Bi women suffer more sexual violence: “It's not just the attacks, our word is questioned more”
“Added to this is the deception that is assumed of bisexual women, as Coston details: ‘One of the most common forms of biphobia includes the assumption that being attracted to multiple genders makes a person more likely to cheat or be unfaithful. This, clearly, can lead to violence. For example, controlling certain behaviors such as who they spend time with or who they write to; manipulation (such as blaming or criticizing the clothes you wear); threats of self-harm by the partner; and, sometimes, physical and sexual violence.’”
LGBTQIA+ health research is not niche, it’s necessary, and one nursing student is showing us why
“Symanowitz is collaborating with another VCU faculty in the College of Humanities and Sciences to inform this work. Seeing a need to investigate social determinants of health, Symanowitz worked with Ethan Coston, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies whose own work deals with health care disparities of the LGBTQIA+ community. “Given that there seems to be little expertise or focus on LGBTQIA+ health generally, let alone trans people and populations specifically, collaboration across and between disciplines is vital for students today. While I may not have formal training in nursing, I do have formal and advanced training in LGBTQIA+ health,” Coston said. They say that work like Symanowitz’s is important not only because it invites a responsible transdisciplinary scholarship approach, but also because it gives visibility to an underrepresented and unresolved health issue.”
Spark Special Series
Living an LGBTQIA2+ Life: Enacting Health Justice for a Flourishing Future. Click below to read the articles featured in the series.
VCU News - January 2022
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded a major research grant to Virginia Commonwealth University to develop, test and implement a comprehensive assessment of sexual health. B. Ethan Coston, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies in the College of Humanities and Sciences, will serve as principal investigator.
The grant, “Improving Sexual Health for 2LGBTQIA+ People in the U.S.,” totals $462,748, making it the largest in the history of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies.
USA Today - July 2020
“The self-proclaimed “anti-feminist lawyer” Roy Den Hollander positioned himself as a key figure in “men’s rights activism,” a movement animated by grievances that men are ceding their rights to feminism writ large. Den Hollander, 72, died this week from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after a shooting at U.S. District Judge Esther Salas’ home left her son dead and her husband in critical condition. Den Hollander, who once described Salas as “a lazy and incompetent Latina judge," is suspected of carrying out the shooting.
Den Hollander’s beliefs, according to multiple reports, were steeped in outwardly misogynist ideologies: For instance, he published a 152-page screed titled the “Cyclopedia” filled with anti-feminist thought. The most notorious lawsuits he was involved in — filed in the span of a decade — involve a litany of grievances, from allegations that women’s studies in universities violated Title IX legislation to “ladies’ nights” at bars and clubs being discriminatory to men.”
Rewire.News - December 2019
“There has been little movement, structurally and politically, to end what the American Medical Association recently declared an epidemic of violence against transgender people in the United States. There has been far more public and political focus on bathroom access than murders—and while some have argued that more pertinent safety issues should be attended to, conversations and proposed legal changes about gender-neutral bathrooms do often stem from bias and exclusion experienced by trans youth at school. Violence and harassment targeted at trans people doesn’t start in their adulthood—it begins and builds where socialization occurs: in the classroom and on campus.”
Rewire.News - February 2019
“When all is said and done, limiting our understanding of intimate partner violence and sexual assault and disregarding the need for long-term, bipartisan reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act has detrimental impacts on survivors’ mental and physical health and severely limits their access to post-traumatic survivors’ services. Even more devastating, these changes send a clear message to all of us who are survivors at the intersections of other targeted identities: You are not valued, violence against you is not a serious issue, and your safety is not important to us. When combined with the desire to end asylum protections for survivors of violence, the current administration has participated in the active and continued marginalization, discrimination, and dehumanization of LGBTQ people, Black and Indigenous people of color, immigrants, and disabled people.”
Students present ideas about accessibility in interactive symposium
Access4All, an interactive research symposium was held on Friday, April 26, 2019 in the Cabell Library Lecture Hall, features students from Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies presenting projects about how society as a whole looks at accessibility.
VCU Lavender Empowerment Summit
A student describes my session “Increasing Neurodivergent & Disabled Perspectives in Social Justice Advocacy.”
Disabled and/or neurodiverse people are underrepresented in social justice groups and movements. Even disability advocacy groups tend to exclude members of the community, particularly those with mental and cognitive disabilities and those belonging to marginalized groups, such as people in LGBTQ+ communities and people of color. This workshop focuses on how to move beyond awareness and into inclusion and equity of marginalized, disabled and neurodivergent perspectives, talents, and contributions to social justice advocacy.
Methodologies in Sexualities Studies
Read more about my collaborative featured plenary at this preconference.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New Connections Research Spotlight
VCU Professor Receives Grant to Study Health of Bisexual and Non Monosexual Women
"'I think it's important to highlight where inequalities exist, where we can get better, and a large part of that, I think, is in partnering with, or increasing funding to, these local organizations that already know how to do it,' Coston said.
Hopefully, Coston says, this research will help inform policymakers in their efforts to support survivors, regardless of how they identify.
'I want to make the world a place where there is no violence; but in the meantime, I want to make sure everyone has equitable access to healthcare that is rooted in anti-oppression frameworks, so that survivors don't have to suffer the negative physical and mental health outcomes of victimization or the revictimization that often occurs when seeking help,' Coston said."
Two students will use research fellowships to advance inclusiveness
Two Virginia Commonwealth University undergraduates, Cheyenne Johnson and Christine Wyatt, are recipients of Undergraduate Research Fellowships for Inclusive Excellence for 2017.
Each fellow receives a $1,500 award, while their faculty mentors receive a $500 award. Both Johnson and Wyatt will present their work at the Spring 2018 Poster Day during the Undergraduate Research Symposium. This is the third year that the Division for Inclusive Excellence has sponsored an award.
For Johnson, a rising junior majoring in psychology and minoring in statistics in the College of Humanities and Sciences, that means using existing data to explore how inequality can affect access to mental health care.
Her proposal, “The Role of Inequality on Health Care Seeking,” was inspired by taking the course, “Sex and Sexuality in the U.S.” last fall. The course linked contemporary issues about sexual identity, reproductive rights and sexual violence to “historical legacies of power and control.”