philosoraptor42

The Guardian review had this to say:

Yet each nation has a certain type of people, a favoured race different from the rest, people with the Jedi-like power to control or "bend" the elements. Firebenders. Earthbenders. Waterbenders. And airbenders. At the cinema showing I attended, the British crowd reacted derisively at key dialogue moments. One wise old lady says solemnly to a young man: "I could tell at once that you were a bender, and that you would realise your destiny." One character tells another wonderingly: "There are some really powerful benders in the Northern Water Zone." Another whispers tensely: "We want to minimise their bender sources." A key figure is taken away by brutal soldiers, one of whom shouts cruelly: "It's a bender."And so on, for almost two hours. Each time, the response from the auditorium was deafeningly immature, and brought many of us to a state of nervous collapse.

Filmdrunk was, apparently, very confused by this. He needed the following explanation from The Economist:

“Bender”, of course, is a crude British pejorative for “homosexual”.

So seriously, "bender" doesn't refer to gay people in the US? I could have sworn that Americans recognised the distinction between "bent" and "straight". What about "poof" or "queer"?

Well, at least that explains why no one ever seems to notice this connotation in Futurama (particularly when they introduced Bender's wrestling persona). Though I'm sure my fellow Brits cause similar confusion when they start asking each other for fags: