Adolescents’ judgments of homophobic harassment toward male and female victims: The role of gender stereotypes

One hundred and fifty-six adolescents, drawn from a high school in a Midwestern suburb, provided judgments of a hypothetical incident of homophobic harassment with either a male or female victim. Participants also completed a revised version of the Macho Scale, measuring their endorsement of gender stereotypes (α =.75). Without the interaction term, victim gender was not predictive of judgments of the harassment, however, endorsement of gender stereotypes decreased the odds of believing the behavior was completely wrong (χ² (1) = 9.18, p =.00). Once added, the interaction term was the only significant variable in the model, demonstrating that endorsement of gender stereotypes has an effect on judgments of homophobic harassment of male victims, but not female victims (χ² (1) = 4.78, p =.03). As more schools invest resources in anti-harassment initiatives, our findings suggest that discussion of gender and gender stereotypes is essential.