I have and still do both male and female. The only exception is multiplayers games, specifically FF14 online cause I don't feel right playing as a female and having other people believe me to be female when I'm not, doesn't feel right. 

It does make me feel less merged with the character but it's quite fun and I've even done some romancing as a female in games like DA Inquisition, it is the only way to see Sara's romance quests in that game. Fallout 4 somehow felt ad if the game was meant to be played as the mother, Idk why. Her VA was way better too and so was Casandras in Ass Creed Oddessy. Bloodbornes female grunts and moans are less annoying than the males. Often females are more slender and that effects the feel of gameplay to a degree, often in a good way. Smaller hit boxes and all. I.e the female choices in The Last descendant. 

I'm secure in myself enough to play with digital barbie dolls but it doesn't seem like this is the norm with recent controversies over female MC's. I don't understand it. 😕 If you choose to stay away from females in character creators, please share, I'd like to know your reasoning for choosing only male. 

It does not matter but I generally go for the male version if the option is there. But When I played Pokémon Crystal I choose the female option. It was new and i liked the character model more.
When the character creation is a large part of the start of a game i usually go with some kind of default. Even if it is fun to play around in with the character creation tool it is often not why I started a new game, I just want to start playing the actual game.
If I just want to do some stupid shit and not play a game proper I'm mor inclined to go for the female option. Somehow find it funnier stacking corpses and books on a mountain in Skyrim as a female instead of a male and then "FUS RO DAH!" the pile down the slope.

Only female, no idea why. Just because I suppose.

Whatever I'm in the mood for.

I usually choose female, as I have a thing for sexy badass women and I'm going to be looking at a character for dozens of hours, I'd rather look at a woman.

Male for first playthrough

Female for second playthrough

I voted only male, but sometimes I pick to female like in Fire Emblem to make harem runs challanges (only one guy+all other units female, or one girl+all other units males). Those games all feature some classes that are genderlocked, which is an additional incentive to change avatar gender sometimes

I'd say I play male 95% of times when given option. Since in almost all games the difference is merely cosmetic, I prefer to play guys. Sometimes though I really enjoy the female character models so I pick them

My choice varies. If ads for the game emphasized one gender, I often go with that. That was true for Immortals: Fenyx Rising, which emphasized the female version in ads, so I choose female. And green skin. Or in Dragon Quest Builders II, which also emphasized the female version in ads. In many games I try multiple characters, like Skyrim, then I have both genders present. In some games I choose for the better looking variant, especially if one is looking like shit. it also can because I somehow connect one gender to the gameplay. Or subverting this, so for cozy or farming games I often play the male version, for violent ones often the female. So yeah, it varies wildly.

Male, I also tend to make the character look as silly as possible.

Male most of the time, unless the female character has, or can be customized to have large buns.