Sexual Intimate Partner Violence: Effects of Prejudice toward Bisexual and Gay Men on Victim Blame

Abstract

Bisexual men are one of the least studied populations within the sexual intimate partner violence (SIPV) literature, despite the prevalence of SIPV being equivalent between bisexual and gay men, and greater in bisexual than heterosexual men. Consequently, it remains unclear as to what factors contribute to SIPV–related victim blame toward bisexual men. The current study utilized a mixed–methods design to investigate prejudiced attitudes toward bisexual and gay men as predictors of victim blame in the context of SIPV. Participants (N = 124) were randomly assigned to read a vignette wherein a bisexual or gay man disclosed an experience of SIPV. Participants then completed measures of victim blame and prejudiced attitudes toward bisexual or gay men. As a means of contextualizing the quantitative analyses, participants also completed a qualitative stereotype task. Results indicated that prejudiced attitudes toward both bisexual and gay men predicted victim blame, and that victim blame attributions toward bisexual and gay men did not differ. Qualitative findings indicated that there was overlap between the stereotypes attributed to bisexual and gay men, which may explain the lack of difference in victim blame toward the two groups. These results implicate prejudice reduction and controlled stereotype processing strategies as a means of reducing victim blame attributions toward sexual minority men.

Keywords:

• sexual intimate partner violence
• victim blame
• bisexual and gay men
• prejudice
• stereotypes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Being in a cross–sex or same–sex relationship is not necessarily indicative of sexual orientation—that is, an individual in either of these types of relationships may identify as bisexual rather than as gay, lesbian, or heterosexual.

2 The overwhelming majority of participants in this study were gay men (4% bisexual men).

3 Although the sexual orientation of these women was not specified, they were, presumably, heterosexual; furthermore, the majority of women (71.9%) knew the perpetrator of their sexual assault.

4 In spite of individuals reporting experiences of financial, emotional, physical, and sexual intimate partner violence, there were not separate disclosure statistics for each type of violence; rather, all types of violence were aggregated to obtain one overall disclosure statistic.

5 The original version of this measure includes 4–items which assess perpetrator blame, which were omitted from the current study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Towson University’s Graduate Student Association awarded to the first author.

Notes on contributors

Michael J. Brienzo

Michael J. Brienzo is an experimental psychology graduate student at Towson University. Michael’s research interests focus on how intersectionality affects physical and mental health within LGBT + communities.

M. Paz Galupo

M. Paz Galupo, PhD, is professor of psychology and director of the Sexual and Gender Identity Research lab at Towson University. Paz’s research interests focus on understanding the intersection of sexual orientation and gender identity as they are negotiated in the context of social and personal relationships, with a particular focus on bisexual/plurisexual and transgender experience.