One in three in LGBTI community experiences street harassment – La Trobe University research reveals
// April 6th, 2016 // Research, Within Victoria
The Age newspaper today focuses on La Trobe University research that shines a light on the troubling behaviour many LGBTI people have to endure, often in plain sight, with about one in three having experienced street harassment.
La Trobe Researcher Bianca Fileborn (pictured above) surveyed 292 people throughout Australia, 54 per cent of whom identified as being sexually diverse, on their experiences.
Dr Fileborn said there was little difference between the types of harassment women and LGBTI people experienced. These include staring (65.1 per cent), comments (63 per cent), car horn honking (63.3 per cent), wolf-whistling (41.1 per cent) and unwanted conversation (42.5 per cent).
The Anti-Violence Project has long championed the cause of people experiencing street harassment and prejudice motivated violence, where an estimated 7 out of 10 people in metropolitan areas and 9 out of 10 in outer urban and regional/rural cities and towns are not reporting their experiences of violence and harassment to anyone.
AVP executive director Greg Adkins said “The saddest thing is that many LGBTI people think this (street harassment) is something they have to learn to accept; that it’s something that’s going to happen to them anyway. That’s just really sad and misplaced. No one should face harassment because of their gender or sexuality.”
People experiencing street harassment, prejudice motivated violence or relationship violence can report their experiences via the AVP website.
Read more here:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/street-harassment-of-lgbti-people-rife-la-trobe-university-study-finds-20160406-gnzq0z.html
