Victimization of Gay Representatives - Essay Example

Number Semester Year Victimization Over the Life Span: a Comparison of Gay, Lesbian, Heterosexual, and Bisexual Siblings The article speaks about the research conducted among gay, lesbian, and bisexual people and their traumatic victimization experience. The goal of study was to examine whether gays , lesbians and bisexual people are exposed to victimization more than their heterosexual siblings. Since there exist several studies dedicated to victimization only few of them concentrate on homosexuality and bisexuality as a probable cause of traumatic victimization. Sexual orientation is usually not taken into account during studies connected with victimization however there is a number of reasons to hypothesize that people who are not traditional in their sexual orientation experience more psychological, physical, and sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence. Moreover, they are prone to remain victims of traumatization even in older age due to adapted behavioral patterns of the people who contact with them. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents turn out to be frequent victims of their family emotional, psychological abuse if their sexual orientation was disclosed. They can be criticized for their extraordinary behavior or outfit on this ground. Adults usually suffer from discrimination at work and at home, invisibility among acquaintances. Such attitude often results in victimization in gay, lesbian, and bisexual and psychological problems connected with it: drugs abuse, promiscuity, self –destructive tendencies. Adolescences who feel pressure of victimization escape from home and lead antisocial way of life. There also exists difference between men and women experiencing victimization. Men risk more to become victims of home abuse because of more distorted image regarding gay relationships in the society. But women are more frequent victims of discrimination, psychological. physical, and emotional abuse. The existing studies underline only slightly increased rate of violence among gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, however, the methodologies of the research were mostly doubtful. There was a shift to the research on lesbians and infants with more attention dedicated to home violence but the results were not compared with the results from heterosexual people. Moreover, only few studies concentrated on life-long examining of the participants` life while this study aims to find out if victimization stops with age or it tends to continue during the whole life. The researches of this study aimed to find out whether homosexuals and bisexuals are more exposed to traumatic experience during lifetime. And in order to do this the scientists compared their results with heterosexual siblings of the participants. The choice of siblings was not accidental because it allowed examining people from similar environment, of the same race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Sexual orientation was determined as the factor influencing a.) psychological or emotional abuse from a caregiver or a parent; b.)sexual abuse; c.)psychological and physical victimization d.)sexual assault in childhood. The hypothesis of the research consisted in higher number of self-reported victimization and abuse among siblings with non-traditional sexual orientation not only in childhood and adolescence but in adulthood as well. The researches managed to recruit 557 homosexual, 163 bisexual, and 525 heterosexual respondents through advertisements in periodicals specific for LGB auditory. Participants were also found with the help of LGB specific websites. Those who wanted to take part in research were sent questionnaires by e-mails and post. They have to be completed by direct participants and their siblings. Totally 1, 275 respondents were involved into the research with 796 women (63. 9 %) and 449 men (36.1 %). Participants had to identify their sexual orientation themselves and thus 42, 2 % identified themselves as heterosexual, 44.7 % determined their orientation as homosexual while 16.7 % claimed that they were bisexual. The majority of women, 42.7 % determined their sexuality as heterosexual and 41.6 % identified themselves as homosexual, only the rest 15.7 % claimed they were bisexual. Most of the men identified themselves as homosexual, 50. 6%, followed by 41.2 % who responded that they believed they were heterosexual, and the only 8.5% claimed that their orientation was bisexual. The average age of participants was 36, 6 with respondents ranging from 18 to 71 years old. 91.1 % of respondents were European American followed by small amount of African American 1.1 %, 0.5% Asian American and 7.1 % of Latinos. It is interesting that the researches aimed not to concentrate the attention of respondents on sexual orientation. The questionnaires were introduced as those studying relationships between siblings and their modification during life. Childhood Psychological Abuse was estimated with the help of 7-item self-report scale from Childhood Maltreatment Interview Scale. The same scale was utilized to use sexual abuse in the family and with a partner but the difference in physical and emotional sexual contact was made. Domestic violence was categorized as sexual, physical, and psychological abuse between partners in close relationships. Abuse in adulthood was examined with the help of modified version of Abuse Survey. Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale was used to assess the level of psychological and physical abuse from parents and caregivers side. To define the lifetime victimization risk the researches made up a summary calculating all the cases of childhood sexual and physical abuse, adult domestic and sexual violence. The study was descriptive since the participants were not placed into any experimental conditions. The results of the research were received after questionnaires processing without participants involvements. The results were demonstrated in the form of tables. Taking sexual orientation of respondents as independent variable since its change was presupposed to change the dependent variable- the level of psychological, physical, and emotional abuse and victimization towards respondents. The results of the research were introduced in the form of descriptive statistics and later were analyzed and grouped according to the following parameters: gender, sexual orientation, prevalence of victimization, childhood victimization, adulthood victimization. The results showed that women regardless of their sexual orientation and age become victims of abuse more often than men. In general, bisexual and homosexual participants reported much more cases of violence. For instance 1.6 % of heterosexual, 13.2 % of bisexual, and 11.6 % of homosexual men claimed being raped in adolescence or childhood. These figures were women were respectively high: 7.5 for heterosexual, 16.9% bisexual, and 15.5 % of homosexual. The cases of victimization for all homosexual and bisexual men and women were higher. The researchers found out that the risk of being physically, emotionally and sexually abused does not decrease for bisexual and homosexual people with age. However adults usually experience abuse from their partners’ side and easily become victims of domestic violence. For adults the figures among women are again much higher that among men. For example, 15.6 % of bisexual and 16.9 % of homosexual women experienced victimization as adults compared to 7.5 % of heterosexual women. Among possible bias of the research the authors marked the level of response of heterosexual siblings. The experiments that change some well-established stereotypes or that have to reveal some social inequality have to involve a lot of participants. This research was conducted with the help of questionnaires and so most of the reports were subjective since participants were not instructed of how to recognize victimization and violence. With the help of this assignment I realized how studies of social and psychological concepts are conducted. The topic of LGB discrimination remains very urgent till our days and this research demonstrates that urgent measures should be taken. It turned out that people whose sexual orientation is not tradition undergo lifetime sexual, psychological, and physical abuse from their families and partners. Moreover, the risk of victimization does not decrease with age, and adults experience much the problems as children and teenagers. To my mind, there were several weak points in this research. First, the researches wanted to examine if sexual orientation influenced greatly the risk of victimization and abuse. They recruited the participants with the help of press specific for LGB people; however, in their questionnaires the researches did not place any emphasis on sexual orientation which could misguide the participants. The people completing questionnaires were not instructed precisely how to evaluate their experience of abuse and victimization so the answers they gave were mostly subjective. The respondents were mostly European Americans, ethnicities mostly tolerant to people with non-traditional sexual orientation due to high level of culture. However, the results in Latin American, Asian American, and African American would bring more light on the overall situation with homosexual people victimization in the world which would be different. So it is possible to claim that the study was not diverse enough and involved nationalities which typically show low results in the question of LGB people discrimination. Another weak point of the research is recruitment of participants via questionnaires. With no direct contact and inability to prove or to prove wrong the results the data obtained with the help of these questionnaires remains quite subjective. The results of the research turned out to be really alarming and showed that most often people with non-traditional orientation become victims of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse which continues during their whole lives. Women, especially bisexual and homosexual women have higher chances to be victimized and receive traumatic experience while men are exposed to lifetime abuse and discrimination. Works Cited Balsam, K., Rothblum, E., & Beauchaine, T. “Victimization Over the Life Span: a Comparison of Gay, Lesbian, Heterosexual, and Bisexual Siblings”, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, vol. 73, issue 3, 2005, pp.477-487. Read More