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A Decade of Microaggression Research and LGBTQ Communities: An

Introduction to the Special Issue

Article  in  Journal of Homosexuality · November 2018

DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2018.1539582

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Kevin L. Nadal

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A Decade of Microaggression Research and LGBTQ Communities: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Kevin L. Nadal

To cite this article: Kevin L. Nadal (2019) A Decade of Microaggression Research and LGBTQ Communities: An Introduction to the Special Issue, Journal of Homosexuality, 66:10, 1309-1316, DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2018.1539582

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A Decade of Microaggression Research and LGBTQ Communities: An Introduction to the Special Issue Kevin L. Nadal, PhD

John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University, New York, New York, USA

ABSTRACT Though the Supreme Court of the U.S. legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, heterosexism and transphobia has continued to manifest through many systems in the US — from lack of federal protection in employment non-discrimination laws to polices that prohibit transgender people from using bathroom and public facilities that match their gender identities. Heterosexist and transphobic discrimination have also per- sisted through interpersonal interactions — ranging from more overt forms (e.g., hate crimes, bullying) to more subtle forms of discrimination, otherwise known as microaggressions. Since 2008, there have been hundreds of articles written on microaggressions, with dozens focusing specifically on experi- ences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. Qualitative and quantitative studies have revealed that LGBTQ people who experience microaggressions have reported negative outcomes like depression, low self-esteem, and trauma. This special issue aims to further Microaggression Theory by providing theoretical and empirical papers that focus on the manifestation and impact of microaggressions on LGBTQ people. Using an interdisciplinary approach, articles range in topic from intersectional identities, to health and psychological outcomes, to advancing research methods. Future studies regarding microaggressions and LGBTQ people are discussed- highlighting the influence of the changing land- scape of heterosexism and transphobia within general society, as well as new dynamics that have formed and developed within LGBTQ communities.

KEYWORDS Microaggressions; LGBTQ; discrimination; heterosexism; transphobia

Over the past decade, there have been many indicators that general American society had become more accepting of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. In 2009, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Act, which officially added sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in federal hate crime law. That same year, he signed the executive order to put an end to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell—allowing LGBTQ soldiers to serve openly in the military. Many LGBTQ celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres, George Takei, RuPaul, Ricky Martin, Wanda Sykes, Laverne Cox, and Chaz Bono openly discussed their

CONTACT Kevin L. Nadal [email protected] John Jay College, CUNY, 524 W. 59th Street, New York, NY 10019, USA.

JOURNAL OF HOMOSEXUALITY 2019, VOL. 66, NO. 10, 1309–1316 https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2018.1539582

© 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

sexual orientations and gender identities and continued to be embraced by mainstream audiences. And in 2015, the Supreme Court of the U.S. legalized same-sex marriage across the country.

Despite this, heterosexism and transphobia has continued to manifest on systemic levels—ranging from some states’ anti-transgender laws regarding the use of bathroom and public facilities to the passing of “religious freedom laws” that permit anti-LGBTQ discrimination when such behaviors align with one’s religion (e.g., not baking a cake for a same-sex wedding). Furthermore, sexual orientation and gender identity are not considered protected classes in federal employer non-discrimination laws and many state laws prohibit adoption by same-sex couples. Interpersonally, anti- LGBTQ discrimination has continued to persist—from anti-LGBTQ bullying in K–12 institutions to the alarming amount of murders of trans women of color annually (Nadal, 2018). Over the past decade, researchers have also examined microaggressions, or subtle forms of discrimination that LGBTQ people and other historically marginalized groups encounter in their daily lives (Nadal, Whitman, Davis, Erazo, & Davidoff, 2016).

Conceptualized initially as racial microaggressions by Pierce, Carew, Pierce-Gonzalez, and Willis (1978) and later reintroduced by Sue et al. (2007), many scholars have highlighted the many ways that racial discrimi- nation have manifested in more covert or well-intentioned forms—often by individuals who were unaware of their biased behaviors. As people of color had attained more rights and opportunities than in the past, it it had become less socially acceptable for people to maintain or vocalize racial biases. Accordingly, microaggression scholars argued that people (particularly those who belong to dominant identity groups) may no longer participate in overt or bigoted behavior, but instead may engage in unconscious or subconscious behavior that may be reflective of their implicit biases (Nadal, 2018; Sue, 2010).

In the past two years, thousands of media articles have been written about microaggressions through popular outlets such as the New York Times, Huffington Post, Washington Post, and Buzzfeed (Nadal, 2018, Torino, Rivera, Capodilupo, Nadal, & Sue, 2018). Hundreds of scholarly articles on microaggressions, particularly racial microaggressions, emerged at a much more rapid rate than other previous studies focusing on psychological or sociological concepts (Wong, Derthick, David, Saw, & Okazaki, 2014). Microaggression theory had been expanded to include discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability status, religion, ethni- city, and other identity groups (Nadal, 2013, 2018; Sue, 2010).

Sue and Capodilupo (2008) first described microaggressions based on sexual orientation (along with microaggressions toward women). Shortly after, Nadal, Rivera, and Corpus (2010) introduced a taxonomy outlining microaggressions based on both sexual orientation and gender identity,

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hypothesizing themes that were later qualitatively supported. Examples of these endorsed themes include: (1) use of heterosexist/transphobic terminol- ogy, (2) endorsement of heteronormativity/ gender binaries, (3) assumption of sexual pathology, and (4) discomfort or disapproval of LGBTQ identities or experiences (Nadal et al., 2011; Nadal, Skolnik, & Wong, 2012; Platt & Lenzen, 2013). Numerous qualitative and quantitative studies have revealed that LGBTQ people who experience microaggressions have reported negative outcomes such as depression, low self-esteem, and trauma (Nadal, 2018; Nadal et al., 2016). Despite this research, some naysayers have argued that microaggressions are not valid, that people who experience microaggressions are overly sensitive or paranoid, or that microaggression research is not scientifically robust. Thus it is crucial to build on the existing research on microaggressions, to use multiple, robust, and creative methods to document the existence of microaggressions, and to continue to validate the lived experiences of LGBTQ people and other groups.

This special issue aims to advance microaggression theory by highlighting theoretical, quantitative, and qualitative scholarship that focus on the impact of microaggressions on LGBTQ people. Accordingly, this issue features eight articles that comprise diverse disciplines, including psychology, education, social work, public health, human development, epidemiology, and more. These articles feature theoretical models, new quantitative measures, and qualitative studies that examine lived experiences of specific LGBTQ sub- groups. All studies utilize intersectional approaches—considering the ways that microaggressions manifest due to interactions of sexual orientation and gender identity with other identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, religion, immigration status, age)—beginning with Vacarro and Koob (2019), who presented an intersectional model of microaggressions, highlighting the need to center intersectional identities when theorizing and studying anti-LGBTQ microaggressions.

Building on a previous literature review of Nadal et al. (2016), Fisher, Woodford, Gartner, Sterzing, and Victor (2019) conduct a scoping review of previous quantitative studies on heterosexist microaggressions and other forms of subtle homophobia. Complementing these previous quantitative studies, three new scales measuring anti-LGBTQ microaggressions are intro- duced in this special issue- the Microaggression Experiences at Work Scale (Resnick & Galupo, 2019) and the Sexual Orientation Microaggressions Scale (SOMS) and Gender Identity Microaggressions Scale (GIMS; Nadal, 2019). Because one of the critiques to microaggression research is the lack of robust quantitative studies, these scales provide opportunities for future empirical studies to better understand LGBTQ microaggressions as they affect different groups and in different contexts.

The remaining studies provide understanding of the various ways that microaggressions may impact diverse subgroups of LGBTQ people in unique

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ways. First, Arayasirikul and Wilson (2019) provide insight to the myriad ways that transgender women encounter microaggressions and how these experiences influence their stress levels and overall processes. Second, Winberg et al. (2019) use quantitative methods to examine how heterosexist language negatively impacts LGBTQ college students’ substance use beha- viors. Finally, Munro, Travers, and Woodford (2019) conducted focus groups to reveal how LGBTQ youth experience microaggressions, while Lomash, Brown, and Galupo (2019) used a qualitative method to underscore three main themes of microaggressions faced by LGBTQ people of different reli- gious backgrounds.

Reflections and future directions

One of the ways that the study of LGBTQ microaggressions has evolved since our initial conceptualizations are the ways that new language and identities have been introduced and integrated into our understandings of gender and sexuality. Specifically, in recent years, there has been an increase in literature on the concept of gender nonconformity—citing the multiple ways that people may identity along the gender spectrum or beyond the gender binary. No longer do people simply identify as men or women, nor are transgender people expected to transition according to a binary; individuals proudly claim their identities as genderqueer, genderfluid, agender, and bigender, among others. Similarly, regarding sexual orientation identity, no longer do people identify only as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or heterosexual; they also identify as queer, pansexual, asexual, demisexual, and many other terms. With this, it is crucial for scholars of queer and transgender studies to validate and integrate these lived experiences and to prevent microaggressions that may occur toward individuals with these identi- ties. Though the general population (and some LGBTQ individuals themselves) may be reluctant to understand or accept new identities or terminology, rejecting these individuals and communities would be similar to the ways that hetero- sexuals do/did not accept gay and lesbian people; that gay and lesbian people did/ do not understand accept bisexual people; or gay, lesbian, and bisexual people did/do not understand transgender people. In this way, enacting any biases toward these groups would be considered microaggressions themselves.

One future direction for research would be the study of microaggres- sions that occur within LGBTQ communities. Previous studies highlighted some of the ways these occur; for instance, in one study, lesbians described microaggressions they experienced from bisexual women, and bisexual women described microaggressions from lesbians (Nadal et al., 2011). Transgender people (especially transgender women) are cognizant of microaggressions they encounter from cisgender men, and LGBTQ people with disabilities have identified both systemic and interpersonal microag- gressions within the LGBTQ community (Nadal, 2013). LGBTQ people of

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color can identify the many types of racial microaggressions they encoun- ter with LGBTQ communities, with examples of exclusion or lack of representation, bias through dating, and exoticization (Nadal, Erazo, Shulman, Han, & Deutsch, 2017).

Relatedly, noted in many of these studies (e.g., Lomash et al., 2019; Nadal, 2019) are the disproportionate overrepresentations of White LGBTQ samples and underrepresentation of LGBTQ communities of color (e.g., particularly Black Americans and indigenous people). While this is a trend that matches LGBTQ research in general, it is critical to make more intentional efforts to represent communities of color in order to fully understand how race, ethnicity, and other intersectional identities impact LGBTQ people’s lived experiences. In this regard, it must be noted that there are very few studies that collect data on ability status, further marginalizing and erasing people with disabilities—especially LGBTQ people with disabilities.

One other way to further empirically support microaggression theory (particularly studies involving LGBTQ communities) is to conduct experi- mental, epidemiological, and mixed methodological designs with large sam- ples. While multiple quantitative and qualitative methods have been employed—using online surveys to in-person focus groups—measuring microaggressions in these ways can assist in telling a more complete story about how microaggressions impact LGBTQ people’s lives. As such, there is a need for funding opportunities that focus on LGBTQ communities, with specific intents to recruit underrepresented LGBTQ populations (e.g., people of color, transgender and genderqueer people, people with disabilities). And because there are limitations to the types of federal or government funding goes to LGBTQ research, it is important for foundations and LGBTQ phi- lanthropists to consider ways to advance our communities.

Finally, LGBTQ-led organizations and support systems are important in assisting LGBTQ people in navigating and fighting against microaggressions. For instance, GLSEN has brought to light the many obstacles that LGBTQ youth face in primary and secondary school systems (Greytak, Kosciw, Villenas, & Giga, 2016), while the LGBTQ Scholars of Color Network was founded with the mission of advancing LGBTQ communities of color in academia (Nadal, 2016). Organizations such as the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) annually documents the experiences of LGBTQ survivors of hate violence (Waters, 2017), while Lambda Legal (2010, 2015) documents how systemic oppression against LGBTQ people still per- sists—citing discrimination in health care, legal settings, or other systems. The thousands of LGBTQ-affirming organizations that exist across the world are necessary in continuing to validate the existence of LGBTQ people, particularly highlighting their resilience in navigating microaggressions, overt discrimination, violence, and systemic oppression.

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In conclusion, I believe this special issue on LGBTQ people and micro- aggressions advances the science and practice in microaggression theory, and I hope it provides provocation for more critical models and studies to emerge. In order to truly advocate for equity for LGBTQ communities (and the decrease or erasure of systemic and interpersonal discrimination), scholars, activists, community leaders, public servants, practitioners, and others must first acknowledge how microaggressions impact LGBTQ people’s lives and then work together to instill change on systemic and group levels.

Acknowledgments

Special thank you to the team of peer reviewers who assisted in this process, including Steph Anderson, Rebecca Campon, Kim Case, Melissa Corpus, Kristin Davidoff, Cirleen DeBlare, Tanya Erazo, Lourdes Follins, Alexis Forbes, Carlton Green, Cara Jacobson, Marc Johnston Guerrero, Mira Krishnan, Omar Martinez, Anthony Ocampo, Nic Rider, María Scharron-del Rio, Richard Shin, Avy Skolnik, Charlotte Tate, and Gina Torino. They represent many academic and clinical specialties, sexual orientations, gender identities, racial and ethnic identities, and other backgrounds, and their collective perspectives were invaluable in ensur- ing this special issue was an inclusive success.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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