Basic Trope: In fiction, people who change genders tend to take on stereotypes of their new gender.
- Straight:
- Bob becomes a girl, and immediately starts wearing a dress.
- Alice becomes a boy, and immediately signs up for the football team.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob becomes a girl, and immediately turns into a Girly Girl.
- A team of manly football players are turned into women, and they immediately put on frilly dresses and throw a princess-themed tea party.
- Alice becomes a boy, and enlists in the army to engage in mass Testosterone Poisoning.
- Downplayed:
- Formerly male Bob’s sex drive is a bit lower and/or she's slightly more emotional(ly expressive), but otherwise maintains the same personality and interests.
- Formerly female Alice is more perverted than before and/or slightly more stoic or aggressive, but other-wise maintains the same interests & personality.
- Justified:
- The gender-bending magic includes a compulsion to act the gender.
- Bob is deliberately following gender stereotypes in an effort not to stick out like a sore thumb. (How successful these attempts are may vary wildly.)
- Bob is taking advantage of being a woman by doing things he'd usually get made fun of for if he was still a guy.
- Alice is taking advantage of her new status as a male and finally being taken seriously in her society, thus doing things that she wouldn't be able to get away with if she were still a woman.
- Alice was The Lad-ette or a Tomboy with a Girly Streak and now that she's a he, those behaviors no longer stand out.
- Inverted:
- Bob becomes a girl, and immediately starts watching football wearing boxer shorts and scratching herself... which she didn't do when she was a guy.
- Alice becomes a boy, and becomes interested in very girly things such as fashion designing, which he had no interest in when he was a girl.
- Subverted: Bob becomes a girl, tries out a feminine life, and decides that he dislikes it.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob becomes a girl, and refuses to change his dress in any way. However, it is later shown that in private, she is dressing up in frilly clothing/moonlighting at the local strip club/dating someone.
- Alice becomes a boy, and acts the same way she used to so that her friends won't feel alienated from her. Underground, he's the macho man superhero who fights crime in the name of all things masculine.
- Parodied:
- Bob becomes a girl, and immediately starts acting like a Girly Girl. Badly.
- Alice becomes a boy, and enlists in the army to engage in mass Testosterone Poisoning. He fails miserably
- Zig Zagged:
- Bob constantly switches between genders, instantly switching from a macho man to a girly girl inconsistently.
- Bob becomes a Tomboy with a Girly Streak.
- Multiple people are genderbent. Some act accordingly, some don't.
- Averted: Bob becomes a girl, and doesn't act any different in her new body.
- Enforced: "Well, Viewers Are Morons, so it's probably better to just make her, you know, act like a girl."
- Lampshaded: "Aw crap, I'm a girl now. Quick, someone point me to the nearest dress and copy of Cosmo."
- Invoked: Bob becomes a girl, and actively tries to learn more about the female condition.
- Exploited: Alice becomes a boy so that he will be easy to distract when the Big Bad's Evil Plan comes into operation.
- Defied:
- "Aw man, I'm going to have to learn how to wear heels and everything, right? You know what? Screw that. I'm gonna be a tomboy."
- "So now that I'm a guy I have to not shower, work in construction and do nothing at home but watch baseball games all week? Yeah, like that'll ever happen."
- Discussed: "He's a girl now, huh? That means he has to learn how to cook, right? Hey, stop hitting me!"
- Conversed: "Ok, have these writers ever heard of the term 'tomboy'? Why in the world does every gender bent kid turn into Little Miss Cheerleader?"
- Deconstructed:
- Bob becomes a girl, and subconsciously takes on some classical feminine traits. However, it is shown that it was because he was sexist to begin with.
- Bob becomes a girl and begins acting in stereotypically feminine ways, then realizes what is happening and stops it.
- Reconstructed: Bob becomes a girl, and takes upon newly appropriate gender stereotypes. However, upon changing back, he gains a new respect for the other gender, as well as a new understanding of his own gender stereotypes. Oh, and he never forgets to put the toilet seat down again.
Back to Third Law of Gender-Bending
