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There is corroborated evidence of a significant correlation between the experience of homonegative abuse and increased levels of depression, suicidal behaviour, feeling unsafe at school, and continued mental health problems into adulthood. In Switzerland, where liberal attitudes toward gays and lesbians prevail, there have been several serious cases of homonegative abuse in a major Swiss city during the past year. In this light, we explored the experience of homonegative abuse of men who have sex with men (MSM) living in Switzerland.
Method
We used the data from the European MSM Internet Survey (EMIS-2017) which surveyed 137,358 MSM in 50 countries. The online questionnaire assessed, among others, respondents’ experience of homonegative intimidation, verbal insults and physical violence. Our analysis is based on data from 3,066 MSM living in Switzerland who passed the internal data validity tests. We analysed the data using descriptive statistics and performed t-tests to compare group means.
Results
The respondents’ median age was 41 years (IQR=31-51) and ranged from 16 to 85 years. Overall, 10.8% (n=331) were younger than 25 years old. Around 79% (n=2412) of the respondents identified as ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’.
Regarding the lifetime prevalence of experienced homonegative abuse, 54.9% (n=1677) of the respondents reported that they had been intimidated because someone had known or presumed that they were attracted to men. Another 54.4% (n=1661) reported that they had been verbally insulted and 13.2% (n=405) said they had been hit, beaten or kicked because of their sexual orientation.
Regarding the recent past, data show that the experience of intimidation and verbal insults was common, with almost 24% (n=723) having experienced intimidation and 17.4% having reported verbal insults (n=532) in the previous 12 months; while physical assaults were a rare experience (1.6%; n=50) among MSM in Switzerland.
The findings show a significant difference for homonegative abuse in the previous 12 months between MSM younger than 25 years and MSM 25 years and older. The adolescent and young adult MSM more frequently reported intimidation (M=0.47, SD=0.50) than MSM who were 25 years and older (M=0.21, SD=0.41), t(3053)=10.98, p<.001, d=-.57. MSM younger than 25 years reported verbal insults (M=0.33, SD=0.47) more frequently than MSM who were 25 years and older (M=0.15, SD=0.36), t(3053)=8.12, p<.001, d=-.43. Physical assaults were also mentioned more frequently among adolescents and young adults (M=0.05, SD=0.22) than among the adult MSM (M=0.01, SD=0.11), t(3055)=4.88, p<.001, d=-.23.
Among the adolescents and young adults, 47.4% (n=157) reported experiencing intimidation, 33.2% (n=110) reported verbal insults and 4.8% (n=16) reported physical assaults in the previous 12 months.
Conclusions
In view of the reported experience of gay men living in Switzerland, efforts to reduce homonegative abuse must be continued. Research is called for to elicit the social milieus still holding homonegative attitudes in order to inform the development of targeted interventions. Social work has the responsibility to develop multi-perspective prevention and targeted intervention strategies.