Gender Nonconforming Equals Gay

Look at that tan, well-tinted skin
Look at the killer shape he's in
Look at that slightly stubbly chin
Oh please, he's gay, totally gay!

— Legally Blonde, "There! Right There!"

Gender nonconformity is stereotyped as a sign of homosexuality or any kind of deviation from "heterosexual" norms. How this manifests will depend on the gender of the character in question, as well as the society they've grown up in. This may relate to either the culture in which the work was made or the world-building of a supernatural universe.

However, in primarily Western contexts, common ways to spot gay (or bisexual) men may include a love of theatre or other traditionally "cultural" pursuits, a dislike of hunting and/or violence of any sort, especially when contrasted with a preference for female and/or feminine things. In terms of personality traits, it may encompass cowardice and/or softness, ease towards crying, preferring the company of women solely as friends, being a Momma's Boy, either an unusual level of promiscuity or a reluctance towards sex and/or lack of aggressiveness, and, unfortunately, sexual perversion.

Common appearances for women include any Tomboy tropes, especially Boyish Short Hair, looking like a "man", and being bigger or more physically imposing than other women. Personality traits may include a love for sports, generally being more masculine, being One of the Boys or not liking men, even as friends or acquaintances, being an Action Girl (because Women Are Delicate), apparently preferring less traditional men/so-called "pretty boys", and/or an aversion towards sex or sexuality.

As a result, Camp Gay (for men) is a subtrope, while Butch Lesbian is the female equivalent.

However, any behavior that is stereotyped outside of gender norms in the specific story counts, including being trans. While this trope may be more obvious in a Butch Lesbian or a Camp Gay character, it equally applies to the Lipstick Lesbian, Straight Gay, and Armoured Closet Gay character, where it may be more obvious due to being foreshadowing for The Reveal.

Contrast Camp Straight, which is often based on the same principle but applies to straight characters. This is often what leads to people being Mistaken for Gay, though this is for so-called "straight" examples — where the character isn't straight and this is treated as foreshadowing, and/or when the sexuality of the character is not explicitly confirmed. As such, no real-life examples, please!

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Boy's Abyss has Gen Minegishi, who initially appears as a very macho bully for the first half of the story but secretly likes women's clothing and makeup and is equal parts admiring and jealous of femininity. He's also deeply in love with his former friend-turned bully victim, Reiji Kurose, and is the only explicitly gay character in the story.
• Inverted in I Think Our Son Is Gay: Akiyoshi has a very stereotyped view of gay people, so when he hears that one of his wife Tomoko's coworkers has come out, he assumes the man will start to cross-dress at work. He doesn't mean it maliciously but Tomoko gently encourages him to broaden his mind a little. (The coworker in question is Straight Gay, for reference)
• Rurouni Kenshin: Honjou Kamatari is a crossdressing gay man whom Misao initially mistakes for a cisgender woman (he flashes her by way of correction). His given name is a pun on "kama", meaning his preferred weapon of a chain-scythe, and "okama", a Japanese slang term for crossdressing gay men. He's the only confirmed queer character in the series.

Comic Books

• Played with in the early years of Runaways, where rumors circulated among the fans that one of the characters would turn out to be gay, and a significant number of fans figured that it would be Gert, as she was overweight, had dyed purple hair, dressed tomboyishly, and seemed disinterested in sex. It later turned out that the lesbian was Karolina, the team's most conventionally pretty and feminine member, and Gert ended up being the team's only explicitly heterosexual girl. Ironically, for the TV adaptation, Gert was played by Ariela Barer, who is a lesbian in real life.

Fan Works

• The Legend of Zelda: In Their Bond, Malon was able to tell that Link was gay due to his knowledge of fashion.
• Harry Potter: In Girls with Short Hair Who Play Quidditch, Ginny gets a pixie cut, prompting rumors about her sexuality — apparently, in wizarding Britain, "you know what they say about girls with short hair who play Quidditch." It's true, at least in this case — she ends up with Luna Lovegood.

Film — Live-Action

• Bend It Like Beckham: Jules' mother is already concerned about her tomboyish teenage daughter's love for football, and wishes she would be into things like boys and clothes. She believes wholeheartedly in the Lesbian Jock trope, asserting that "there's a reason Sporty Spice is the only one of them without a fella!" When she overhears Jules arguing with a female teammate, Jess, about love, she assumes they were in a relationship and are breaking up. In reality, they're arguing over their mutual feelings for their (male) coach, Joe. Hilarity Ensues as Paula spends much of the second act misinterpreting everything her daughter says and does to mean she's a lesbian, and trying desperately to come to terms with that. When Jules finds out, she's annoyed.
  Paula: I saw you with my own eyes! You were kissing after your match!^note On the cheek, in excitement, after speaking with a talent scout for an American college. I'm not stupid, you know! And anyway, look at the clothes you wear!
  Jules: Mother, just because I wear trackies and play sports does not make me a lesbian. Me and Jess were fighting because we both fancy our coach... Joe.
  Paula: (Beat) Joe, a man, Joe?
  Jules: Yeah, as in male, Joe! Joe, our coach, Joe, man, Joe! (Beat) Anyway being a lesbian's not that big a deal.
  Paula: (wiping her eyes) Oh no, of course not sweetheart, no. I've got nothing against it. I was cheering for Martina Navratilova as much as the next person!
• But I'm a Cheerleader: The 'ungaying' process by the Anti-Gay Camp True Directions invokes this trope by focusing mainly on trying to get the characters to fulfill traditional gender roles. This is especially mystifying for Megan, who is femme but gay and Jan, who is butch but straight. Similarly, Dolph, a varsity wrestler, is pretty 'masculine' to begin with but somehow the camp seems to suggest that by becoming even more masculine, he'll magically stop being gay.
• Clueless: Christian's tendency to dress stylishly is cited as clear proof of his homosexuality.
• High Tension: Marie has Boyish Short Hair and is teased by her best friend, Alex, for apparently being "shy" with the opposite sex, or "scared" of them. The Tomato in the Mirror ending reveals that Marie is a Psycho Lesbian who is romantically and sexually obsessed with Alex.
• In & Out: Downplayed. Howard Brackett has a few gender-nonconforming qualities, such as a love of literature, dancing, and Barbra Streisand. But other than these, the audience (and Howard himself) are led to believe he has just been Mistaken for Gay, even emphasized in the trailers... until Howard gets kissed by Peter and realizes, at the altar to be married to a woman, that he is, in fact, gay. Subverted with Peter, who is Manly Gay, and Aldo the hairdresser, who has equally strong opinions about Streisand but appears to be straight.
• I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry: A minor subplot of the film is Larry being worried that his ten-year-old son Eric may be gay since he's more interested in theater and would rather tap dance and sing than play baseball, much to Larry's chagrin.
• Legally Blonde: The trait that makes Elle clock that Enrique is gay is that he recognizes designer shoe brands. This is confirmed when Emmet causes him the Freudian Slip his boyfriend's name on the stand, calling his testimony into question. (Sadly No Bisexuals applies.)
• Ready? OK!: One of the protagonists is a little boy who plays with dolls and desperately wants to be a cheerleader. At one point he also dresses like one of his heroes from history who just happens to be female, in a dress sewn by his gay neighbor. It is strongly implied that the boy is gay.

Literature

• Origami Yoda: Discussed. At one point, the kids wonder if Murky is gay due to his tendency to wear pink shirts and the fact that his signature finger puppet is of Padmé Amidala (a female character). Ultimately, it is left unknown if he is actually gay.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Tim Linton is an openly gay upperclassman who alternates between wearing the standard men's school uniform and dressing in drag for his own amusement. However, he's the only queer character in the series to whom this applies: Pete Reston is a Sex Shifter who prefers to present as masculine, Carlos Whitrow dresses androgynously and is nonbinary, and Leoncio Echevalria is aggressively Straight Gay.
• She Who Became The Sun: Discussed. Wang Baoxiang's preference for fine robes and perfume is seen as contemptibly unmanly in the Mongol court, causing a steady stream of homophobic abuse. It's one of many reasons he's bent on Revenge against the dynasty.

Live-Action TV

• Played with in Euphoria. Nate and his father Cal are portrayed as typically masculine men with very strict views on gender expression. However, Nate is shown wearing a pink shirt, which the costume designer described as reflecting his more uncertain sexuality. Both Cal and Nate are sexually interested in trans girl Jules, with Cal outwardly showing that he's bisexual in Season 2.
• Giri/Haji: Takei is berated by her mother and grandmother for stabbing a boy with scissors when he tried to kiss/grope her, saying that it shows a lack of decorum and unfemininity. When she runs away to London, she comes out to Rodney and Kenzo, and becomes infatuated with Rodney's friend Annie.
• Girls: Overlapping with N-Word Privileges, Elijah points out to Hannah that her (married) father has "gay" interests early in Season 1 and bluntly tells her that he is gay, which he can tell from the fact he has an earring. In Season 4, he officially comes out as gay.
  Hannah: In what way does my father read gay to you?
  Elijah: Uh, well, he has a stud in his ear.
  Hannah: He got it on a trip he took with a bunch of his male friends.
• Glee:
  • Shannon Beiste is often assumed to be gay, with her typical 'butch' appearance and the fact that she's a gym teacher. Though she only shows romantic interest in men, she comes out as trans.
  • Burt Hummel always knew his son Kurt was gay; for his third birthday, he wanted "sensible heels."
• Veronica Mars: Played with.
  • It's taken for a fact that two kids — one openly gay, one uncertain about his sexuality but treated by all as if he were "really" gay — should have no interest in sports, which is a clue that they were really at the baseball field to confront their abuser Woody Goodman, which also has some Rape and Switch implications.
  • Veronica thinks Woody's other victim Cassidy Casablancas is gay and outright says this to him in their confrontation. She thinks that he wasn't able to have sex with Mac but he was able to rape the unconscious Veronica because he could "imagine whatever he needed to." He's also shown to be much less interested in sex and to be withdrawn and shy, and is constantly teased for his lack of interest in girls.
  • However, Mr. Wu lampshades and subverts this trope when Veronica accuses him of having a Teacher/Student Romance with Peter (the gay kid who has since died).
    Mr Wu: Veronica, I think when you get out in the world a little more, you'll discover that not all well-dressed, articulate, detail-oriented men are gay. Many of them are just... Asian.

Theatre

• Legally Blonde: Lends the page quote. Discussed and toned down a bit from the original. Elle suspects Nikos is gay when he doesn't react to her Bend & Snap, which has a 99% effective rate on straight men (and lesbian women, if Enid's reaction is any indication). When Warner points out they can't build a legal strategy on the Bend & Snap alone, Elle points out all of the signs of gender nonconformity he displays, such as his silk shirts and waxed chest. Callahan and Vivian point out that his gender nonconformity might simply be because he's European, which has different standards for masculinity. After an entire song debating the issue, the trope ends up getting played straight when Emmet gets Nikos to Freudian Slip his boyfriend's name on the stand.

Web Animation

• Helluva Boss: Moxxie has several stereotypically feminine hobbies, loves musical theater, is an avid crossdresser and has a fairly submissive personality especially when compared to his wife Millie. So it's not really much of a surprise that he's bisexual and has dated a male shark demon in the past, but he's quite reasonably offended when his dad assumes this is the same thing as being 100% gay and calls Millie his beard.

Webcomics

• Magical Boy:
  • Jen is an open Butch Lesbian who dresses boyishly, visits the arcade to play shooter games, and is often mistaken for a man on account of her wardrobe and Boyish Short Hair.
  • Sean is a delinquent who happens to be In Touch with His Feminine Side. He collects cute, pink things and is an enormous fan of the Magical Girl show, Sunshine Girls. At the very end of the comic, he's revealed to be gay when he asks out Max, who'd just been turned down by Tobi on account of Incompatible Orientation.
  • Before Max came out as trans, his dad Kai thought that he liked girls because of how he hated anything girly.
• Scandinavia and the World: Discussed. America tells Canada that it's "gay" and "girly" for a man to accept flowers from a woman.

Western Animation

• The Owl House: Luz wears a tuxedo with a tutu skirt to Grom in an episode focused on her relationship with Amity Blight. The two of them become a couple later that season, and Luz eventually formally comes out to her mother as bisexual.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Catra tends to act fairly masculine and is the only female character to wear a tux to Princess Prom, while also getting heavy amounts of romantic subtext with Adora. The finale has her give Adora an Anguished Declaration of Love and the two get together.

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