‘Gender troubles’ in researching violence towards LGBTQ+ people: a case study from Italy

This paper presents results from a mixed methods study on discrimination and violence against lgbtq+ people conducted in the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy) in 2021–2022. The research is situated in a country without specific laws against hate crimes towards sexual and gender minorities, and where the production of applicable information is weak. Our analysis pursues two goals related to a gendered reading of physical/sexual violence and verbal harassment towards lgbtq+ people. The first has a descriptive nature: to estimate how the incidence of selected forms of interpersonal violence interacts with the sex/gender identifications of victimized people. The second goal – that shifts from description to interpretation – is about exploring different understandings of the sex/gender regime that emerge from the experiences of victimization reported. Results show that ‘engendering’ assumes rather different – although overlapping – meanings when it comes to interpreting homophobia or transphobia. Against the tendency to consider different gender perspectives as mutually exclusive or antagonistic, we propose that they should be considered complementary. The potentialities and limitations of a standardized method of research are also discussed in relation to attempts to account for discrimination and violence against lgbtq+ people adopting an intersectional gaze.