Violence and controlling behaviors in same-sex couples: a preliminary analysis in a sample of Italian sexual minorities

Introduction: Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is considered any behavior within a couple that involves behaviors of physical, sexual, emotional and/or psychological abuse, and controlling behavior. Research has focused primarily on the study of IPV in heterosexual couples. Although there have been many efforts to investigate these dynamics in non-heterosexual couples in recent years, there is still a need to investigate IPV in same-sex couples to fill this gap. Method: Participants have been recruited through a snowball sampling and have completed an online-based survey. We reached 40 Italian same-sex couples (n=80) aged from 18 and 58 years (M=28.01; SD=7.41). To verify our hypotheses, we used measures to assess sexism, internalized homophobia, couple satisfaction, social support, economic control, and isolating control. Therefore, physical violence, psychological violence, sexual coercion, and the presence of injury due to a fight with a partner were assessed through a self-report measure. Paired-samples T-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) have been used for our preliminary investigation. Correlation analysis has been conducted to evaluate the association between IPV and other individual and dyadic variables. Results: ANOVA results suggest that there are no differences in total IPV perpetration between male and female same-sex couples. Paired-sample T-test showed no differences between partners’ IPV perpetration mean scores for physical violence, sexual coercion, and injury. Significant differences have been shown for psychological IPV perpetration t(39)=-2.683; p<.05. Correlation analyses showed a significant negative correlation of couple satisfaction with physical IPV (r=-.271, p=<.01) and psychological IPV (r=-.461, p=<.001) and a significative positive correlation of economic control towards the partner with physical IPV (r=.184, p=<.05) and psychological IPV (r=.332, p=<.001). Finally, sexual coercion has a significant positive correlation with malevolent sexism towards females (r=.204; p=<.05) and with internalized homophobia (r=.217, p=<.05). Conclusions: These preliminary analyses seem to confirm the relation between IPV and some both individual and dyadic variables such as relationship satisfaction, sexism, and internalized homophobia and with other forms of violence such as controlling behavior. Moreover, it seems that both partners perpetrate the same amount of psychological IPV, sexual coercion, and injury within the couples, but different amount of physical IPV.