http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SecondLawOfGenderBending

"Any character, after being gender bent, will come to enjoy their new gender more than their old gender."

A fictional character that gets his or her gender bent often becomes gradually accustomed to life as a new man or woman. Eventually they likely will experience an epiphany: that they are better off in their new gender than they ever were in their old one. This is the Second Law of Gender Bending, where a gender bent person would, if offered a chance to revert to their former gender, turn it down because they have come to enjoy the benefits of the change.

Advertisement:

The epiphany typically takes one of two forms:

A reluctant admission, either because they've changed too much to return to the way things were or are loath to admit the enjoyment they get from their new lifestyle.

A jovial acceptance, where they quickly discover how much fun life is after the gender flip, and they never want to go back.

A specific variation of I Choose to Stay which often results from The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body. May involve Becoming the Mask or Going Native depending upon surrounding circumstances. Can result in Beneath the Mask when the Gender Bender allows a character to reveal a hidden side of their personality. Contrast You Can't Go Home Again for characters who'd like to return to their former gender but realize they've changed too much to make that possible. See the Third Law of Gender Bending, which frequently (but not always) precedes or overlaps with this trope.

Advertisement:

Since the First Law of Gender-Bending ensures that most of these characters are male-to-female, Man, I Feel Like a Woman is frequently a contributing reason for these characters' choice. Though it would take a rather base view of human nature to assume this as someone's primary reason for wanting to keep his/her gender change permanent, many "adult" stories often do make use of the common pornographic cliche that sex is inherently more pleasurable for women even if their authors would rather point to more dignified reasons. Even in those works where the above is not the case, the law likely is as prominent as it is at the behest of the first, as from a Doylist perspective, there are not a lot of other ways of resolving the Gender Bender situation that result in both a Happy Ending and don't violate the First Law of Gender-Bending.

Advertisement:

Often used as an Ending Trope since invoking the second law typically resolves the gender-bent character's Fish out of Water status, though it may not eliminate all Different for Girls moments.

The one Gender Bender plot that usually averts this law is when it occurs due to a "Freaky Friday" Flip.

Of the three laws of gender-bending, this one is the one that's starting to become the least common as awareness of Transgender people becomes more widespread- this trope is increasingly seen as having Unfortunate Implications regarding gender dysphoria and thus it's becoming more prevalent for authors to either have the gender-bent character be transgender but in the closet, or, in rarer cases, never fully come to terms with the process.

See also It's the Journey That Counts. Contrast Gender Bender Angst, though many works have characters experience a mix of both, at different period or at once.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

Inverted twice over in an Excalibur story where the heroes were subjected to a "Freaky Friday" Flip with their enemies the Crazy Gang. Not only was Meggan not very happy with the Knave's male body, the Knave was really unhappy with hers too. (Although given what he said, it may have had more to do with him not being able to control Meggan's shapeshifting ability than the gender issue.)

Fanfic

In Harry Potter and the Mists of Avalon, Harry is turned into a girl by a potion gone wrong. Much later, an antidote to the potion is developed, but by then she has spent so much time as a girl that she chooses not to change back.

Film

Played with in Switch (1991) as the protagonist can't decide whether to be a male or female angel while in Heaven .

. Played with in Some Like It Hot. At first, Gerald doesn't like being Daphne. Dresses are too drafty, he can't hit on women, etc. Eventually, though, he enjoys being female immensely, to the point where the Ho Yay with Osgood is so great that Joe makes him say "I'm a boy," over and over. But hey — Nobody's perfect.

The Hot Chick: Though initially horrified, Clive uses Jessica's body to become a successful crook, and when Jessica tracks him down, Jessica has to trick Clive into getting her body back .

Literature

Live Action TV

In Doctor Who, it's a bit strange. Time Lords can routinely change genders via regeneration, but they also change personalities, which means their feelings towards their old and current selves can change quite dramatically from one incarnation to the next. When a Time Lord only known as "The General" regenerated from man to woman, they didn't seem uncomfortable in their male form but instantly remarked that they much preferred being female once the shift was done. The Doctor too, instantly felt quite pleased when they discovered that they had regenerated from Peter Capaldi to Jodie Whittaker. The Master, whose attitude towards women has always been somewhat disdainful, embraces their new persona Missy with gusto.

Star Trek: Voyager. In "Warlord", would-be planetary dictator Tiernan does a Grand Theft Me on Innocent Flower Girl Kes as he's dying. His followers aren't happy that their fearsome leader is now a cute alien female, but Tiernan finds the change quite useful, and not only because of Kes' psychic powers. He even announces a political marriage to his Puppet King, then strongly implies to his squicked-out wife that he'd be quite interested in a threesome.

Music

The Who song "I'm a Boy " subverts this trope; the narrator can't wait to resume his normal sex role.

Mythology

Possibly Tiresias from Greek Mythology, who spent seven years as a woman (and had children) after killing a mating female snake, then transformed back into a man after killing a male; at very least, one can assume he enjoyed sex better as a woman. Zeus and Hera called upon him to settle an argument over which gender enjoyed it more (as he alone had experienced it from both perspectives), and Tiresias claimed, "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only." (In other words, he was saying a woman enjoys it ten times as much.) By the by, that crack was what got him turned into a Blind Seer. (Specifically, Zeus did not take the answer well and Hera tried to make up for her husband's behavior by giving Tiresias magic powers.)

Tabletop Games

Downplayed in Dragon magazine's "The Ecology of the Sheet Ghoul". The story's Villain Protagonist is a greedy miser who becomes a sheet phantom upon dying, and like any, seeks a human host to transform into a Sheet Ghoul. Eventually, he succeeds by slaying a female thief who tries to rob his house. He's a little irked at first upon finding himself in a woman's body, but then he figures, "Eh, better than nothing" and goes about his business. Being, by that point, an undead monstrosity that no longer had any biological functions (such as a sex drive) probably meant that it didn't make a lot of difference.

Theatre

Played With in John Lyly's Gallathea. After presenting as males for the bulk of the play and falling in love, both Gallathea and Phillida are revealed to each other, and the rest of the characters at the end of the play. Still in love, Venus pities them and declares that one of the maidens (which one is not revealed) will become a man for real so that they can be together.

Video Games

Almost every playable character in Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme ends up feeling this way (the one exception is Stephenie/Stephan, who was also the first female to male transformation in the game- canonically, she goes back to being a woman after the end of her arc and is seen in both her male and female forms in subsequent arcs), and it's even pointed out by the characters responsible in certain paths. Good thing too, since the gender-flipping turns out to be irreversible. A cure is discovered eventually, but by that time none of the characters who were affected by the initial accident are interested in going back to being male.

Xion from Kingdom Hearts is an iffy example. She is physically male or genderless but was treated as female throughout the game. Regardless, she considers herself female even after the reveal. Xion : Now its time for the puppet to play her part. Her anatomy is clearly female at the start of the game and clearly male when she fights Roxas. Given that she is literally created from Sora's memories though, which in the Kingdom Hearts universe affects how you are seen by others, Xion's actual gender is difficult to pin down.

from Kingdom Hearts is an iffy example. Regardless, she considers herself female even after the reveal. Averted in SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy; Terry Bogard doesn't take kindly to his Gender Bender.

Visual Novels

Shouko Aihara from Gakuen Saimin Reido. He is originally a male bully and playboy known as Akira Aihara. As a revenge by the protagonist whom he used to bully, he is hypnotized into crossdressing and receiving breast implants. Though he tries to resist, Akira is then hypnotized again to act more feminine and gets his sexual orientation twisted. Afterwards, he falls in love with the protagonist, changes his name to Shouko, voluntarily takes female hormones offered by the protagonist, and eventually chooses to undergo sex change surgery.

Webcomics

Web Original

Western Animation

Futurama: In "Bend Her", Bender pretends to be "Coilette", a fembot from Robonia note whose national anthem is, according to Bender/Coilette, "Hail, hail, Robonia, a land I didn't make up!" in order to compete in fembots' events in the Robolympics. After winning five gold medals, he finds that sex testing is mandatory, so he has the Professor switch his "testosteroil" with "femmzoil", intending to switch back after the test. Then this trope kicks in. In "Neutopia", a sexless alien first takes away everyone's gender, then when asked to restore them gets everyone backwards. The now-male Leela, Amy, and LaBarbara struggle to save the sinking Planet Express business, while the feminized men have fun being girls and goofing off. When the "guys" force the "girls" to make a swimsuit calendar, they go along with it a lot more happily than the real women did earlier. Despite all this, the men go back to their original sex with zero protests when the opportunity comes up ( except for Scruffy, who came in late ).

In Mary Shelley's Frankenhole, Victor gives himself female genitalia but is extremely hesitant when Elizabeth tries to treat him to stereotypically feminine things. It's subverted slightly when he acts traditionally feminine to date Dracula, but that was only so he could screw him over.

Real Life