What do sexual and gender minorities have to tell us about their experiences of gender-based violence?Voices from the University of Geneva

• In Event: Intersectionality within research on gender and education: omissions, opportunities, and challenges

Proposal

International research on gender-based violence (GBV) in higher education institutions (Cantor et al. 2015; Bergeron et al., 2016; AHRC, 2017; Paquette et al., 2021) has highlighted the existence of groups more likely to be exposed to GBV in university settings, suggesting the need of analyzing GBV in academia through an intersectional feminist approach. Among these groups there are also sexual and gender minority (SGM) students. A recent global consultation on inclusive education and access to health for LGBTI+ youth aged 12 to 26 (Richard & MAG Jeunes LGBT, 2018) showed that both school and university experiences of LGBTI+ pupils and students are characterized by a low sense of security, a high level of GBV and a lack of consideration of their needs by institutional and education policies and practices. This last point is particularly true for young people who have experienced school-related GBV.

GBV experienced by SGM youth in school settings is carried out by their peers, by the staff, but also by the institutional environment itself, which "contributes to reiterating the markers of a cisgender, binary and heterosexual normality" (Richard & Alessandrin, 2019, p.2). This was highlighted, for example, by a recent survey on sexual violence in French universities (Observatoire-VSS, 2020), which revealed that, although the perpetrators of LGBTIQ+phobic violence were mainly cisgender students and faculty members, non-binary and transgender individuals considered their institutions as transphobic due to, for example, toilet restrictions. As a result, the participants developed a lack of trust towards the administration of their institutions, which was deemed to be one of the sources of such violence. Smith et al. (2016) refer to this as an "institutional betrayal", which has quite significant repercussions on the academic experience of students who suffer from this type of violence. In their analysis, Paquette et al. (2019) show that the consequences of GBV on SGM students range from psychological and social challenges (such as increased sense of vulnerability and guilt or the need to isolate oneself, respectively), to changes in certain habits and/or life projects, such as dropping out of school.

This presentation, which is part of a PhD research project aiming at understanding the attitudes and norms that consolidate GBV at the University of Geneva, intends to reflect on the issues surrounding GBV experienced by students identifying as SGM, as well as the impact of this violence on their university experience, by looking in particular at the consequences of GBV for their studies. In addition to this, we will be discussing students’ reactions to this violence as well as the actions taken to face it. The starting point for these reflections will be the analysis of 51 written testimonies and 11 semi-structured in-depth interviews produced by and carried out with the participants of the study identifying as SGM.

Author

• Giorgia Magni, University of Geneva