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Peer Victimization of Sexual Minority and Transgender Youth: A Cross-Sectional Study of High School Students
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2020
Source: Psychol Violence. 10(2):201-211 -
Alternative Title:Psychol Violence
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Description:Objective:
To identify rates of victimization experiences by gender identity and sexual orientation in a large regional sample of 14-to-17-year old high school students.
Method:
All 10th grade students from 27 Northeastern high schools were invited to participate in a survey of dating and sexual experiences (N = 2,766).
Results:
Compared with heterosexual youth, sexual minority youth reported greater peer victimization of every kind (i.e., bullying, sexual harassment, unwanted sexual contact and intercourse, and every type of dating conflict [threatening behavior, physical abuse, and sexual abuse]). Sexual minority girls evinced particularly high levels of bullying. Similarly, transgender youth were more likely than nontransgender youth to experience every form of peer victimization except physical abuse in a dating relationship. Cumulatively, 91% of sexual minority girls, 86% of transgender youth, and 79% of sexual minority boys experienced at least one form of peer victimization, compared to 78% of heterosexual girls and 63% of heterosexual boys. Further, 14% of transgender youth experienced all 4 victimization types in the past year alone. Finally, bias-based harassment was rarely the only form of victimization experienced by these youth.
Conclusion:
The victimization of sexual minority youth, particularly girls, and transgender youth was pervasive across individual forms of victimization and multiple forms of victimization concurrently. Further, bias-based harassment was imbedded within a pattern of victimization, such that youth experienced it in concert with multiple other forms of victimization. Researchers implementing prevention-based programs for interpersonal violence should examine the experiences of and impact on youth of diverse gender and sexual identities.
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Pubmed ID:35979532
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Pubmed Central ID:PMC9380522
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