, big breasts, and curves in all the right places (“she’s gorgeous in all ways” if the player is not a very inspired one, or “her face shines with an otherworldly splendour; her milky-white breasts are exposed enough to attract the attention of all those she passes; she exudes a natural charisma that makes it hard for men to turn their eyes away from her, attracting them inevitably, like moths to a flame” if the player has aspirations of being a writer). The character will often be dressed in the most revealing clothes or armour that the player could find. May go through several IC marriages.
This type goes very well with either The Victim or The Bitch, or even both at the same time.

The Victim. This character will likely display one or (most likely) more of the below-mentioned traits or mannerisms.
-Fainting a lot.
-Being very weepy and emotional in general.
-Needing to have her hand held (sometimes literally!) through anything, often exclaiming she “just can’t do it! It’s all too hard, too difficult, too much to bear!” (After which, of course, there will be weeping)
-Touching people a lot, especially hugging.
-Telling others how strong they are and how much she admires them. Most often men, but not necessarily.
- Blinking or fluttering her eyelids (innocently).
- Blushing.
-Being very clumsy.
-Often frightened of most everything, possibly including her own shadow.
-Giggling a lot.
In general, this character will not be much interested in combat, and anything rough and often described as boyish or typically male. She might like things like art, cooking, small animals, and being a nurse; things that are neutral, or better: considered very feminine.
Will often be seen in a healer/priest role, wringing her hands, weeping, sighing, and making scared and/or anguished exclamations all the while when she goes about her job, of course.
May annoy her IC friends with much whining over her love-life or other assorted struggles.
This type goes especially well in combination with The Slut.

The Tough Girl, or Bitch. Players of this type often defend themselves by claiming to be feminist and portraying ‘strong women.’
This character is likely to be a lesbian. She’s often aggressive, hurting others at the slightest provocation or even just entirely on a whim (if a lesbian the aggression may be turned solely against male characters).
She’ll love big weapons, many weapons, or big balls of magic that kill people. It may seem a bit odd, but she will still often be dressed in revealing armour. She will most likely also be aggressive in other ways, like relationships. This character can even go so far as to be indistinguishable from the most stereotypically butch of men, apart from the female body.
May be seen starting fights in bars.
Goes well in combination with The Slut. When combined with The Victim, you often get the overused ‘tough girl with a soft side: hiding that she is not very self-confident behind a lot of brawl, and only needs the right man (or woman) to bring out her femininity.’

2. Current assumptions about the female nature will seep into RP. Even when not playing a stereotypical character, a lot of assumptions about women that are popular in our own, real life cultures right now will find their way into RP.One of these real-life assumptions is that women do not like fighting, and thus do not like combat in games. Female characters, even in combat-oriented games, will often be roleplayed to avoid combat, or at least take a supportive role in the combat instead of a pro-active role. The real life assumption that women are nurturing, caring, and empathic, will also push them towards the support roles. Not only are the current ruling assumptions not necessarily correct, this is also OOC-intrusion, because the setting we roleplay in is (usually) not our real life culture.
Make an effort to think about current assumptions about women, so that you do not take something into your RP that you might later regret. (Also make an effort not to bring any real life norms and values, false assumptions or not, into your RP, unless those have a place in the gameworld’s culture that your character is a part of)

3. Vanity will interfere with RP. It is very tempting to want a character that is talented, strong, wise, and good-looking. For this article, we’ll focus only on the looks. You often (far, far more often than seeing just plain-looking ones) see female characters that have their (sometimes even ‘extraordinary’) beauty emphasized in their character descriptions. This is by no means limited to The Slut stereotypes. Even people who you generally know to be excellent RPers will succumb to this. Yes, some people are beautiful. These people are, however, a minority. Most people will look more or less average (that is why it is called average!), maybe pretty (sometimes pretty with a little work :P). Why then are beautiful women the norm in roleplaying?

4. Female characters will be made with the sole purpose of cybersex (preferably with another female character!). Sometimes this is hidden with a thin veneer of RP. However, this is not RP at all, the RP is just an excuse. Still, because of this RP has gotten a reputation of being all about (lesbian) cybersex.
These characters may be vaguely reminiscent of The Slut. The difference is that people playing The Slut will actually be trying to roleplay, and roleplay is what it is about for them, no matter how bad a job they make of it. The cybersex characters will only make token reference to RP at best, often doing such things as dancing naked and running around naked, and spelling very badly.

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The people doing a bad job of roleplaying women are not just men who play female characters. Women playing female characters can make the same mistakes, although it will more often be men who play an outright female stereotype than women. I’m actually not sure about the cybersex characters, although it is often said that it is mostly teenage boys playing them. People should be wiser than to believe something without question just because it is a common notion, though.

If you want to roleplay a realistic female character, there are some things you can do:

• The differences between men and women that we find most striking today, are more often the result of nurture than nature. Yes, there are intrinsic differences between men and women, but they are more subtle and less obvious than all the things many people nowadays often see as intrinsic differences between men and women. Unless you want to spend a whole lot of time finding out exactly what is and is not a real difference (according to several different people too), just go with this simple premise: don’t think so much about having to portray a gender - play a personality.

• Ask a real girl, preferably a gamer girl, about your character. Ask if it is good already, and if not, where you could improve.
In general it would not hurt anyone, experienced RPer or not, male or not, to take a step back now and then and look at their own characters, and asking another person for their opinion. Even if generally you think yourself very well capable of playing a female character, and even if other people have told you before that you do a good job of it. Never let quality slip because you become complacent.

• Do not succumb to your own vanity. Resist that urge to play only beautiful characters. Dare to take the chance to play someone who looks like an average Jane (average-looking characters are actually less common than all-out ugly characters).

As a last word: I realise that this all probably goes for male characters as well.