Gender locked race?

[Gwenorai]

I mean, not all of us want to play as females. I hate playing as a female toon in all RPGs, I hate hip swing, I hate female animation run and I'm certainly not a fan of the chest physics. So yeah. I prefer to play as a male toon.

As a wise person once said, if I'm going to be staring at someone's behind for hours at a time - then it's going to be of something I like. If dudes can do it, why can't girls? And of course, the dudes who like themselves a good looking chap to stare at. Gotta share the love.

Point being I shouldn't have to be swept under the rug in regards to my favourite race because I don't want to be the female and would prefer to be the male. Gatekeeping sucks.

@Ariane; thank you for the info!

[Iscah]

This is the best I've seen: http://mirkemenagerie.tumblr.com/pos...7699/the-viera

Reading over that lore again, the quote that seems to be used to support the "male Viera are never seen outside the forest" is this from the Wandering Dramaturge:

I spent many a moon in the Desert Sapphire, and while I saw all manner of wondrous creatures, not once did I lay mine eyes upon a male Viera, nor did I hear of one living in the city. They simply do not exist to us.

The "Desert Sapphire" is Rabanastre, I assume? In any case, the core of the statement is that in the past he has not seen a male Viera in the city, but that doesn't mean it can't change.

And there's also this quote from Jenomis:

That said, with every generation there are those Viera who long for a life beyond the verdant sea of trees and abandon their tribes to start a new life in the kingdom’s cities.

That said, some people were saying earlier that it doesn't matter what the normal lore is for male Viera, because the WoL is special and might choose to leave regardless? I think the other side of that concern is that, even though in a single-player game you can make the argument that your special character is an exception, in this multiplayer game the world is populated by other player-characters (who are not the Warrior of Light in your version of the story), and suddenly that population includes a noticable number of male Viera. Even if they're rare characters in the long run, it's still "above zero" and that's not what fits in with the lore they've written for the Viera.

Of course they could have written different lore, but they have their own reasons for doing this - whatever they are.

As a wise person once said, if I'm going to be staring at someone's behind for hours at a time - then it's going to be of something I like. If dudes can do it, why can't girls? And of course, the dudes who like themselves a good looking chap to stare at. Gotta share the love.

I don't really get that logic - I don't think I look at my character much at all during gameplay. You're looking past them into the distance at where you're going, or looking around you in battle. It would be like the equivalent of staring at your feet the whole time you're walking, instead of looking at where you're going.

You see them more in cutscenes, of course.