What Makes a Stereotype

What are the stereotypes around gay-oriented males?  Femininity?  A predisposition with fashion and style?  A dislike of manly things like cars, football, or hunting?  Involved in the arts -- particularly performing arts like acting, singing, and the like?  A tendency toward depression and/or suicidal thoughts?

Why are these stereotypes in place?  I'm not really sure, but I have some guesses.  First, I've seen numbers suggesting that a healthy percent of males are gay-oriented, but many of them don't express it to others.  You could say they are "in the closet," but I don't think that adequately expresses their position.  They won't necessarily identify as "closeted gay" at all, but rather that they are attracted to males, yet choose to be straight.  Please don't confuse me.  They don't choose their orientation.  That may not be changeable at all.  Rather, they choose a different identity for themselves.  Someone with incredible talent on the football field can choose to be a non-athlete if they want.  That doesn't affect their inborn strengths, but simply their desires to identify themselves differently.

People who are heavily involved in the performing arts, however, usually need to express a level of vulnerability and sincerity when they perform that makes such chosen identities harder to pull off.  In fact, it may seem dishonest to them to identify themselves as anything but gay.   So, among those who publicly identify as gay, a disproportionately high percentage are involved in performing arts.  Similarly, if there is a mental challenge involved like clinical depression or anxiety, the reflections used in most therapies are likely to make it difficult to identify as something other than gay, especially when their orientation has become entangled with the mental condition.  That would create a disproportionate number of depressed and possibly suicidal people among the gay population.

Not only that, but "gay" and "transgendered" have been confused so often that many traits of one are assumed to be part of the other.

Again, I'm not really sure about these, but I think they would explain many of the stereotypes that persist about gay-oriented males.  In truth, I don't believe in these stereotypes.  I think they are there due to sample bias and misunderstandings, and the real population of gay-oriented males will show no greater propensity for sports, effeminate behavior, the arts, etc. than the population in general.

But I freely admit that I may be wrong.  It's just so hard to get a good representative sample when so many people with gay orientations don't even identify as gay.