Almost 2 years after the vote in May 2013 of the law opening marriage and adoption to same-sex couples, SOS homophobia publishes the report “National survey on the visibility of lesbians and lesbophobia”.
The document provides an inventory of the life of homosexuals in France. 7,126 women across France responded to a questionnaire from the end of March to July 2013.
The objective of the survey: to establish the visibility that lesbians give to their sexual orientation and determine the proportion of them who claim to be victims of lesbophobia.
Little visibility and a lot of control in lesbians
It turns out that lesbians are hardly visible. Only 26% of them tell all their family members about their sexual orientation and 18% tell all their colleagues.
Gestures in public spaces are very controlled: more than half of the volunteers pay attention to where they are before holding or kissing their partner’s hand. For 63% of the respondents, this attitude is explained by the fear of hostile reactions.
13% of victims encounter lesbophobia regularly
Almost 60% of these women had experienced at least one lesbophobic act during the 2 years preceding the survey. Among them, 13% say they have been confronted with it regularly.
With 45% of violence taking place in public spaces, this environment appears to be the most hostile. Family and work are also lesbophobic environments for 14% and 11% of testimonies, respectively.
Lesbophobia, in these contexts, takes various forms: insults, mockery, assaults in the street, rejection of relatives, refusal of promotion, expulsion from a sports team …
To be happy, don’t live in hiding
For fear of these hostile reactions, lesbians therefore tend to make themselves invisible in society, even if it means not denouncing the violence, physical or psychological, to which they are subjected.
At the end of its report, SOS homophobie does not advise them to live in hiding in order to be happy and calls on the public authorities to strengthen “the financial, legal and human resources to fight against discriminations and the violence suffered by women “.
Read also :
– Health does not depend on sexual orientation
– Blood donation: homosexuals could save millions of people