History Main / FirstLawOfGenderBending

!!Examples:

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* The protagonist of the ''X-Change'' DatingSim series. Changing back to male and getting the lead girl appears to be the "canon" ending, but he gets turned back into one each game. The last game actually states that changing so will soon make him permanently female.

** Also, much later, a "seyonuolu" ([[HalfHumanHybrid chimera]]) member of the QuirkyMinibossSquad, Vlad, is hit with a TransformationRay and is turned female, but more importantly to him/her, ''human''. "She" has no desire to change back, and since BizarreAlienBiology overrides the time limit (and, implicitly, gender identity), Vladia, as she is now called, is treated as a woman from then on.
** Moving on from Elliott being a ''double'' victim of this, we get to Tedd. Who probably wouldn't know this was a law: the 'circumstances' usually equate to 'Dad's out of town' and 'As a girl, I'm ''hot'''.

So you've got the plot all finished, the {{McGuffin}} is located, and all of the loose ends are nicely tied. Time to finally reverse that pesky GenderBender you've been laboring under since the beginning of this story arc. Piece of Cake. This is fiction, after all. Don't [[GreenRock green rocks]], [[InvoluntaryShapeshifting magic springs]], and AppliedPhlebotinum abound? All you need do is hunt down ThoseTwoGuys with the [[SailorSun Transformation Gun]], jump back into the [[RanmaOneHalf magic spring]], or run down to [[TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday]] for one of their EasySexChange specials. How hard can it be?

Oh, wait. You used to be a boy, didn't you?

Fictional Male-to-Female [[GenderBender gender benders]] seem to be a lot more common and former men seem to get stuck as their new gender a lot more often than their Female-to-Male counterparts. One would think that once one achieved the capability of turning a boy into girl that reversing it would be just as easy, but that's rarely the case in fiction. Most characters who do try to reverse a male-to-female genderbender will usually learn that FailureIsTheOnlyOption.

*** It does not look good for Tiffany, the results of [[http://www.exiern.com/?p=1020 of consulting a magic encyclopaedia]] is just 3 pages of mocking laughter, ''in text''.

* In ''MSFHigh'', Nurse Keiri seems to have made it her mission to warp the gender ratio as much as possible. Everyone who gets more than bandages from her leaves female. At the end of the day, anyone who's been transformed in any way can change back totally or keep all aspects of the new form, forever; with this in mind, she also tends to give incentives ''not'' to change back. There's nothing to stop people who have been changed from being changed again, but (other than the daily ResetButton) female-to-male is rare, and never seen in the comic, where so far at least three significant characters (Urk, Collete, and Victoria) have gone through this progression and are now female for good.

* This is ''very'' common on {{Literotica}}, especially since most sex-change stories there are male-to-female anyways.
** Also relatively common on the lesser-known ''Crystal's Story Site''.

* ''{{Misfile}}'', as referenced above. Not only does Ash seem to have a better life as a "girl", nearly everyone he and the angels have come in contact with since the misfile seems to have had their life improved in some way. Finally, the revelation that [[spoiler:Rumisiel's sentence on Earth just got ''reduced'' to 72 years along with Emily's "I should be dead now" and "I like my life now" moments]] seems to have sealed their fate in stone.
** Speculation: Set in stone though it might be, ''Misfile'' might yet deconstruct the trope if girl!Ash [[IChooseToStay chooses to stay]] as a [[HeroicSacrifice sacrifice]] to [[spoiler:keep Emily alive]], rather than because of some inherent enjoyment of being a girl.
*** [[FridgeLogic Fridge Logic]]: if Ash is forced to choose to stay, he might further deconstruct the trope by pursuing conventional medical sexual transition options (with a little help from Rumi along the way, perhaps, to make up for the [[IfYouKnowWhatIMean inadequacies]] of current FTM surgery techniques). This would go nicely hand-in-hand with Hazelton's [[WordofGod stated goal]] of exploring sexual transition in a constructive way, especially in light of the murder of Brandon Teena, to which Hazelton has paid tribute before.

* Parodied in [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0249.html this]] ''OrderOfTheStick''.

* For that matter, after trying to bodyswap, the only available one for Mr Sinister was a woman(His original plan was to use Xaviers body, but had to settle for a female clone of himself.) , who has since had a fling with Wolverine's son(Though being bi, Daken would have probably had gone after Sinister in his male body too) and is disturbingly attractive when you think who's in there.

** Surprisingly, the latter part turns into an aversion of the trope. The clerics perform a reversal spell, and it works... for all of them except the one who obviously loved being a girl, and she obviously refused to reverse her own gender.

* For that matter, after trying to bodyswap, the only available one for Mr Sinister was a woman, who has since had a fling with Wolverine's son and is disturbingly attractive when you think who's in there.
* The body of Walter Langkowski (Sasquatch from AlphaFlight) was destroyed near the end of John Byrne run, later, after some body jumping, his spirit ended inhabiting Snowbird's body, a female shapeshifter who had recenly died while in Sasquatch's form. Soon he discovered that this body only would shapeshift between his Sasquatch form and Snowbird's human form, that was obviously female. So he changed his name to Wanda Langkowski and lived as a female for a couple years until the previous status quo was restored.

** In the chilean version gets way more convoluted, as both Lalo/Lola and Pepa/Pepe can't get back to normal and when that happens it's just for a few episodes. Or the instances where there are Two Lalos or Two Pepas thanks to the later added conditions to the spell. But that's part of the [[DisContinuity second arc]]

* ''[[http://www.jaydenandcrusader.com Jayden and Crusader]]'' referenced, and subverted, this trope twice, and eventually did [[http://www.jaydenandcrusader.com/2008/06/19/yes-maam/ swap the gender]] of it's most masculine character. However, that was reversed moments afterwards thanks to his excedingly violent nature. As the entire event was designed for the [[http://www.jaydenandcrusader.com/2007/08/08/2007-08-08/ purpose of gaining readers]] the trope has only ever been jokingly entertained.

* This next example uses {{Shape Shifting}} rather than Gender Bending, but otherwise follows this law: In {{Cave Story}}, the witch Misery [[{{Baleful Polymorph}} turns Sue and Ihto into Mimigas]] (anthropomorphic rabbits). Sue's mom uses a machine to turn them back into humans in the credits... only for a sneeze to turn them back to Mimigas seconds later.

* ''Mantra'', the Malibu comic that had a warrior knight reincaranted in the body of a woman.

* Although not a {{Gender Bender}} in itself, [[{{hayate the combat butler}} Hayate]] was found to play a very convincing female (even attracting the romantic attention of three male characters in that form). His female appearance has since made several more appearances and it's own name (Hermione Ayasaki) and has been fandom paired with his gender bent form, thus making it applicable for this trope.
** Notably, he is one of the least male stereotypical characters of the story.

* Manga example: in ''AfterSchoolNightmare'', main character Mashiro Ichijo was born with the upper half of a male and the lower half of a female. Mashiro identifies as a male for most of the series, and struggles with his femininity. Toward the end of the series, [[spoiler:he accepts his femininity and chooses to be a female. The series ends with the realization that Mashiro's male and female "halves" were really a pair of {{HalfIdenticalTwins}}, fighting each other for survival in the womb; the female twin lives.]]

** In the end, he [[spoiler: chooses to remain a girl, and [[{{Squick}} has a child.]]]]
*** [[spoiler: with himself.]]

* ''{{Misfile}}'', as referenced above. Not only does Ash seem to have a better life as a girl, nearly everyone she and the angels have come in contact with since the misfile seems to have had their life improved in some way. Finally, the revelation that [[spoiler:Rumisiel's sentence on Earth just got ''reduced'' to 72 years along with Emily's "I should be dead now" and "I like my life now" moments]] seems to have sealed their fate in stone.

* Possibly played with in a cameo by [[BaldursGate "Edwina"]] as a barmaid in Dragon Age: Origins.