genderbending

English

Etymology

gender +‎ bending

Noun

genderbending (uncountable)

1. The changing of a character's gender within a story.
   • 2000, David John Bell, Barbara M. Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader, page 452:

     There is one episode in the novel, however, where questions of racial masquerade intrude on the freewheeling genderbending of the main characters.

   • 2006, Peter Swirski, The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem, page 75:

     The genre is traditionally nonsexual, despite the scantily clad bimbos on the covers of its pulp magazines of the 1950s and despite its politically correct genderbending of the 1970s and 1980s.

Adjective

genderbending (not comparable)

1. Confounding attempts to identity one's gender, especially by dressing in the clothes of another sex or in a way that makes one's gender identity ambiguous.
   • 2012, Combat Rock: A History of Punk (From It's^[sic] Origins to the Present), →ISBN:

     When the band broke up, Reed reinvented himself as a genderbending gutter poet and earned the nickname “The Godfather of Punk”, mostly by going out his way to subvert his fans' expectations on albums […]

Verb

genderbending

1. present participle and gerund of genderbend

Related terms

• genderbender

See also

• gender changer