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Objective: To identify lifetime polyvictimization rates by gender identity and sexual orientation, for a national sample of sexual and gender minority adolescents. Method: An anonymous, incentivized, online survey was completed by 1177 sexual and gender minority adolescents who were currently enrolled in middle or high school (14 to 19-years-old). Results: Most of the sample experienced some form of lifetime physical assault (81.3%), bullying victimization (88.8%), sexual victimization (80.6%), child maltreatment (78.8%), property victimization (80.1%), and indirect or witnessed forms of victimization (75.0%). The overall rate of polyvictimization for the sample was 41.3%. Genderqueer assigned male at birth (65.4%), transgender female (63.2%), transgender male (57.4%), genderqueer assigned female at birth (55.0%), and cisgender female (39.3%) adolescents were significantly more likely to be lifetime polyvictimized than their cisgender male counterparts (31.1%). Additionally, pansexual (56.8%), queer (52.0%), questioning (47.0%), and bisexual (45.8%) participants were significantly more likely to be lifetime polyvictimized than gay-identified peers (32.7%). Conclusions: This is the first study to identify lifetime polyvictimization rates for sexual and gender minority adolescents. These findings call into question the practice of studying single forms of victimization for this population as if they occur in isolation to one another. Future research is needed to identify the shared risk and protective factors across victimization subtypes to inform prevention and intervention strategies for this vulnerable adolescent population.

This paper addresses social work's place in the movement to "defund the police." We argue that social work's collaboration with police and use of policing constitutes carceral social work. In defining carceral social work, we specify the ways in which coercive and punitive practices are used to manage Black, Indigenous, other people of color and poor communities across four social work arenasgender-based violence, child welfare, schools, and health and mental health.To inform anti-carceral social work, we provide examples of interventions in these arenas that dismantle police collaborations and point to life-affirming, community-centered, and mutual aid alternatives.

A problem with the current conceptualization of youth sexual violence is its exclusion of chronic, “low-severity” forms of violence known as gender microaggressions. A review of the sexual assault, sexual harassment, and gender microaggression literatures is undertaken to identify the unique and overlapping characteristics of each construct. A theoretically grounded conceptualization of youth sexual violence is presented with gender microaggressions, sexual harassment, and sexual assault existing along a continuum from chronic, low-severity to infrequent, “high-severity” offenses. In this reconceptualization, gender microaggressions exist as a unique form of youth sexual violence and function as a potential “gateway mechanism” to legally actionable offenses.

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