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How did gay stereotypes get started?

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by tommycee, Sep 2, 2014.

  1. tommycee

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    I'm just kinda curious how all these stereotypes got started. Not all gays talk with a lisp or have limp wrists or are obsessed with fashion and glitter. I just don't get how it got started.
     
  2. Because people are assholes who assume that all gay men are feminine and all lesbians are masculine.
     
  3. Browncoat

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    There are indeed people that fit the stereotypes (not a bad thing) - as such, they stand out and people can always point to them and say "aha, that person is gay!" (even though they're not always gay...). So they begin to assume, since they can't spot the ones that blend in personality-wise, that all gay individuals must also be like that.
     
  4. stocking

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    This :thumbsup:
     
  5. Nychthemeron

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    I think, for some reason, people think a relationship must have a man and a woman, and since women are stereotypically flamboyant and sparkly and all, all gay men, too, are flamboyant and sparkly.

    Which, by the way, still makes no sense, because if all gay men are flamboyant and sparkly and "reminiscent of a woman", where are all "the men in the relationships"?

    The opposite applies to gay women.

    It's a shit ton of hogwash.
     
  6. Wuggums47

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    Stereotypes are about equal parts aggression and ignorance. Ignorance comes from a refusal to learn, but where does aggression come from? There are different theories, but I think it's evolution. Without aggression animals wouldn't be able to hunt other animals and fight off predators easily. So the more aggressive animals passed their DNA on to us. Now it's pretty much useless, the more aggressive people have a disadvantage in most social interactions. We have it for the same reason we have vestigial body parts though, it was necessary at one time, but evolution hasn't discarded it yet.
     
  7. PurpleGrey

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    Because when Joe Schmo thinks about sex, as many ignorant people jump to, the receiving partner is the girl. Because that's how "normal" sex works. Joe Schmo typically thinks about receiving partners, thus Joe Schmo automatically sees a "girl" partner. And, as my mother puts it, "gay men are an offensive caricature of women". By that, she means offensive to women.
     
  8. joshy the queen

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    i fit in the stereotype zone being called the silly queen million times but i didnt even know when did i start being myself anyway i learned to act how i love and want to act not how people act nor do i act how people want me to act
    i always blame the media though people are learning from tv without knowing they control us from tv sometimes thoughts really get to people minds from some shows and trust me they get stuck there forever so if the media show the stereotypes then to them we are all like that !
    another reason is because as far as i know masc guys dont always have the courage to come out they keep thinking they are straight and they want to be one of the cool guys not one of the gay guys i know personally some who are exactly like that
    and as for girls people always had assumed that a lady (who is the girly femme one) needs a man in her life to make her complete weather she like it or not
    i disagree 100%
     
  9. the haunted

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    I think there's at least two ways they got started:

    1. People assume that if you like women, you must want to be a man and act masculine. If you like men, you must want to be a woman and act feminine. We all know this is obviously not true, but [dumb] people get so uncomfortable with masculine-masculine and feminine-feminine couples. To them, someone has to be "the man" and someone has to be "the woman". Though I think we are making great progress, society has imposed these ridiculous gender roles on us. Same-sex couples make heteronormative society lose its shit sometimes.

    2. I know it can be hard to hear, but people in the LG community really do feed these stereotypes sometimes. Not on purpose, but it just happens. Certainly not all, but a lot of lesbian women are indeed masculine and a lot of gay men are feminine. There's a reason why they're stereotypes. Being a masculine lesbian and a feminine gay man isn't a problem. The problem is when people assume we are all like that. Nobody thinks anything of a masculine man, but they will notice if a man is more in touch with his feminine side. Then they find out that he's gay and that's how stereotypes get started. They just don't realize when the masculine men are gay because they seem so "typical".

    People don't usually peg me as a lesbian right away because of my long hair and makeup, but I do fit a ton of stereotypes. Go figure lol.
     
  10. Ticklish Fish

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    which kind of stereotype? there's the fem one, there's the fit masculine gay one, there's the drama queen one, the artsy one, and other ones?
     
  11. resu

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    This is my theory. For many years/decades, it was largely the fashion and performing arts industries where some gay men could be semi-closeted. You had people like Liberace, Elton John, or others who are what most people visualized as gay. I'm not sure where the lisp came from; though, Truman Capote had a strong lisp. Many of these early celebrities were flamboyant, and it didn't help that the media caricatures of gay men were the same.

    One example is Three's Company, a hit US TV show in the 80s where one of the running plots is a guy pretending he's gay to stay in an apartment with two women. In the UK, you had someone like the character Mr. Humphries in Are You Being Served? who played an effeminate man in a clothing store.

    In general these stereotypes were just a crude way to box gay men such that they were sufficiently different (=queer) from straight men. Sadly, it is our human nature to generalize and judge, which these stereotypes represent an extreme.
     
  12. CyanChachki

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    Stereotypes begin with an outside look coming from others who don't belong to that group or race. For LGBTQ people, the main stereotypes are that lesbians are butch and gays are flamboyant because some of them are and I believe that a lot of that stuff has been portrayed on TV a lot as well. Because of that, some people just base it on what they know and go with it because it's easier than trying to figure it all out. I believe though, that it would be up to us to make others aware that the stereotypes they know aren't always how a lesbian or gay acts, that we're just like everyone else. As for my community, if you saw any of them walking down the street you wouldn't even guess. There are times where I'd have a very small question in my head asking myself if they where LGBTQ but you never know who is and who isn't and that's what these people need to learn.
     
  13. One Man Army

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    Could it also be possible that, in the past, gay men and women had to conform to certain stereotyped so that they'd be noticed by other gay men/women, but not by the authorities? Homosexuality was a crime here in the UK until fairly recently, so perhaps some of the gay stereotypes are based on the way that gay men and women had to act to signal that they were gay, without facing the risk of prosecution?

    This is just an idea, and I could be talking a load of crap.
     
  14. jahow95

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    1) Because gay men are on average more feminine than straight men - please note that I said on average, I recognise that the full spectrum of human personality is included in the gay community

    2) Because the only gay men whom one could reasonably guess as being gay are the effeminate ones, to the straight population the only gay men they see are effeminate, flamboyant, 'obvious', gays, propagating the stereotype.

    The same but vice versa for gay women.
     
    #14 jahow95, Sep 3, 2014
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2014
  15. Cap’nSerious

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    because that's the only type displayed in media
     
  16. Lipstick Leuger

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    That is what my guess would be. I know it was rather secretive. I was a Psychological disease until 1979 or so here in the US so I feel ya. In the Stonewall years(the reason we have Pride)women either had to be Femme and dress as a girly girl or Butch and dress as a masculine person. If you were neither, you were probably an undercover cop and it was illegal to be gay So everyone cleaned up their acts and avoided hitting on that person. I think that is the root of the stereotypes in general.
     
  17. Hexagon

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    Because being attracted to men is interpreted as femininity.
    Femininity is assumed to be expressed through certain behaviours.
    Men who are attracted to men are assumed to have certain behaviours.