Vulnerabilities and strengths of Lesbian and Homosexual Mexican Adolescents to dating violence

Abstract

This paper explores dating violence among same-sex adolescent couples and compares the prevalence’s of the different expressions of this violence (emotional, physical, and sexual) between heterosexual couples and same-sex couples. Additionally, we identify those characteristics of homosexual adolescents that reduce or increase their vulnerability to dating violence, examining the role played by various elements of empowerment, such as self-esteem, agency, gender role attitudes, social power, and adolescent sexual power. Descriptive analysis as well as bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models were developed using data from the Survey on Dating, Empowerment and Sexual and Reproductive Health in Adolescent in High School in Mexico (ENESSAEP 2014 in Spanish), a survey representative of three Mexican states in México: Morelos, Jalisco and Puebla. The findings confirm that the prevalence’s of the three types of dating violence (emotional, physical, and sexual) are significantly higher for adolescents with same-sex partners than for heterosexual adolescents. The experiences of emotional violence received and witnessed at home are more frequent in the lives of gay and lesbian adolescents, and these experiences in turn show significant and larger associations with the risk of all three types of dating violence for them. Except for sexual empowerment, most indicators of empowerment showed significant and negative associations with the risk of the three types of dating violence for heterosexual adolescents, and in some cases for gay or lesbian youths too. It is necessary further research on the role of adolescent's empowerment as a relevant process to prevent dating violence and to provide young people with key resources to identify and deal with violent relationships, and particularly in the case of youth from the sexual diversity groups.