Community engagement among LGBT living in a rural area of southern Italy

In the last decade the conditions of the LGBT communities around the world, especially in the western one, have undergone a considerable improvement given in particular by the recognition of some fundamental rights. However, very often queer research has focused on taking into account only the (urban) environment where it was easier to find LGBT people, especially the big cities of Europe and US.
This presentation wants to fill this gap in the scientific literature by focusing on the intrinsic and extrinsic prejudices that young gays and lesbians residing in the province of Foggia (Southern Italy) experience in their own living environment characterized by being an agricultural, conservative, familist and high-rate of youth unemployment context. The twenty interviews collected and analysed qualitatively (Grounded Theory) primarily underline the heavy pressure of family and cultural conformism in obstructing the development of a full assumption of their own homoerotic desires, openly living a relationship with a partner of the same sex, as well as participating in local LGBT activism. Remaining within a presumed invisibility remains the pre-eminent response to a pervasive oppression. Implication for community intervention will also be considered.

“Men are not caring”: Young Lesbians’ views on same-sex sexual preferences.

In many parts of the world, heterosexual relationships are the accepted norm, and are formed mostly based on the overall man-woman relationship traditions that favour men above women. Various studies have shown evidence of the inequalities that exist within heterosexual relations and how men generally dominate and suppress women. This paper seeks to demonstrate how some young women are defying the social cultural norms that govern the expression of women’s sexuality in Ghana. To this end, the paper explores the experiences of six (6) lesbian university students who have had previous heterosexual relationships as to what they perceive to be the reasons for their same-sex preferences. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed using thematic analysis. Five themes emerged from the study: ‘No pregnancy drama’, ‘Female partners more caring’, ‘History of bad heterosexual relationships’, ‘Selfless satisfying intimacy with female partners’ and ‘History of heterosexual sexual violence’. The findings indicate that the participants prefer same-sex relationships to heterosexual relationships due to the caring nature exhibited by female partners, the increased level of intimacy they experience with female partners, violent encounters they have had with the opposite sex in the past, and to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

Breaking the binary: International experiences of bisexuality, wellbeing and social justice

Bisexuals make up the largest proportion of the LGBTQ+ community, yet bisexuality remains relatively invisible. Bisexuals also report higher incidences of mental health problems and social exclusion than gay and lesbian people. Social representation theory may attribute this to a lack of sense of belonging as bisexuals are ‘othered’ in both heteronormative and LGBT+ spaces. LGBTQ+ spaces may from the outside appear somewhat cohesive but are, however, fraught with intergroup tensions. Our study was the first international exploration into how bisexuality is represented and experienced by bisexual people. This presentation reports qualitative findings from a mixed-method survey. Twenty qualitative questions provided bisexual participants with the opportunity to discuss how they represented and experienced their sexuality.
Participants (n = 840) were mainly from the US, UK, Europe and Australia, aged 13 to 75 years and of various gender identities. Over a thousand pages of open-ended survey responses were subject to a six-step thematic analysis informed by social representation theory. This involved a team of five researchers (varying in age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and nationality) coding independently initially and then meeting to confer on codes and themes. Three core interconnected themes emerged through the analysis; identity as a spectrum, social institutions that empower and oppress, and the pursuit of wellbeing.
Participants described how their sexual identities mostly hinged upon the degree of empowerment or oppression experienced within the social institutions in their lives, and that wellbeing was the ultimate goal. This research provides valuable insights into the central role that social institutions play, as powerful sources of oppression and empowerment for those with marginalised sexual identities. Phase two of this project will involve working in collaboration with a national LGBTQ+ charity in the UK to identify and facilitate collective opportunities to resist oppressive social representations of bisexuality.

Pathways and prevalence: Poverty among LGBTQ people in the U.S.

Economic disparities among sexual and gender minorities (particularly among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or LGBT people) in the U.S. are well known, but not well understood. The Pathways to Justice Project was a 2-year study designed to inform sustainable policy advocacy goals and identify collective, as well as unique, social service needs, among LGBTQ subgroups. The project had two main components: a) the Quantitative Component -an analysis of national health data to examine LGBT poverty rates at the intersection of race, gender and region; and b) the Qualitative Component – a mixed method exploration of the pathways in and out of poverty and barriers to escaping poverty within rural and urban locations in one area of the United States. Analyses of the national health survey data indicated that LGBT people are more likely to be poor than cisgender straight people, and the poverty rates of bisexual cisgender women and transgender people drive this overall disparity. Analyses of the qualitative data demonstrated the complexity of factors leading to the disparities in rates. Themes identified in the qualitative study component included the significance of childhood poverty, managing discrimination against transgender workers, and the impact of interactions with systems of care. This oral presentation will explain the dilemmas facing efforts of LGBT solidarity with other identity-based activism that led to the development of this project, provide an overview of the methods and main findings, and pose questions about the results’ implications for how we might (re)think the use of intersectionality frameworks when discussing poverty.