Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) stereotypes are conventional, formulaic generalizations, opinions, or images about persons based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Stereotypes may be learned through personal experience or indirect means; parents, teachers, peers or the mass media,^[1] though lack of first hand experience tends to lead to more reliance on stereotypes.^[2] Negative stereotyping is often a result of homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia.^[3] Positive stereotypes, or 'countertypes,' also exist but may be no less harmful, as they are still oversimplified views of the group being stereotyped.^[4][5]

Male homosexuality

Prevalent stereotypes about male homosexuals are they are licentious, have substance abuse problems and have trouble staying in committed relationships.^{[citation needed]} Another prominent misconception is that gay men are always easy to identify with the effeminate image, and speaking with a gay lisp.^{[citation needed]} The overwhelming majority of gay men are indistinguishable from heterosexual men.^[6]

Female homosexuality

Lesbians are female homosexuals who are also subjected to the stereotypes and misconceptions of whom they are, and how they dress and behave. Typically , they are thought to be "Butch", with short haircuts and work boots. Ordinary lesbians are generally more difficult to identify in the general female population than the males are. Lesbian who dress more like men or "dykes", a pejoriative term, are thought to making a stong statement of their place in today's society. Portia de Rossi has made some progress in dispelling the general misconception of how a lesbian "should" look and function. Some lesbians have chosen to embrace the designation of "dykes", which serves to take the onus of the term

Transgenderism

Transgender is an umbrella term that encompasses a wide range of people with more specific identities, someone who identifies with a gender other than the biological one. There are vast differences in the people that may be generalized "under this umbrella"that are transsexual people, cross-dressers, drag queens, drag kings, masculine women, and effeminate men. In a broad sense, the term "transgender" includes all people who fall outside of gender stereotypes.^[7] The beliefs that transgendered people are all prostitutes and caricatures of men and women are two of many misconceptions.^[8]

Transsexualism

A Transexual is a person born with the physical characteristics of one gender and psychologically and emotionally feel they belong to the opposite sex, it other words they believe were born into the wrong body. It is a painful and confusing phenonomena, especially to those afflicted with transsexuality and their parents, much less society.

Stereotyping Transsexual women as tall and that transsexual men are short is a popular . misapprehension. le many MTFs and FTMs conform to this stereotype, it is by no means universal.^[9]

Tranvestites

Transvestites are often assumed to be homosexual. However, most transvestites are heterosexual.^[10] Transvestism tends to have a fetishistic component whereas cross-dressing does not, although many people use the words interchangeably.^[11]

In the media

A 1983 research study of 1,968 Asian and European students found that most found most European respondents think that their cultural values were negatively influenced by media content produced in the United States. Europeans also thought that US media influenced other cultures less than their own. The already-liberal media in countries like France, Spain, and the United Kingdom probably leaves them feeling less affected by American portrayals of homosexuality than other countries.^{[citation needed]} (The research did not attempt to find direct evidence of influence, relying only on the indirect evidence of popular perception.)^[12][13]