Dating Violence Among Gay Men in China

This is the first study on the prevalence of dating violence and threats of being forced to “come out of the closet” among Chinese gay men. Data on social demographic information and the experience of dating violence, including types of abuse, threats of “outing,” and the gender of abusers were collected from 418 gay men and 330 heterosexual men by self-administered questionnaires. Mann–Whitney U test, χ2 test, and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to test group differences. Up to 32.8% of the gay men had experienced one abuse or more. Among those experiencing abuse, 83.9% of the gay men never told anyone about their abuse. The experience of any form of abuse by gay men was 5.07 times higher than the rate of abuse among heterosexual men controlling for age in logistic regression models. In addition, 12.4% of the gay men have experienced the threat of being outed. Overall, dating violence is more prevalent in gay men than in heterosexuals. Efforts to prevent dating violence, especially among gay men, should be made in China.

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