Gender bender

Gender bender refers to a person or behavior that 'bends' or distorts expected gender roles. Cross-dressing is a common form of gender bending, and gender benders are most obviously people outside the mainstream dualistic rules of 'male' and 'female'. They could be transsexual, intersexed, androgynous, butch or femme, or reject the binary conception of gender in favor of being of the Third Gender, genderqueer, Two-Spirit or atypical gender roless.

Sometimes gender bending is essential to the happy, productive of life of people, and they often transition to the other accepted gender with hormome replacement therapy or sex-reassignment surgery. At other times it is in the spirit of a challenging performance or Jacques Derrida's concept of play.

Gender bending is a recurring theme in modern popular culture, for example in: the appearances of performers from Josephine Baker to Quentin Crisp and Sandra Bernhard, the ouevre, including public presentation of Ed Wood, and in films such as Some Like it Hot, La Cage Aux Folles and its American remake The Birdcage, Tootsie and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. In entertainment, camp is the most common form of gender bending.