Slang: Often Offensive. a person, as a crossdresser or transgender person, whose gender expression blurs differences between various sexual orientations and gender identities.
something that challenges traditional societal norms related to gender.
Women play all the roles in this gender bender of a play.
informal a person who adopts an androgynous style of dress, hair, make-up, etc
a male-male or female-female adaptor, used esp for computer hardware
First recorded in 1980–85
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
She'll be seen next in Gus Van Sant's Restless and Albert Nobbs, a gender bender in which she plays the romantic interest of Glenn Close.
From Time ● Mar. 26, 2011
His voice starting to rise, Mr. Wright said, “If you’re trying to make something that’s unique and fresh, that’s a completely unique gender bender, how can you give examples of similar films?”
From New York Times ● Aug. 6, 2010
If this sounds like the plot of The Crying Game, don't blame scripter Bill Jesse; Riff-Raff was made a year before Neil Jordan's gender bender.
From Time Magazine Archive
For every drag queen or gender bender who believes life ought to be street theater, dozens if not hundreds of gay men and lesbians avoid confrontation.
From Time Magazine Archive
Bowie, a defiantly iconoclastic gender-bender emboldened the truly disenfranchised — those who became targets by simply walking out their front door.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 3, 2017
The character who delivers that plaintive statement isn’t one you’d expect, and it brings Churchill’s ahead-of-its-time gender-bender to a delirious peak.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 12, 2016
The original rock 'n' roll gender-bender, Little Richard is such an integral part of the American pop landscape that it's easy to take for granted his cultural import.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 6, 2015
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
