Sexual stereotyping

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Sexual stereotyping is a type of stereotype in which people are associated with a certain sexual orientation extrapolated from matters not necessarily or directly related to sex or sexual behavior, but that usually have some known and accustomed pattern in the general scope of the society, its customs, societal norms, and standards of conformity. A sexual stereotype, whether its assertion happens to be true or false, usually does not follow logically valid deductive reasoning, and is often a syllogistic fallacy.^{[verification needed]} Sexual seterotyping stems from ignorance, lack of exposure to what one is not used to, lack of being informed, and even intolerance.

Sexual stereotyping largely targets LBGT, especially homosexuality, as the inferred sexual orientation. Due to current trends in homophobia, many, many diverse and different things provoke stereotypes of being gay or homosexual. Clothing is one of the biggest targets of homosexual stereotyping^{[citation needed]}, and in various societies, people who dress in nonconformist ways, or even don't follow accepted fashion trends, are labelled as gay (even when that clothing may not suggest anything in particular related to sex). Many who hold universally dichotomous assumptions of sexuality, particularly that "everyone must be gay or straight" or "if you're not straight, you must be gay," categorize/equate certain (often minority) sexual stances as being gay, when in actuality, it might not fit in either category. An interesting self-contrading example is how asexuals and antisexuals are assumed to be homosexual, when in fact those two categories are mutually exclusive by definition.

When AIDS was first discovered in the U.S., it was discovered in gay males, and for a time the belief was held that AIDS could only be a result of being gay; thus the poor sufferers of this fatal disorder were falsely implicated and persecuted, to make their misery worse. Many atrocities happened to sufferers of AIDS during that time, including house-egging and vandalism of property.^{[citation needed]}

In a somewhat different way, sexual stereotyping is often targeted against advocators of certain political viewpoints on topics such as marriage rights, often implicating them to exist under the category they advocate. In modern homophobic times, liberal people who advocate gay rights are accused and/or implicated by (often conservative) dissentors, for being gay themselves. This can be used by gay-rights opponents to humiliate, personally attack, repress, or discourage the proponent viewpoint by fear of stigmatization; and can be a form of ignorance to the possibility of tolerance (by the false assumption that it is impossible for anyone to respect others' differences) (see misanthropy, cynicism).