Feelings of Belonging: An Exploratory Analysis of the Sociopolitical Involvement of Black, Latina, and Asian/Pacific Islander Sexual Minority Women

Abstract

This article compares and contrasts the sociopolitical involvement of Black, Latina, and Asian/Pacific Islander American sexual minority women within lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities of color. For the analysis, a sample of over 1,200 women from the Social Justice Sexuality project was analyzed. Findings indicate that, for all groups of women, feelings of connectedness to the LGBT community was the most significant predictor of sociopolitical involvement within LGBT communities of color.

KEYWORDS:

• belonging
• bisexual
• community engagement
• connectedness
• lesbian
• marginalization
• sociopolitical

Notes

1. For more information about the data, see Battle, Pastrana, and Daniels (2013), and for more about the project, visit www.socialjusticesexuality.com.

2. Known throughout the social sciences, the GSS is one of the largest national data-collecting projects in the United States.

3. For a discussion of the uniqueness and applicability of LGBT POC sociopolitical involvement, see Battle and Harris (2013a, 2013b), Harris and Battle (2013), and Harris et al. (2013).

Additional information

Funding

This publication was supported by the National Center for Research Resources and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, through Grant Number 8UL1TR000055. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.