Discomfort, Dissonance and Prioritization among Individuals with Two Stigmatized Identities

This project seeks to understand how discomfort with stigma influences LGBT-POC (people of color) identity selection, especially in today's social climate where many people assume we have progressed past prejudicial disadvantages. Thus the main research question is: For LGBT-POC, are feelings of discomfort from interactions with members of one of these identity groups associated with prioritization of one identity over the other? Using a data set titled the Social Justice Sexuality Project reported identity importance is measured. I am testing for evidence that individuals prioritize one stigmatized identity over the other. I found that discomfort in one's LGBT community because of respondent's racial/ethnic identity and discomfort in one's racial/ethnic community because of respondent's sexual identity both result in a reduced likelihood of prioritizing that identity. This quantitative analysis should be seen as a precursory exercise as well as a step towards demonstrating the need for nationally representative surveys of LGBT-POC.