Comparison of Sexual Violence Perpetration Rates Among Gay, Lesbian and Heterosexual Cisgender Adults

LGBTQ+ individuals are more vulnerable to experiencing sexual victimization. To truly prevent sexual victimization, preventing perpetration is necessary. The goal of this study was to increase the inclusivity of sexual violence research by examining the rates of sexual violence perpetration among cisgender, monosexual (e.g., attracted to a single gender, heterosexual or gay/lesbian) adults.

Participants were 828 adult Amazon Mechanical Turk workers who completed the study between March and September 2018. Participants completed the short version of the Post-Refusal Sexual Persistence Scale - Perpetration as part of a larger experiment. Analyses compared four gender by sexual identity groups: heterosexual women (31.5%), heterosexual men (27.8%), lesbian women (21.1%), and gay men (19.6%).

There were group differences in reported perpetration rates. Perpetration rates were higher in both groups of men (heterosexual = 33.0%, gay = 35.0%) compared to both groups of women (heterosexual = 12.6%, lesbian = 20.5%), but rates did not differ within gender. Among the subsample with perpetration histories, heterosexual men were more likely to report using verbal coercion tactics (52.0%) than the other groups (45.5% [heterosexual women], 31.6% [gay men], 30.6% [lesbian women]), and heterosexual women were more likely to report using both verbal coercion and physical force in combination (24.2%) than gay men (5.3%).

There are gender-driven differences in the rate of sexual violence perpetration among monosexual adults, suggesting the need for population-specific prevention efforts.