What Accounts for Heterosexual Women’s Negative Emotional Responses to Lesbians?: Examination of Traditional Gender Role Beliefs and Sexual Prejudice

Abstract

This study examined a pathway to heterosexual women's experience of anger and anxiety in response to lesbian interactions. Participants were 149 18-30 year old heterosexual female undergraduates (56% African American) from a southeastern United States university. Participants completed measures of female gender role beliefs, sexual prejudice, and state affect, viewed a video depicting relationship behavior between a female-female or male-female dyad, and again completed a measure of state affect. Results indicated that traditional beliefs about women were associated with higher levels of sexual prejudice toward lesbians. In turn, higher levels of sexual prejudice predicted increased anger (not anxiety) in response to the female-female, but not the male-female, dyad. Findings elucidate determinants of heterosexual women's anger, and potentially aggression, toward lesbians.

The Daily Heterosexist Experiences Questionnaire

“…LGBT people are also known to experience rejection from family members because of sexual orientation (e.g., Koken et al, 2009; Nel et al, 2004; Radkowsky & Siegel, 1997) and anti-LGBT discrimination in settings related to their children and parenting (Bos et al, 2004; Clarke et al, 2004). LGBT individuals who do not follow the gender norms of appearance and behavior experience more stress and are viewed as less acceptable, especially by same-sex peers (Horn, 2007, Lehavot & Simoni, 2011; Parrot & Gallagher, 2008). Gay and bisexual men particularly may experience a range of stressors associated with HIV/AIDS (Herek & Capitanio, 1999), and the high seroprevalence in gay male communities has been associated with distress (Yi, Sandfort, & Shidlo, 2010; Yi, Shidlo, & Sandfort, 2011).…”

Aggression Toward Gay Men as Gender Role Enforcement: Effects of Male Role Norms, Sexual Prejudice, and Masculine Gender Role Stress

“…Second, the present sample was comprised of male participants recruited exclusively from an undergraduate population. While the literature, in general, finds that young men are the most frequent perpetrators of aggression toward gay men (NCAVP, 2007), recent research has found that women’s sexual prejudice toward lesbians accounts for the link between traditional female gender role beliefs and anger in response to a lesbian dyad (Parrott & Gallagher, 2008). Thus, these data suggest that women may also be driven to anti-lesbian aggression to enforce traditional gender role norms.…”

Current Intimate Relationship Status, Depression, and Alcohol Use Among Bisexual Women: The Mediating Roles of Bisexual-Specific Minority Stressors

“…These experiences of discrimination can be understood as distal or external minority stressors, which include societal prejudice and stigmatizing experiences (experienced stigma) and proximal or internal minority stressors such as the degree to which one's minority status is known (outness) and internalization of negative societal attitudes (internalized stigma) (Goffman, 1963; Herek, Gillis, & Cogan, 2009; Hatzenbuehler, 2009; Meyer, 2003). Traditional gender beliefs and values in the U.S. include framing opposite-gender relationships and compulsive monogamy as normative and have been linked to discrimination against LGBT individuals, in part due to the number and gender of intimate partners (Goodman & Moradi, 2008; Herek, 2002; Israel & Mohr, 2004; Parrott & Gallagher, 2008; Whitley, 2001; Whitley & Ægisdóttir, 2000). Bisexual populations further represent a distinctive threat to traditional gender norms, values, and practices, due to their range of intimate partners, and deviation from U.S. and other societies’ normative binaries (Li, Dobinson, Scheim, & Ross, 2013, Canada; Rust, 2000, 2002; Samji, 2008).…”