Sexual citizenship and lifetime sexual assault: exploring the risks for sexual minority women with a physical limitation

Abstract

This exploratory study examines how the intersection of physical impairment, sexual minority status, and gender affects lifetime sexual assault. Persons with a physical disability, sexual minorities, and women all experience high rates of sexual assault. However, the intersection of these identities is rarely studied. The author draws on the concept of sexual citizenship to contextualize how vulnerability affects populations with multiple marginalized identities. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health Wave 4, analysis showed that both physical limitation and sexual minority status were positively correlated with higher risks of lifetime sexual assault in Binary Logistic Regression. Predicted probabilities derived from analysis indicated that sexual minority status had a larger effect than physical limitation on lifetime sexual assault, but sexual minority women with a physical limitation had the highest risk of having experienced sexual assault.