Considering that at times more than half of the top ten on this site have the gender bending tag, I think this might be the right place to ask: why do people write genderbent characters if they’re never going to address the issue? I’ve honestly been soured on this tag over time and it’s not because I’m somehow opposed to gender bending in principle (heck, I’m a long time reader of EGS), it’s just that most stories seem to use their gender bending for a few (usually very unfunny) „oh my peepee is gone!“ and „ooh boobies!“ jokes and then forget about it forever. The implications of being forced into a body of another sex are many and serious and while magic might be able to circumvent them, I’d expect the issue to be addressed somehow.
The height of my confusion came, when an author stated in his chapter commentary that they had elected to genderbend their main character, because they didn’t know how to write a believable female character and this way the character could be mentally male. This really boggles my mind. How can it be harder to write a believable female character (considering that individual differences between people of any gender are so much greater than differences between the genders as a whole and thus people of any gender can have pretty much any kind of personality) than a believable trans character (which is what you get if you force someone into a body that doesn’t correspond to their gender identity)? The only answer seems to be that nobody actually considers the mental implications of being genderbent.
And while I get why someone might not want to write about these themes:
If you’re not going to address all the things that would actually make the gender bending into a plot point or character trait, such as dysphoria, plain having to relearn all kinds of movement with different height, strength and centre of weight, confrontation with different role expectations (or in contrast a world where gender switching is common and the implications of that), what does the trope accomplish at all? If your character is magically turned to the opposite sex and the magic automatically rewrites their identity to accept it so it never comes up again, what difference does it make? Why put it into the story if it’s ultimately pointless? Just for a bad castration joke? I don't get it.
The height of my confusion came, when an author stated in his chapter commentary that they had elected to genderbend their main character, because they didn’t know how to write a believable female character and this way the character could be mentally male. This really boggles my mind. How can it be harder to write a believable female character (considering that individual differences between people of any gender are so much greater than differences between the genders as a whole and thus people of any gender can have pretty much any kind of personality) than a believable trans character (which is what you get if you force someone into a body that doesn’t correspond to their gender identity)? The only answer seems to be that nobody actually considers the mental implications of being genderbent.
And while I get why someone might not want to write about these themes:
If you’re not going to address all the things that would actually make the gender bending into a plot point or character trait, such as dysphoria, plain having to relearn all kinds of movement with different height, strength and centre of weight, confrontation with different role expectations (or in contrast a world where gender switching is common and the implications of that), what does the trope accomplish at all? If your character is magically turned to the opposite sex and the magic automatically rewrites their identity to accept it so it never comes up again, what difference does it make? Why put it into the story if it’s ultimately pointless? Just for a bad castration joke? I don't get it.