By the Hands of Our Brothers: An Exploration of Sibling-to-Sibling Aggression for Victimized Heterosexual and Sexual Minority Women

Abstract

Two major forms of aggression against children have recently received considerable attention from the media: childhood bullying specific to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) youths and family violence. As a consequence, research on these topics has also increased and expanded to include bullying and violence within the family for both heterosexual and GLBTQ youths. Importantly, however, these studies have focused on adult-to-child victimization, leaving a gap in the literature in regard to sibling-to-sibling bullying and violence, especially for GLBTQ individuals. This study explores this gap in the research through the examination of 64 heterosexual and GLBTQ women's experiences of sibling-to-sibling aggression. Comparative analyses reveal that the GLBTQ participants experienced more severe forms of verbal victimization from their brothers than the heterosexual participants. Meanwhile, heterosexual participants experienced more physical aggression from their brothers than GLBTQ participants and they experienced verbal aggression from siblings that lasted longer in their lives than GLBTQ participants. This study importantly reveals the dire need for further research on sibling-to-sibling aggression and specifically sexual aggression as experienced by GLBTQ women.

KEYWORDS:

• sexual orientation
• sexual minorities
• familial relationships
• siblings

Notes

1. Although Gelles and Cornell explain violence in regards to aggression frequency, the authors utilize the American Psychological Association's definition of violence, which focuses on aggression severity, to indicate that violence is an extreme form of aggression (Kazdin, 2000).

2. Cisgender refers to those whose gender identities and experiences match their sex identities assigned at birth. Cisgender is often used in contrast to “transgender.”

3. The authors use “GLBTQ” as an umbrella term to describe those women who self-identified as lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, and queer in this study, although no gay or transgender individuals participated. Pansexual is a sexual identity that, similarly to “Queer,” denotes a more fluid sexual desire that is not based on gender or object-choice (Palermo, 2013).