Social exclusion of young lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Europe
In the first phase of the analysis, we examined quantifiable variables, looking at the positive and negative responses to questions on the experience of prejudice and discrimination (such as “have you ever experienced prejudice or discrimination targeting you as an L/G/B/T person…?”). In order to balance the unequal distribution of responses by country in the original sample, at least to a certain extent, we weighted the original sample by country population size in order to produce the quantitative survey results. Weighting is a sampling method in the course of which the unequal probability of selection into the sample will be equalised. The weighting was necessary because we received a lot of replies from countries with a smaller population size, and in other instances we received few responses from countries with large populations.
In the second phase, we analysed the content of questionnaires by coding the individual respondents’ answers according to the five problem areas (family, school, peer group, community and media). In optimal cases, we were able to compare the content of individual and organisation questionnaires concerning the most typical forms and the most important causes of social exclusion of LGBT youth in a given country.13
5.2. Findings On the basis of our quantitative and qualitative analyses it can be stated that young LGBT people have a lot of trouble with the main agents of socialisation, i.e. family, school, peer group and media. Some of them suffer from different forms of social group pressure starting at an early age; as one respondent reported: “I wanted to be like the others for the sake of belonging to a group and being accepted. And I tried hard to fit their boxes. Thanks God, I didn’t succeed, and I have my one real identity now, but it was very hard for a child to go through this experience” (Moldova F30).14
Based on the survey responses, school and family seem to be the social contexts where it is particularly problematic for LGBT youth to fit in. Indeed, 61% of our respondents experienced prejudice and/or discrimination in school, and 51% in their family. On the other hand, 38% of respondents said they
13 For more detailed information about the data collected through this survey, you can contact the research team at socialexclusionresearch@iglyo.com. You can also contact IGLYO or ILGA-Europe directly. 14 When we quote individual responses, we indicate country of origin, gender (F=female, M=male, FtM= female-to-male transgender, FtM=male-to-female transgender) and age of respondents.(e.g. Moldova, F 29)
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