‘Stereotypes about LGBT People in the Belarusian Media’

All people tend to classify other people and events in order to create a clearer structure of their environment. Categorisation can be based on various criteria, such as gender, race, nationality, sexual orientation, social status, and so on. This simplified way of perceiving others leads to the emergence of stereotypes. When someone interacts on the basis of stereotypes, they already assume what to expect from people belonging to a particular group. The reason for the all-encompassing nature of stereotypes is that people have a psychological need to categorise and classify social objects. The real world is too vast, complex, and ever-changing to be perceived directly. People are constantly overloaded with information, facing nuances, differences, coincidences, and complicated combinations in their surroundings. To cope with this, they reconstruct the world into a simpler model, which results in the creation of stereotypes.

However, stereotypes have significant drawbacks. First, they erase the individual characteristics of people belonging to a group, since stereotyping assumes that all members share the same traits. Second, stereotypes repeat and reinforce certain beliefs until people start to accept them as truth. Third, stereotypes are based on half-truths and distortions: while they may contain real features of the group, they also simplify and twist reality, creating inaccurate perceptions of the people we interact with.

In this brochure, we have collected both stereotypical and exemplary publications about LGBT people and complemented them with our own recommendations.

The downloadable version is available in Russian.