Tag: LGBTQ+

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LGBTQ+ Stereotypes Series: A Conclusion

Over the past several months, I have written posts about stereotypes associated with some of the major identities in the LGBTQ+ community; namely, stereotypes associated with identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual.

When I started this series, I planned for it to coincide with a number of big events this calendar year, such as the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in June, but I had no idea quite how much this series would coincide with some other major events related to the LGBTQ+ community. For example, in July, Olympian Caster Semenya, an athlete born with intersex traits, was barred from defending her world title in the 800-meter race;[1] that was part of why my post on intersex stereotypes weighed in on whether Semenya was being unfairly treated. I was also unaware that, before the end of this series, the United States Supreme Court would start yet another term where LGBTQ+ issues were up for consideration. There were probably other things that came up between the beginning of this series and now, but those two developments come to my mind.

If anything, these events show that understanding yet rejecting these stereotypes associated with different groups in the LGBTQ+ community is as important as ever. The rights, livelihoods, and lives of many people in the LGBTQ+ community depend on our rejecting such stereotypes.

Previous Posts in this series:
Introducing a Series on LGBTQ+ Stereotypes
Stereotypes Associated with People with Same-Sex Relationships
Lesbian Stereotypes
Gay Stereotypes
Bisexual Stereotypes
Transgender Stereotypes
Queer Stereotypes
Intersex Stereotypes
Asexual Stereotypes

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2019/07/31/caster-semenya-barred-from-800-world-championships-by-swiss-court/1875957001/

The LGBTQ Pride Flag.
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Asexual Stereotypes

A few months ago, I began a series addressing stereotypes for LGBTQ+ people—talking about people who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, as well as people who are intersex and asexual. This is the next-to-last post in the series, as I will do a wrap-up post next week.

As I am going in order of the acronyms for LGBTQ (or LGBTQIA), it is time for me to discuss stereotypes associated with being asexual. But before going into details about those stereotypes, I should start by talking about what it means to be asexual and stereotypes that I’ve learned (and stereotypes that others should also dismantle) about being asexual.

Asexual people are people who are not sexually attracted to anyone (men or women), and/or have low or no desire for sexual activity. You may hear the term “ace” when hearing talk about asexual people; “ace” is short for “asexual” (and the asexual community is often referred to as the “ace community” or as “aces”).

Now that we’ve talked about what it means to be asexual, here are a few stereotypes associated with being asexual:

  1. Asexual people can’t have sex. This stereotype confuses a lack of sexual desire with the lack of ability to have sex. Just because an asexual person does not have sexual desires does not mean that the person is incapable of having sex.
  2. Asexual people can’t be in romantic relationships, let alone get married. This is a stereotype where asexuality gets confused with another identity: aromantic. To keep things straight and to the point, asexual people lack sexual desires but can have romantic desires that don’t necessarily involve sex, while aromantic people have sexual desires but not necessarily romantic ones. In addition to the confusion between asexuality and aromanticism, this stereotype also breeds the notion that sex needs to be at the center of a deep relationship or a marriage, which need not be the case. Oh, and by the way, if you still have doubts about the ability of an asexual person to be in a romantic relationship or in a marriage, I encourage you to read this Vice article on asexual people who are in very deep romantic relationships.
  3. Asexual people just haven’t found the right person to have sex with yet. If someone is asexual, what this means is that there is nobody who an asexual person will have a deep desire to have sex with. And that is not about an inability to find the right person, but is instead just about a lack of sexual desire.
  4. Asexual people are afraid of sex. Not necessarily—asexual people just lack sexual attraction and/or desire. Lacking the desire to do something is not necessarily the fear of something.

These, of course, are just a few of the harmful stereotypes associated with being asexual. If there are other stereotypes about asexual people that should be discussed and/or if anyone wants to expand upon the intersex stereotypes mentioned here, please feel free to post a comment below!

The Asexual Pride Flag.

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Intersex Stereotypes

As I said a few months ago, I will be doing a series addressing stereotypes for LGBTQ+ people—talking about people who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, as well as people who are intersex and asexual. I look forward to continuing through this series.

As I am going in order of the acronyms for LGBTQ (or LGBTQIA), it is time for me to discuss stereotypes associated with being intersex. But before going into details about those stereotypes, I should start by talking about what it means to be intersex.

Intersex people are people who have variations in sex characteristics (examples: sex hormones, genitals, chromosomes) that do not fit the typical definition of a male or a female body. One example of an intersex person is someone with external genitals that don’t appear to be clearly male or female.[1]

Now that we’ve talked about what it means to be intersex, here are a few stereotypes associated with being intersex:

  1. Only men and women were made; therefore, there are no intersex people. This is a belief most commonly held by conservative Christian churches. My counter to this is science—sometimes there are people who are born with both male and female body characteristics, or body characteristics where it’s not clear if the body is clearly male or female.
  2. Intersex athletes are cheats. For this stereotype, look no further than the treatment of Olympian Caster Semenya. She is ostracized, marginalized, and is just about treated as the equivalent of a cheat for the simple reason that she was born with intersex traits,[2] which in her case means that she was born with an abnormally high level of testosterone. Some have come to her defense and argued that she’s successful because of her skills and not her testosterone, but additionally, athletes should not be punished for the way they were born.
  3. Intersex people must be “made” into a man or a woman. If intersex people want to undergo transition so that they are a man or a woman, that is up to them. However, non-consensual surgery to make an intersex person into something they don’t want to be is harmful mentally, not to mention the fact that such surgeries can be physically harmful if not done properly.
  4. Even if they don’t get surgery to be made into a man or a woman, intersex people must be raised as a man or a woman and behave as a man or a woman. This seems like a product of ideas about gender as a binary—the idea that someone must be clearly a man or a woman. However, intersex people should have the freedom to choose their own path as to whether their gender identity is as a man, as a woman, or as somewhere outside of the gender binary.

These, of course, are just a few of the harmful stereotypes associated with being intersex. If there are other stereotypes about intersex people that should be discussed and/or if anyone wants to expand upon the intersex stereotypes mentioned here, please feel free to post a comment below!

Other posts in my LGBTQ Stereotypes Series:
Introducing a Series on LGBTQ+ Stereotypes
Lesbian Stereotypes
Gay Stereotypes
Bisexual Stereotypes
Transgender Stereotypes
Queer Stereotypes

[1] There are other examples too, aside from the one I mentioned here.

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48120228

The Intersex Pride Flag.

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Queer Stereotypes

As I said a few months ago, I will be doing a series addressing stereotypes for LGBTQ+ people—talking about people who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, as well as people who are intersex and asexual. I look forward to continuing through this series.

As I am going in order of the acronyms for LGBTQ (or LGBTQIA), it is time for me to discuss stereotypes associated with being queer. But before going into details about those stereotypes, I should start by talking about what it means to be queer and stereotypes associated with friends, fellow writers, celebrities and others who are queer.

Let me start by saying that the definition of “queer” is not one that everyone uses in the same way. The term queer has a history of being used in a derogatory way, and depending on the generation you come from, you may still view queer as a derogatory term.[1] However, more recently, queer has turned into a term that is often used to either: a) describe all people who are not heterosexual and/or not cisgender[2] or b) describe non-heterosexual and/or non-cisgender people who feel that other LGBTQ+ terms such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, etc. don’t accurately describe who they are.

Given the multitude of definitions of what it means to be queer, there are many stereotypes associated with being queer. Here are a few such stereotypes:

  1. If you are queer, you must be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or some other identity. Not so. As I said in my previous paragraph, one major reason that some people describe themselves as queer is that terms such as lesbian or transgender may be too limiting to describe themselves and their experiences.
  2. All queer people face the same struggles. Once again, not so. It seems like the people who oftentimes battle the most for inclusion, even within the LGBTQ+ community, are queer people of color and queer people with disabilities. This is truly a case where it is important to understand the concept of intersectionality, where different forms of discrimination overlap, combine, and even intersect, with each other. In the case of queer people of color or queer people with disabilities, for example, it is important to understand how being queer and being disabled can overlap and intersect with each other to result in exclusion among other queer people (for being disabled) or other disabled people (for being queer).
  3. Queer people are confused about their identity. This stereotype comes from the fact that many queer people don’t view themselves as specifically any other identity (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, etc.). Queer does not equal confused. However, people who are uncertain about their gender or sexual identity fit under a different “q” term that is sometimes used in the LGBTQ acronym instead of “queer”: that term is “questioning.”
  4. “But you don’t look queer…” Even though certain “looks” are still associated with being queer, the reality is that there is no single way that someone could possibly “look” queer. Being queer has nothing to do with how one looks.

These, of course, are just a few of the harmful stereotypes associated with being queer. If there are other stereotypes about queer people that should be discussed and/or if anyone wants to expand upon the queer stereotypes mentioned here, please feel free to post a comment below!

Previous posts in my series on LGBTQ+ stereotypes:

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/gay-man-millennial-term-queer-word/story?id=20855582

[2] Cisgender people are people whose gender corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth.

The LGBTQ Pride Flag. Ludovic Bertron from New York City, Usa [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5DThe LGBTQ Pride Flag.
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Transgender Stereotypes

As I said a few months ago, I will be doing a series addressing stereotypes for LGBTQ+ people—talking about people who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, as well as people who are intersex and asexual. I look forward to continuing through this series.

As I am going in order of the acronyms for LGBTQ (or LGBTQIA), it is time for me to discuss stereotypes associated with being transgender. But before going into details about those stereotypes, I should start by talking about what it means to be transgender and stereotypes associated with friends, fellow writers, celebrities and others who are transgender.

The consensus definition is that being transgender means that your gender identity differs from the sex that you were assigned at birth.[1] I should note, though, that not everyone has the exact same definition of the word transgender.

Now that we’ve defined what it means to be transgender, we can start to understand what sort of stereotypes are associated with being transgender. Here are a few such stereotypes:

  1. Transgender people are not “real” men or women. People who are transgender may not be “real men” or “real women” to certain individuals, but separating the real men and women from trans men and women is dehumanizing (as if trans men and trans women are somehow “fake”). Just please avoid categories of realness and fakeness.
  2. Trans women athletes have an unfair advantage. A journalist (I forget for which outlet), when covering the success of a transgender collegiate athlete, said that trans women are forgotten when they fail and delegitimized when they succeed. It is true, though, and I should add that not all trans athletes who transition from the male category to the female category (or vice-versa) succeed.
  3. Transgender people are still fundamentally the same people they were at birth. I can’t begin to emphasize how problematic this sort of attitude is. This is the sort of attitude that leads to deadnaming, which is calling someone by their birth name instead of their new chosen name. It’s also the sort of attitude that leads to deliberate misgendering of transgender people. Having an attitude that leads to deadnaming and misgendering is problematic, because for most transgender people I know, their birth name and previous pronouns are a reminder of a period of life when they tried to live as someone they were not—a great source of pain indeed.
  4. Transgender people are predators. For whatever reason, there is this stereotype among some that transgender people are predators. Because of that stereotype, some states look at, or even pass, laws that keep transgender people from using the bathroom that fits most closely with their own gender identity. In reality, however, the overwhelming majority of trans people just want to use a bathroom they feel comfortable using, without all the harassment and discrimination. Is that too much to ask?
  5. All transgender people have/had gender dysphoria. This was something I used to think and had to unteach myself, by the way. I had to unteach myself—by remembering that gender dysphoria is when someone experiences distress because their biological sex does not match their gender identity.[2] However, many transgender people do not experience discomfort from the fact that their gender doesn’t match with their biological sex, and therefore never had gender dysphoria in spite of being transgender. I would also note that by assuming that all transgender people have/had dysphoria, it promotes an attitude, whether intended or not, that being transgender is a disorder.[3]

This post hopefully covered some of the major stereotypes associated with being transgender. If anyone wants to add to any of my stereotypes, or has stereotypes of your own, feel free to comment below!

Previous posts in my series on LGBTQ+ stereotypes:

[1] This is pretty close to the definition that Merriam-Webster had for transgender: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transgender

[2] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/#targetText=Gender%20dysphoria%20is%20a%20condition,the%20appearance%20of%20the%20genitals.

[3] While doing research for this piece, I found out that gender dysphoria used to be called gender identity disorder. When you connect the term “gender identity disorder” with being transgender, one can see how being transgender was considered a mental illness (not that I defend this, by any means, and in fact it was awful that being transgender was once considered a disorder).