María Victoria Carrera-Fernández

Spanish Adolescents’ Attitudes toward Transpeople: Proposal and Validation of a Short Form of the Genderism and Transphobia Scale

The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a short form of the Genderism and Transphobia Scale and assess adolescents’ attitudes toward transpeople. A total of 800 Spanish adolescents aged between 14 and 18 years (50.70% girls, 49.30% boys) completed the Spanish version of the scale and other related questionnaires. The short form of the scale is composed of 12 items clustered into two factors (Transphobia/Genderism and Gender Bashing) that explain 54.22% of the variance. All the items showed good discriminating power, and the present scale demonstrated adequate reliability and validity. In the study, boys exhibited significantly more negative attitudes toward transpeople than girls did, both in the affective/cognitive dimension (Transphobia/Genderism) and in the behavioral dimension (Gender Bashing). Moreover, adolescents showed significantly more negative attitudes toward gender-nonconforming men than toward gender-nonconforming women. These results are discussed in terms of their relevance to the maintenance of discriminatory attitudes toward sexual diversity.

Performing intelligible genders through violence: bullying as gender practice and heteronormative control

ABSTRACT The purpose of the present study was to analyse adolescents’ perception of bullying and particularly of the ways intelligible masculinities and femininities are performed through violence in the framework of Queer Theory. We conducted a qualitative study using focus groups. The sample was composed of 93 Spanish adolescents (48 girls and 45 boys, mean age 13.7 years) who attended 4 compulsory secondary education schools in Spain and participated voluntarily in the study. Students’ statements revealed that bullying is a strongly gendered phenomenon and an additional way of ‘doing gender’, that is, of performing hegemonic femininities and masculinities at school, imitating and reproducing gender norms and punishing those who transgress them.