Viewer Gender Confusion/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Viewer Gender Confusion in Live-Action TV include:

  • Data's cat Spot from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Spot was always referred to using male pronouns. Then Spot got pregnant. She later gave birth to a healthy litter—despite being de-evolved into a lizardlike creature at the moment (It Makes Sense in Context) (well, not really, but whatever).
    • Of course, Spot also changes breeds a few times, so changing gender was probably all in a day's work.
      • One fan theory is that Data had multiple cats over the years and Data being Data, named them all Spot.
  • Grace Polk from Joan of Arcadia, although it was addressed in the first episode when the character got mistaken for a "very rude boy" by another character.
  • George from the British kids TV show Rainbow. Despite being pink with long eyelashes, having an effeminate voice and being the girly one of the group ("ooh, you are naughty!"), the character was male. The name should have been a clue, but the hugely popular kiddie book series The Famous Five did feature a girl called George, as does the Nancy Drew series...
  • iCarly: In-show example in iWin A Date. While Spencer was looking at the emails sent to him by ladies from whynotdateme.com, he remarks that the most recent email sender is 'kinda pretty'. Carly then points out to him that she's really a dude.
  • Snoop from The Wire confused a lot of viewers. She dresses exactly like the men, hides her braided hair under baseball caps, makes suggestive comments about other women, has a very gravely voice, and generally makes her way as a stone killer in a man's world. The only time she wears feminine clothes in the entire series, she's also wearing a face-convering motorcycle helmet on a drive-by shooting. Marlo's first words to her are, "Your turn, girl", however, so the series is never trying to deliberately confuse the audience.
  • Alpha Centauri, in the classic series Doctor Who serial "The Curse of Peladon" (and "The Monster of Peladon", its sequel). A bit different, given its not even vaguely human. But both stories generally depict it as being female.... it doesn't help that the voice and body mannerisms are all very definitely feminine.... when, in actual fact, its an "it" (it has no specific gender). Further viewer confusion is gained by nearly every character refering to it as either "he" or "him", despite the visual and aural indicators being for the opposite.
  • Trippitaka from Monkey. She's played by a very pretty Japanese actress, has a pretty female voice in the English dub, and basically apears in every way to be a female, However, all the other characters refer to her as a "Him", and on the reare occasions when she sins (she IS a Budhist monk) she comes on to women. It's not even like, "Is that a girl? Is it a boy?" It's more like "That's a woman! but everyone's calling her a man for some reason.
    • Actually, that was done deliberately. It's less genderbending and more to display the gender neutrality of Buddha. The character is male, and played by a female actress.
    • Random, utterly pointless, note. Did anyone else read "That's a woman!" in Simmons' voice?
  • Though it's quickly apparent if you watch the show, many people who hear of Angel assume it stars a woman, thanks to his Gender Blender Name. (The show Dark Angel probably didn't help.) Lampshaded by Cordelia in Season 2 when She says "She could have been Angel because its kind of a Girly name"
    • He's also a vampire, just to make the name more confusing.
      • Though this is on purpose he is quite deliberately the demon with the face of an angel.
      • The funny thing about "Angel" being a Gender Blender name for a man is that all the angels mentioned as having any sort of gender in The Bible are male.
      • Also Angel (pronounced "ON-hel") is a fairly common men's name in Spanish-speaking cultures.
  • The title character of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo was female—people tend to mistakenly refer to her as a "he" (then again, Skippy is nowadays primarily known through Popcultural Osmosis). Major clue that Skippy is a girl: she has a pouch.
  • Uni Sax from Super Hero Christmas. Even in the illustrations that accompanied the credits, she could be either or. Then again, this is largely justified, considering her goal was to make everyone look and seem the same, which includes having nothing to define who or what you are.
  • Big Bird from Sesame Street.
    • For the record, he's voiced by a man...who has the first name of "Caroll".
  • This is the whole entire point of the "Man or Woman?" episodes in Maury.
  • Coach Bieste from Glee. Many viewers believed, or still believe, she is played by a male actor. (She is, in fact, played by Dot Jones.)
    • And then there's Kurt. The combination of his very high-pitched voice, Camp Gay mannerisms, elaborate outfits, and Bishonen, sometimes outright feminine appearance make it easy to mistake him for a girl at first, or at least a Bifauxnen. The actor's going through puberty helped to alleviate this... somewhat.
  • Pat, anyone?!
  • Perry in "Kevin and Perry" is played by a woman.