No one will play a female character, or at least, everyone will have a female alt.
But, i think one way to do it without involving idiots running around yelling crap about "raping you, literally" would be to setup a system where the character has to travel back to the initial spawn point, and be able to "start a family" at which point a NPC of the opposite sex will spawn, that the player has to take to their claim or village or whatever. At that point it becomes similar to a digital-pet minigame based on the happyness level of yourself, your NPC partner, and your NPC children.
First you have to raise the happyness of your partner to a point where you can "propose" to them. Then, you have to take them back to the initial spawn point to "get married" at which point you will get a baby. From there it works mostly like the OP described, minus the insane downside of forcing female character players from taking even a temporary hitpoint reduction due to birth and slower walk speed, higher metabolism, etc.
See, it's all dealt with off-screen, just like the toilet!
However, the baby is perminately "tied" to the NPC parent as far as happyness goes. If either that NPC parent becomes unhappy for long enough or too many times, or the same thing happens to the child, both the NPCs will leave and the player will have to start over. If the baby is killed or dies because of another player, the parent will take a large happyness hit; if the player killed the baby directly or from neglect, the parent NPC will instantly leave. If the NPC parent dies because of another player, the child will take a even larger happyness hit; but if the player killed the NPC parent, then the child will run away.
Also, if the player is in a village, the happyness level of the entire village populace could also come into play in effecting the happyness level of the NPC parent and child, but most of those happyness points would be based on the happyness of other couples, the single parents in the village, and to the least degree the single and ex-married players in the village. If the village is the worst hive of scum and villainy in the entire game, NPC parents will say "forget that" and keep making demands that the player move them the hell away before they do it themselves.
[edit - and if you arn't prepared to play as your child at the moment, you can "send them to a more civilized land" which basically 'retires' both NPCs from the game world, to be used later if ever.]
The Dwarf is making a plaintive gesture. He doesn't really care about anything any more.
