I am a male who used to play wow. I had two female avatars. The reason is simple. I cannot stand a man in a dress. Way Too Ugly. That was my priest and my mage. Enough said.
yeah, I'm one of them. Perhaps 80% of my toons are female on WoW.
Why? Aesthetics.
The races I prefer to play have vastly superior appearance/animations for female models, primarily blood elf. I CANNOT STAND male blood elf models, but I almost can't play without Arcane Torrent...so it's female blood elves.
On Alliance side, if it can be worgen, I play a worgen. I love their racials, particularly Darkflight. It has to be the second best racial in the game, just behind Arcane Torrent. And similar to blood elves, I can't stand male worgen animations, particularly that ridiculous forward flip special melee attack animation (which is also the reason i won't play a female undead melee toon). Play a male worgen DK or arms warrior and you literally NEVER PUT YOUR FEET ON THE GROUND.
And they're just two examples. Human males look like hairless gorillas, and draenei males are walking refrigerators with hooves and tentacles, to name a few of my other pet peeves when it comes to character models.
The races where I prefer the male are actually fairly few: orcs, dwarves, and tauren. All three have awesome animations, especially orcs. I just love their "EAT THIS!" casting animation.
The races where I play both genders are troll, undead, and goblin. Undead males for melee, females for casting. Undead female casting animations are the best in the game, hands down.
The races where I refuse to play males are BE, worgen, draenei, and human. I can't stand the male models and/or their animations.
I absolutely refuse to play gnomes, night elves, and pandaren.
Just another guy from the shallow end of the gene pool.
all of my toons except for my warrior and lock are females. why the hell would I want to stare at a males ass all day lol. i have two human females one blueberry female, two worgen females and one panda female. i see nothing wrong with have a female avatar it's just a game. remember plains strider, fel for the taurens?
I play a lot of female characters in MMO's particularly in heavy PvP oriented ones since female characters tend to be smaller and are easier to get lost in a stack, also in some MMO's certain classes are female only and have female only disciplines.
I usually play female character's. As Fel said, aesthetics. I like Female Blood elves better than males. I preferred Female Sheppard to Male Sheppard (for Mass Effect) and well I generally just choose female character's because generally the female character's look better. Eye-Candy, just aesthetics...
My Orc DK (my main) for WoW is male, as is my Orc shaman but my Warlock and Mage are both female.
Generally Orc Males look better than Orc Females (but dammit is blood fury a great talent for burst dps). Honestly Orcs and Blood elves are kind of my race for WoW. I have a mid level Goblin and a mid-level Pandarian but never just pushed through to max level for them. Been a while since i really PLAYED WoW though.
Most of my characters are female for the reasons already said. While I do prefer looking at the female form, Fel nailed the main reason: the male animations and models (at least in WoW) are AWFUL. Almost all of my casters are female, mainly human or undead. I do have a Draenei shaman named Kyvan though (Kyven was taken). I probably should have made him a Worgen, but see Fel's description about Worgen males above.