Scope of All Gays are Pedophiles

Question that came up in the locked pages thread: Is All Gays Are Pedophiles a trope solely about male homosexuals or does it allow lesbians as well? My understanding was that the stereotype is primarily, or exclusively, about males; women in general tend to be ignored in conversations about child abuse.

Gender is not specified in the trope description. So lesbian characters being accused/turning out to be paedos is a perfectly valid example.

I'll also point out that the trope is not under the Always Male index. So no, it's not gender-specific.

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Jan 3rd 2024 at 3:38:23 AM

My question is not about the current description, but about the trope - the description might be wrong.

The description doesn't lock it down to just men, and there are a handful of examples / wicks that talk about women. In fact the description implicitly says it's not just about men since it says "especially men", implying that others fall under the scope as well, just less commonly. And my personal opinion is that Tropes Are Flexible enough to cover more than one gender.

I guess another way to put it is, if examples about women didn't count, where would they go? They're certainly examples of something, and a hypothetical "All Lesbians are Pedophiles" trope would most likely get called out as redundant with this one.

I concur

I think the trope skews male but is not exclusive to men. There are other stereotypes describing why women are... uh, left out here, but I don't think female examples should be disallowed.

It is worth noting that the original YKTTW was much more explicitly male-specific, which remained the case at launch. I'm not sure there's any compelling reason for the trope to be that way; if you wanted to be absolutely certain you'd probably need some sort of advanced sociological study about whether there are/were gendered differences in the perception of gay people being pedophiles that would be beyond the scope of the wiki and might not be worth the effort. (Notably, while the change from "homosexual men" to "homosexuals (especially men)" could be considered to have been made unilaterally, it was part of a series of serial tweaks to the description fairly early in its history by multiple tropers, including Fast Eddie, which could be considered giving an implicit blessing to the change.)

Edited by MorganWick on Jan 4th 2024 at 1:00:42 AM

My two cents: the harmful stereotype in this case is about gay men; there's no corresponding prejudice about lesbians (unless I'm wrong, in which case, please enlighten me). Historically, it has been much more common to simply treat lesbians as invisible rather than to vilify them.

Adding "oh, and lesbians too" when there simply isn't a common belief about lesbians being child molesters would be shoehorning.

I can't really agree with that because the trope description, wicks, and on-page example does not state that this trope is exclusive to gay males at all. Maybe it did in its initial creation, but definitely not now. Adding lesbians isn't shoehorning because the trope doesn't restrict them from it.

historically lesbians have absolutely been vilified as predatory, it's just usually focussed on predation of straight adult women rather than children

but this trope is a preexisting concept. this is an old stereotype, and the stereotype is about gay men. If our page doesnt match the concept as it was used historically, we are not actually describing the stereotype that exists

So it's a question of whether the trope is flexible enough to allow lesbians in examples. I can see on the page that it's almost all gay men in the example list, which makes sense if you know of the stereotype. But like, if a work goes, "Okay, gay women exist. And they're child molesters!!", does that fit the spirit even if it's not 1:1?

Maybe? The issue is that this is based on a specific stereotype, one that just doesn't apply to lesbians. It's not impossible for a work to make these claims anyway, but the spirit seems to be the stereotype about gay men.

So what should we do about this?

Make tweak the description to make it about gay males? Then put it under Always Male while noting the female examples as Gender Inverted Examples?

That's only assuming the trope isn't flexible enough to apply to lesbians.

I mean, I'm not that bothered if lesbian examples exist. I just don't think it makes sense if we're looking at the stereotype.

If there is in fact a problem with the trope description, I personally don't see it, should we take this to the TRS or the Trope Description Improvement thread?

[x4], [x6] I mean, the thing is, does out site's definition of this trope have to align exactly like the specific pre-existing stereotype?

Can't it just be based on it but not follow it exactly?

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Feb 19th 2024 at 7:22:48 PM

I think this falls under "we don't create tropes, we catalogue them".

I mean, ok? I just don't see a justifiable reason the current description and any female examples aren't valid. They still fit the idea of the trope.

Is it the idea of the trope to include women? We are talking about bigotry; by definition, it is not automatically equal by gender. That and expanding a trope past the underlying stereotype often means that we end up with coincidence examples.

In this case, a work having a child abuser that happens to be of the same gender might evoke associations to the trope if the abuser is male because of the stereotype. Whereas a lesbian child abuser would not b/c the stereotype isn't applicable there, thus making an example a mere coincidence.

The idea of the trope seems to just include "gay people in general regardless of gender, but mostly guys"

That's what the current trope description reads as anyway

Ok, since this discussion went nowhere and no consensus was formed, I'll just call it quits with this one.