Gender Bender

It's ladies versus guys in this fun party game of gender stereotypes. The laughter comes easily when you see your friends act out Gender Bender phrases.

Play it at a couples' party or for any group where there's a good mixture of men as women.

• Gender Bender: How to Play
• Gender Bender: The Printable Game
• Make Your Own Version of Gender Bender
• More Home Party Games

How To Play

There are a couple of ways to play, you can play without a card set, thinking up your own words, but with a card set, play goes more quickly and may be more fair (because hard and easy words are equally distributed in the deck).

In both versions of gender bender, men and women are on opposite teams. Each team takes turns with one member acting out the phrase that is stereotypically male or female. Just as in charades, players cannot utter a word.

Team members get 60 seconds to act out the expression. The team of the person who guesses correctly gets the points. But, there's an additional twist that makes it a real gender bender, so read on...

Gender Bender: The Printable Party Game

Gender Bender is game you can print and play right away. With ready-made cards, play is smoother, faster, a little more fair (luck of the draw) than creating a battle of the sexes charades game on your own.

Play begins with the females (ladies first). Cards are laid face down. A player draws a card. Each card contains a phrase that is stereotypically male or female. In addition, the card has either a male symbol with blue coloring or a female symbol with pink coloring.

As in charades, the player acts out the phrase without giving any verbal cues. Players from either team may attempt to guess the phrase on the card.

The team gains one point for guessing the phrase correctly and a bonus point if the phrase is guessed by a member of the same sex as the symbol on the card.

For example, if the card phrase is feminine such as the phrase: "Wedding Dress", the symbol will be the opposite: the blue male symbol.

If a male team member guesses this clue before a female guesses correctly, his team gets 2 points: 1 point for guessing correctly and 1 bonus point because the male symbol was on the card. If the word were guessed correctly by a female team member first, then only 1 point would be earned since the symbol on the card was a male symbol. If no one guesses correctly neither team gets points.

A player from each team has 60 seconds to act out the phrase on the card. After a member of the female team plays, a member of the male team takes his turn, then back to the female team and so forth.

Short play: the first team to earn 25 points wins the game. Long play: act out all 120 cards.

NOTE: there are an equal number of cards for males and females on each sheet. To play a shorter game, you'll want a fewer number of cards. To do this, select fewer pages before separating the cards so that male and female cards will be distributed evenly.

Alternately, if you plan on playing out the whole deck, simply shuffle the deck.

Our printable party game makes gender bender lively and easy to play. And at $6.99, it's a steal!

Spoiler Alert: If you also want to participate in this game, you don't want to see the cards before playing. Without looking at the other pages in the document, you'll print pages 4-13 on Avery 8371 perforated business card stock. You can select only a certain number of pages to be printed in the print dialogue box. Turn the cards over without looking at them, and separate them from the back side.

Make Your Own Version of a Gender Bender Game

Here's a version of gender bender if you play without cards. Have one member from the girls' team think of a phrase that's stereotypically female: for example, training bra, premenstrual stress syndrome, hen party games. She can whisper it, or write the phrase down on a slip of paper, and pass it to one of the men's team. He will go first.

Everyone except the person who came up with the phrase gets to guess what the phrase is.

If the females correctly guess the answer, they get one point. If the males correctly guess, they get 2. If no one guesses within a minute, too bad! No points are awarded.

Play is reversed for the women. To keep track of whose turn it is, you could then have the man who just acted out a phrase think of a stereotypically male phrase for the women. He'll then tell his phrase to the women's team member who just gave him a phrase to act out.

Continue taking turns until every person has both come up with a phrase and acted out a phrase, or until a certain number of points has been reached.

Return from Gender Bender Party Game to Printable Party Games.