Why is every almost fantasy adventure story with a female MC gender bender?

[AryaX]

Wish fulfillment & Escapism...

 

[ForestDweller]

If I'm going to write a gender bender, I'll probably just make the MC be a total perv who uses the gender change as an opportunity to grope other girls.

Though for an actual female MC, I already kinda have that going on in my current story, since I have side stories with females as the MC (though they're part of the main MC's harem). I can just remove the harem romance element and I'll have a decently well-developed female MC. Hopefully.

Many of my favorite novels actually have female leads, now that I think about it.

 

[PieCoNsUmEr]

I just thought of something. What about a gender bender story where the protagonist was female, pretty, happy, and successful; but they were reincarnated into a male who was none of of that, and had to cut out joy in a new world.

 

[OneRanter]

I just thought of something. What about a gender bender story where the protagonist was female, pretty, happy, and successful; but they were reincarnated into a male who was none of of that, and had to cut out joy in a new world.

Why do you want to turn the cheap happy go lucky wishfullfillment stories into a horror one?? D:

 

[TheMangaGod]

I just thought of something. What about a gender bender story where the protagonist was female, pretty, happy, and successful; but they were reincarnated into a male who was none of of that, and had to cut out joy in a new world.

That's horrible! I mean there is an audience for what I call "tragedy-porn" but wow that's rough

 

[Ai-chan]

Something I’ve noticed is if a story is fantasy (though it happens most often in isekai,), with a female protagonist, and isn’t primarily romance, it’s gender bender. Why?

Is it because a lot of the authors are male? If so, then why not have a shut, non-feminine female who was reincarnated?

Is it because you want the character to feel alienated? That’s a more valid excuse, but couldn’t you just use their situation to alienate them, or have them reincarnated into something gender less? (Futa’s don’t count.)

Is it because you want your character to be gay, but don’t know how lesbians think, so you just turn a strait guy into a girl? Your making the character, just give them a kinda manly personality, make them like girls, and then boom, a kinda manly lesbian.

Is it because your character has gender dysphoria, and the fact they turned female hasn’t helped things much? If so, good on you.

You want sex with the MC not totally comfortable with their body? Then you can just have the MC uncomfortable in the first place.

Keep in mind this is just a discussion starter.

Ai-chan's stories aren't gender-benders. Well there is one gender bender here because Ai-chan started writing gender bender to build up confidence years ago. So Ai-chan thought why not just put it up here.

 

[PieCoNsUmEr]

Why do you want to turn the cheap happy go lucky wishfullfillment stories into a horror one?? D:

That's horrible! I mean there is an audience for what I call "tragedy-porn" but wow that's rough

Well, for reasons other than those.
1. It’s a scenario that would better represent the issues with suddenly losing the body you had for your whole life.
2. I rarely see a gender bender that isn’t ____ to female/mostly female/gender fluid.
3. Your life doesn’t end even if you lose success, it sucks three assholes from Sunday, but that’s life sometimes.
4. If the MC manages to succeed again, it show the MC was competent, and didn’t succeed just because she was pretty, or that where she worked was trying to get diversity to help keep heat of their backs.
5. More that I’m too dumb/lazy to think of, or explain.

 

[AKnightWithaKnife]

I don’t really like GB ( I’m a good catholic boy) but I can see the attraction. What I absolutely loathe though is when Gl is included in isekai or recarnation novels. What’s the point of GB if they are just gonna act like their past self ? It makes no sense in a nartive point. I’ve read a few good GB novels and none of them on this site. It’s most likley dude to this sites more accepting userbase

 

[TheMangaGod]

I don’t really like GB ( I’m a good catholic boy) but I can see the attraction. What I absolutely loathe though is when Gl is included in isekai or recarnation novels. What’s the point of GB if they are just gonna act like their past self ? It makes no sense in a nartive point. I’ve read a few good GB novels and none of them on this site. It’s most likley dude to this sites more accepting userbase

For some reason people seem to think that sexual identity would carry over to the new body. I for one disagree and think that each body is biologically unique and would have their own sexual identity whether hetero or not. So yeah I agree, too much Girls Love. Not saying I don't like it sometimes but it dominates the Gender Bender market. Although considering how angry some reader's got when they realized that my MC was bisexual in her new body I guess some readers are extremely hostile to any sexual/romance content between a male and female if the MC was originally a male. Which seems kind of closed minded to me but whatever.

 

[sereminar]

The whole premise of this thread is ridiculous, you can just do the math and it's less that 18% on this site, I wouldn't call that "almost every story".

 

[Jemini]

I highly doubt it's a sexist thing (as it seems that you're implying). I hate gender-benders in general, and I despise the "male forced to be hot, gorgeous female" trope as much as you do (if not more). However, that's just where people follow. We can't do much about it. If I write something about a zombie apocalypse, but what's considered trending is fantasy, it's probably going to be less popular than fantasy. Yeah, sure, I might hate fantasy, and I prefer reading and writing sci-fi, but I can't change the fact that the majority don't think like me.

So, I get you. I do. But we can't control a majority's trends unless we have a large platform, and even that can be difficult to do.

Yep, you just 100% called it right here. It's just a matter of following the trends. Within the fantasy Isekai genre, readers are more likely to read a male-to-female gender bender than they are to read a story with a straight up female protagonist. Simple as that.

That's more or less the reason my story is a male-to-female gender bender. I more or less just wanted a story with a female protagonist, but decided to go the gender bender route instead just because that's what sells. I went ahead and gave her the most masculine female job there is too. A nurse. Yes, a nurse is freaking masculine. You would know that if you've ever seriously interacted with a nurse. Nurses, male or female, are freaking tough. You don't mess with nurses. All of them are smarter than you, all of them know they are smarter than you, and none of them take bullshit. (Although, since it's a gender bender, she was a male nurse in her last life fighting against gender stereotypes in the other direction.)

In my case though, I took it the step further of analyzing the concept of gender benders by having a main cast of 4 reincarnators. 2 male, 2 female, and 1 male and 1 female of the group were the opposite gender in their previous life. So, that's 1 male-to-male, 1 female-to-female, 1 male-to-female, and 1 female-to-male. It's just because of the trend that I decided to make the male-to-female of this group of 4 that represents all 4 possibilities into the main character of the story. (The idea is to drive in the idea that gender benders happen because reincarnation holds no guarantee that you will be the same gender in your next life. So, you have a 50% chance of being born the opposite gender.)

 

[PieCoNsUmEr]

The whole premise of this thread is ridiculous, you can just do the math and it's less that 18% on this site, I wouldn't call that "almost every story".

I’m specifying isekia with a female protagonist (even more so if it include action), you are right about the statistics. At the time of making the original post, and still somewhat now a lot of the actively updated fantasy isekia adventures with a female protagonist were gender benders if you really think it’s that bad, I can make a poll to change the title.