“It’s like Slapping Somebody in the Face in the Middle of Sex”: An Intersectional Exploration of Emotional Abuse in Queer Relationships

Abstract

Purpose

This study identifies and analyzes missed opportunities to examine how race and racism intersect with intimate partner violence in queer relationships.

Method

Guided by the concept of intersectionality, the article reviews the literature on emotional abuse in queer intimate relationships to understand when and how it engages race. The article features an in-depth examination of several studies that failed to consider the racial dimensions of emotional or psychological abuse, even when the sample was made up mainly of people of color. The article juxtaposes these “colorblind” studies with several excerpts from the LGBT Relationships Study. This study entailed interviewing 99 LGBT people in three major U.S. cities about their romantic relationships over the lifespan. Certain participants’ discussion of how racism surfaced in their intimate relationships suggest that sexual racism may constitute an overlooked form of emotional abuse.

Results

Many studies failed to recruit racially diverse samples or recruited racially diverse samples but did not discuss the racial experiences of the participants. Although some of these studies attended to gender, age, power, and/or HIV status, they did not similarly examine how race intersects with emotional abuse.

Conclusion

Scholars should be more intentional and curious about how racial discrimination may factor into emotional abuse. Interventions may include providing participants with specific examples of racial insults and asking whether they have encountered them. Scholars should also explore building bridges between the IPV literature and the literature on sexual racism because of convergence between these phenomena.