Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a synon. for a transvestite or a transsexual, bending or eroding the line between the two sexes; also attrib.; thus gender-bend v.; cite 1975 refers to ‘role reversal’, i.e. women doing men’s jobs and vice versa.

[1975		L.A. Times 9 Jan.‘View’ 11: [headline] NBC’s Gender Bender].
1976		Tennessean (Nashville, TN) 3 Oct. ‘Ask Showcase’ 40/3: [headline Gender Bender. [...] Well all I can say is that poor Chevy would have to have taken quite a bad spill indeed to wind up a comedienne, don’t you agree?
1979		She Feb. 13: Gender Bender. Hubby totted up the points / And gave the marks a scan: / He turned a ghastly shade of pale / And yelled — ‘You are a man!’.
1985		J. Wambaugh Secrets of Harry Bright (1986) 115: I shoulda put Boy George between those two gender benders.
1985		‘Thommo’ Dict. Aus. Swearing & Sex Sayings 56: GENDA BENDA — One who bends the rules as to the general acceptance of moral living standards.
1999		N. Cohn Yes We Have No 86: Transvestites weren’t yet the fashionable gender-bender icons they have become.
2004		J. Ellroy ‘Hot-Prowl Rape-O’ in Destination: Morgue! (2004) 300: He-she boned Bill Berchem and Bob Mosher. She gender-bent them bad.
2005		E. White My Lives 327: Genet was the original gender-bender. He’d get high [...] and dance for the Panthers in a pink negligee.
2010		K. Richards Life 222: Police didn’t really know how to handle the gender-bender varieties.
2021		H. Joyce Trans 279: Many of the women leading the UK’s feminist resurgence were teenagers in the 1980s, the era of New Romantics and glam rockers. They are comfortable with men who gender-bend.