It is actually that simple.  I have no desire to play as a female.  Been there, done that, got the T Shirt.  It is not for me as my disinterest in the concept leaves me disconnected from the game world.

On the other hand I do have interest in being in the shoes of a male adventurer being shot at as well as being somewhat demonic or beastly.  These concepts interest me and therefore leave me connected to the game world.

Regardless of what a lable (and it is more than just parts but that is another subject entirely) stands for, I have no interest in the concept.  Should a person who has an interest in first person shooters automatically be able to enjoy Bloodborne?  What if they do not like third petson or melee style combat?  Are they wrong for feeling disconnected from Bloodborne?  Same concept my friend.

I know someone who loved Destiny, but refuses to play games where you make your own character.  He never got past the character creation in Bloodborne before he returned it (which still baffles me to this day).

I also know someone who loves skyrim, but has no interest in western and JRPGs alike.

I also hated WoW but loved FFXIV (they are in reality very similar).

No one knows why these small details bother us, they just do.  Regardless of how big or small a deal is in the grand scheme of things, simple disinterest in a concept is all that is needed to make a significant enough impact for a person.

I'll try to explain it, since I have the same problem as Shiken in regards to playing as a female character.

I first encountered it with Final Fantasy X-2. Some of my friends (me included) were annoyed that the playable characters were all female while others didn't care - so we wondered why and discussed it.

We came up with the following: there seem to be 2 types of players.

(1) Some people take the character that is given to them and play as that character - it's like a book or a movie to them. The character has it's own personality and the player just role-plays as that character. Players like that won't have a problem playing a character of the opposite sex.

(2) Then there are players like me (and Shiken I guess). They don't really role-play - they project themselves on the character. They view the character as a representation of themselves, which obviously leads to difficulties when you have to play as the opposite sex.

yeah, it felt wrong, but i dont think that her gender is the problem, i think its the design.

I still really can't understand point 2. You're saying you project yourself into the character. So you imagine yourself as another person, already. But since it's female, your brain says this is wrong? Even though your acting out another characters life basically. From my POV. You're playing as someone else, no matter what it is. Would you have a problem playing as a animal, plant, bug, book? those are far more less relatable. Would you have a problem if you picked the female charr in Guild Wars 2. Both male and female Charr are virtually identicle in appearance. How about Samus. Would hiding behind a bodysuit prevent this response?

Horizon isn't set in pre-history. It's set in post-history, and to me it doesn't seem likely that societal norms like that would move backwards just because we lose our technology.

Never played Guild Wars 2, but I play WoW and: yes, I would never play a female character in that.

I don't have a problem with playing non-humanoid characters because those are mostly found in games where it doesn't matter because there is no story/characterization.  That extends to female characters as well though. Playing a Mario-platformer as Peach wouldn't be a problem.  However, I wouldn't play a RPG as a female character.

Even if it was, somehow set in pre-history. The assumption that pre-historic woman didn't hunt is simply false. Newer scientific evidence not only suggests that they did hunt along with the males but also made a lot of the infamous cave drawings.

You have to always be aware of the bias past researchers themselves held against or for various things, wich tainted the outcome of their research. Theres concrete evidence for example that researchers looking into animal sexuality deliberately left out homosexual encounters, because they didn't thought them relevant to their research.

A lot of the research we still cite today was conducted in times when it either was proposterous to suggest females would hunt or during times of extreme tensions between the genders. research should always be objective, it's sadly not.

So it's story driven only.

I can understand that. In games like where you can fully customize your character like fallout, elder scrolls, mass effect and dragon's dogma, I'll make the character as close to myself as possible but I'll change some things of course but I'll never pick female as my character's sex.

In games like the TLOU, horizon, tomb raider, GOW and MGS, I'll play the character as is and to me, i'm not them and they are not me.