Intimate partner violence (IPV) among sexual minority men (SMM) isn’t a straightforward issue, and the social and sexual identities of those involved may play a part here.
This is according to a study – “How Intimate Partner Violence Is Influenced by Social Identity Among Sexual Minority Men” by Owen Jessup, Carrie L. Nacht, Hannah E. Reynolds, Jennifer K. Felner, Chenglin Hong, Sandhya Muthuramalingam, Daniel E. Siconolfi, Glenn J. Wagner, Rob Stephenson, and Erik D. Storholm – that appeared in LGBT Health.
As it is, SMM experience IPV at “disproportionately high rates,” the researchers noted, adding that there is, therefore, a need to identify the experiences of SMM and health care providers on how social identity impacts IPV.
For this study, 23 SMM participants were recruited from online community settings and a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and others (LGBTQ+) organization in Los Angeles in the US; aloalongngn with 10 service providers from LGBTQ+ organizations. Semistructured interviews weredone, and an applied thematic analysis approach was implemented to create memos, inductively generate a codebook, apply codes to the transcripts, and identify key themes in data.
The researchers identified three main themes:
- weaponizing social identity to control a partner, which had three subthemes: (a) immigration status, race/ethnicity, and skin color, (b) threatening to “out” the partner’s sexual orientation, and (c) abusing power inequity. Men who perpetrated IPV often used minority identities or undisclosed sexuality to leverage power over their partner.
- use of IPV to establish masculinity, by exerting power over the more “feminine” partner.
- internalized homophobia is a root cause of IPV, noting that internalized homophobia is often expressed in violent outbursts toward partners.
“These findings highlight how IPV among SMM can be influenced by social and sexual identity,” stressed the researchers.
For them, therefore, “future research must consider socially constructed power structures and the multiple identities of SMM when developing interventions to address IPV in this population.”
