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Heteronormativity and the Victimization of Bisexual and Pansexual Women: An Empirical Test of Norm-Centered Stigma Theory

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Abstract

Recent research suggests that bisexual women may be at high risk for victimization due to their non-monosexual identities, yet it is unclear whether pansexual women, who also have non-monosexual identities, may be at high risk for victimization as well. In the current study, data from a sample of adults in the United States, between the ages of eighteen and sixty-four and stratified by census categories of age, gender, race/ethnicity and census region collected from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) online panelists (n = 1559), were utilized to investigate bisexual (n = 358) and pansexual (n = 45) women’s victimization through a test of Norm-Centered Stigma Theory with a theoretical focus on heteronormativity and intersecting experiences with social power (gender and sexuality) (Worthen 2020). Three notable findings emerged. First, pansexual women experienced higher levels of harassment when compared to bisexual women. Second, both being pansexual and being a pansexual woman significantly increased the odds of enduring violence and harassment. Third, being a bisexual woman decreased the odds of experiencing violence and was not statistically significantly related to harassment. Overall, results suggest that pansexual women may have especially unique experiences that put them at risk for victimization and demonstrate the importance of specifically examining pansexual women’s experiences as separate from others. A discussion of the contributions and limitations of quantitative analyses in critical criminology, in general, and queer criminology, in particular, is also provided. Because this study is the first to highlight the intersecting experiences of pansexual women and their elevated risk of violence and harassment, the findings provide a much-needed first step into working toward developing a deeper understanding of pansexual people’s victimization. In addition, the results demonstrate the need for future research across multiple methods of investigation, including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches to best understand these relationships.

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Notes

  1. In this article, “non-monosexual” refers to those who may have romantic and/or sexual attraction to both same-gender and different-gender partners.

  2. The stigmatizer lens examines how the stigmatizer’s own axes of social power impact his/her/their feelings about the target of stigma.

  3. It is unknown how many of these emails were actually received and read by the potential respondents, so an exact response rate is also unknown. For example, junk mail filters could have prevented potential respondents from seeing the email invitation; some may have opened the email but decided not to click the link to access the survey; and some may have been deemed ineligible due to identity quotas being met as requested by the author set by SSI (five of the eight identity quotas were met).

  4. The survey was held open for nineteen days in efforts to meet the quotas set for the LGBT groups. Five quotas were met as follows: gay men (five days in), bisexual women (seven days in), lesbian women (eight days in), cis men and cis women (sixteen days in). The quotas for the remaining three groups (bisexual men, trans men, and trans women) were not met. The survey was closed because SSI believed it was not realistic to expect these quotas to fill in a reasonable amount of time.

  5. Post-hoc ancillary analyses that included “cis” as an independent variable yielded largely the same results as those presented in this article with two exceptions: for the models focusing on pansexual identity, the interaction between pansexual and woman was no longer significant when “cis” was included for Model 2b for both gender-based violence and gender-based harassment. In addition, “cis” was significant (p < .05) in all models and reduced the odds of both types of victimization.

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Funding

The data collection utilized in this project was funded by the University of Oklahoma Office of the Vice President for Research via the Faculty Investment Program.

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Oklahoma, 780 Van Vleet Oval, KH 331, Norman, OK, 73019, USA

    Meredith G. F. Worthen

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Correspondence to Meredith G. F. Worthen.

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Worthen, M.G.F. Heteronormativity and the Victimization of Bisexual and Pansexual Women: An Empirical Test of Norm-Centered Stigma Theory. Crit Crim 30, 1035–1055 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-022-09632-1

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