Bisexual women ‘especially at risk’ of violence, says report
A United Nations report looking at global LGBT+ issues has found that bisexual women are “especially at risk” of sexual violence.
The report says that LGBT+ people are already at a heightened risk of physical and sexual violence, and that in most cases, sexual orientation or gender identity played a key role in abuse suffered.
However, it goes on to state that bisexual women are more likely than lesbian or gay people to experience violence from a partner.
The report says that the level of sexual violence against bisexual women is “shocking”.
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They point to a survey which found that 61% of bisexual women and 37% of bisexual men had been raped, endured physical violence or been stalked by a partner. 46% of the bisexual women who took part in that survey had been raped.
Despite the shocking levels of violence experienced by bisexual women and men, The Independent says they are often called “the invisible minority” within the LGBT+ community.
The United Nations report comes just days after the UK government published the results of its national LGBT survey, in which 108,000 people participated. A quarter of those who responded to the survey were bisexual.
The survey revealed that LGBT+ respondents were generally less satisfied with their lives than the general population, with trans respondents recording particularly low scores.
Bisexual people reported being less happy with their lives than gay or lesbian people. 6.9 out of 10 gay and lesbian people were happy with their lives compared to just 6.3 bisexual people.
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Overall, 70% of those surveyed said they had avoided being open about their sexual orientation for fear of a negative reaction. However, 80% of the bisexual respondents said they had hidden their sexuality.
Similarly, 67% of bisexual people said they hadn’t discussed their sexual orientation with healthcare staff in the 12 months before the survey, compared to 36% of gay and lesbian people.
Meanwhile, survey results from the Office for National Statistics in May found that bisexual women were almost twice as likely to have experienced partner abuse than heterosexual women.
The same survey found that bisexual women were almost five times as likely as heterosexual women to have experienced sexual assault by a partner.
