I'm a Joss Whedon fanboy. What can I say? However, beyond a cool little video with my personal hero, there is a good blog entry as well that takes some of the stuff Whedon talks about and puts into a study to look at why so many women, when creating avatars, will still choose female avatars while many men will choose to play as a female avatar.

From the article:

After listening to Joss, I have to make the connection between his comment that strong women characters are valuable for men as well as women, and the phenomenon of men taking on female avatars when they are gaming. For some reason, research shows that women gamers rarely switch genders when gaming. Because games are so populated by male avatars, women frequently play games with male avatars , but when given the choice they rarely choose gender bending. This doesn't bode well for Dr. Freud. As a fan of Jung's writings, I have to say that I think gaming and other virtual spaces provide a situation in which men can express and work with their animas.

While many male gamers come up with convoluted reasons for gender bending online, many admit to not consciously knowing we they chose to play a female. Male to female gender bending is still a serious taboo for heterosexual men in our culture and online games provide a space in which men can unconsciously explore the feminine aspects of their psyche without fear of (much) ridicule or violence.

Read the full article and see the video over at the blog