Anyone who believes that Canada is a generally more open society with less prejudice towards sexual orientation should read this recent Statistics Canada report. After controlling for other factors (such as age, living in an urban/rural area, income, student status, and frequency of going out at night), a recent analysis found that gay men and lesbians were nearly twice as likely as straights to be violently victimized; even worse, people who are bisexual had a 4.5 times greater risk of being victimized by violence.
Now admittedly, this analysis doesn’t speak to whether these victimizations were related directly to their sexual orientation (i.e. gay-bashing), but it stands to reason that at least some of them are. They do not seem, however, to feel victimized, however:
Despite experiencing higher rates of violence, gays, lesbians and bisexuals did not express higher levels of fear than their heterosexual counterparts.
Overall, more than 9 out of 10 gay, lesbian and bisexual Canadians indicated that they were “somewhat” or “very” satisfied with their personal safety, a proportion which was similar to heterosexuals.
It would be interesting to see the same study done with regards to transsexual/transgendered folks: I have a bad feeling that the victimization rates would be even higher for that population.
The full study is available here.
