One of the main European laws on these issues determines an education based on the principles of citizenship and democracy, without any violence, for all children, adolescents and the youth. Nevertheless, preventing the conflict of interests, injustice or incompetence from concealing the social problems afflicting the youth has not proven possible. Bullying remains as one example of a hidden social problem (but certainly not the only one). This happens in all school organizations as well as in different institutions and, even though much has been done since its recognition as a real fact with evaluations made as regards its negative effects on students suffering such abuse, the problem has yet to be eradicated (Carrera, DePalma, & Lameiras, 2011; Defensor Del Pueblo, 2007; Ortega, Mora-Merchán, & Jäger, 2007).

Bullying does not represent a phenomenon exclusive to the Portuguese society. However, only recently did scientific outputs around this issue begin to increase and gain widespread dissemination in the media (Defensor Del Pueblo, 2006; Barrio, Martín, Almeida, & Barrios, 2003; Machado, 2011).

Olweus (1993, 1994) defines the term bullying as referring to a student who is intimidated and victimized through exposure to negative actions by one or more individuals, repeated over time. This negative action incorporates someone causing or attempting to cause intentional harm or distress to another person (Olweus, 1994). This repeated violence may be psychological, physical and/or sexual (Carvalhosa, Kima, & Matos, 2001; Defensor Del Pueblo, 2006).

The homophobic bullying concept has emerged from the need to identify motivations behind acts of violence among peers within school contexts and correspondingly perceived as specifically motivated by sexual orientation based upon sexual orientation related prejudice. Therefore, this may represent repeated violent behaviour performed by one or more students towards their peers, with the particularity that the students perpetrating such aggression appropriate homophobia, sexism and the values associated to heterosexism in order to exclude, isolate, insult and assault peers who break the normative patterns of gender identity and sexual orientation or, indeed, any other student who perceives or represents himself or herself as LGBT (Méndez, 2007).

Some studies indicate two similarities between general bullying1 and homophobic bullying: both widely disseminated within the school context, and they are not often reported (Mishna, Newman, Daley, & Solomon, 2009). However, these authors also identify three items of homophobic bullying that appear unique. First, the fact that we live in a homophobic society and our culture not only legitimizes the practice of homophobia in school contexts, but also in the family, in religious institutions, in social policies, with state laws and in the media. Secondly, the paradox arising out of how revealing one's sexual orientation, potentially crucial to gaining social support, simultaneously represents a factor of risk as, for many young homophobic bullying victims, revealing their non-normative sexual orientation to their peers and to adults increases the risk of losing social support (Newman, 2002). Finally, despite the exponential scientific production about bullying in general and the consequential launching of public policy interventions designed to eradicate this kind of violence between equals, the motivations encouraging the bullying of LGBT people have been either denied or diluted – frequently by certain professionals and political organizations. This latter situation leads to a bias which hides other particular motivations in reducing all forms of violence in school contexts into a general bullying category (Greene, 2006) thereby camouflaging information vital to intervention and the prevention of homophobic bullying.

We would importantly stress that the bullying label may also ignore a series of actions, such as racist, xenophobic, ageist,2 ableist,3 homophobic, transphobic, ethnic and religious attacks. Thus, attention should be paid to the motivations driving these behaviours in order to successfully deal with bullying victims (Greene, 2006; Rigby, 2002). Therefore, providing visibility to research about homophobic bullying proves essential alongside understanding just which characteristics make victims vulnerable. Hence, this reflects the aims of this study: ascertaining the characteristics of homophobic bullying in Portuguese schools; particularly identifying the most associated features such as the age group with the greatest probability of violence, the victim's and aggressor's sex, the most common locations of such violence, the most frequent types of violence (e.g. psychological, physical and/or sexual violence), the victim's feelings; with whom the victims talked about violence and the reactions obtained. It is sought to identify the configurations of homophobic bullying and, consequently, promote action tools able to protect the most vulnerable students from peer violence in schools – specifically homophobic bullying.

While presenting the results, we also indicate the disposition of the eight indicators (the discrimination measures) and we further detail the two dimensions selected – dimension one: victim's characteristics and dimension two: the characteristics and impacts of violence (Fig. 1) – in conjunction with a table setting out the discrimination values and those variables contributing to the dimensions (Table 1). Finally, we put forward a description of the multidimensional space characterized by the interdependence of the qualitative indicators through the fundamental support of graphical representations (Fig. 2).

Figure 1.

Indicators display (measures of discrimination).

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Figure 2.

Homophobic bullying patterns.

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The first dimension chiefly includes the indicators relating to the victim's features (how old he/she was when becoming a victim and the victim's sex). In the second dimension we report indicators relating to the characteristics and impacts of violence (violence type, the context where violence happened and the victim's feelings).

Discrimination measures quantify the variance in each indicator. An indicator proves equally or more important to a dimension as its ability to discriminate between the objects under analysis is greater. In addition to the discrimination measures, another measure is often deemed relevant to portray the quality of indicators – their contribution towards explaining the variance in each dimension – through a comparison of the importance of these indicators within each dimension.

The victim's sex and how old he/she was when becoming a victim represent the indicators both most discriminating and making the largest contribution to dimension one.

The context where violence happened, the violence type and the victim's feelings constitute the strongest indicators of discrimination in dimension two. The context where violence happened stands out as the indicator that contributes the most to this dimension, followed by the violence type and, finally, the victim's feelings.

The aggressor's sex, with whom he/she spoke about violence, the reaction of the person who he/she told about the violence are the indicators that discriminate this dimension the most even if they only do so slightly.

MCA features four patterns of homophobic bullying for our sample with different features, described broadly as follows:

Pattern one – also stated as male violence –constituted of male victims (boys). They were victims, predominantly aged from five to 14 years old; the violence locations were mainly during breaks in school and in its vicinity. They suffered psychological violence, told teachers and friends, and experienced negative feelings, but there was no refusal to go to school. Boys perpetrated the attack.

Pattern two – also stated as female violence – features female victims (girls). These victims were assaulted at ages of older than 14 years old. The violence locations were not specific with the abuse occurring in different settings both in school and in the vicinity of school. They told friends and other people about the violence, some gave them support and some did nothing. Boys and girls perpetrated the aggression.

Pattern three – violence with slighter perceptions of the impact – does not differentiate between the victim's sex and includes both boys and girls. The violence occurs during school breaks with victims suffering psychological violence and telling teachers and friends. The victim's feeling in relation to the violence was neutral/did not bother them.

Pattern four – violence with greater perceptions of the impact – is composed of male and female victims. The violence occurred in class and in the vicinity of the school and happened across various age groups. They suffered physical and psychological violence with victims reporting negative feelings, including refusal to go to school. In some cases, the abuse even resulted in a change of school.

Using Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), we identified eight core indicators related to homophobic bullying. We then selected two dimensions as spatial structural axes of violence representation (dimension one: victim's characteristics, and dimension two: characteristics and impacts of violence). These results corroborate previous studies on the fundamental characteristics involved in bullying situations, particularly the victim's characteristics and the characteristics of the violence. From these two dimensions and by evaluating these situations, victims would select coping strategies in order to deal with the violence experienced (Kochenderfer-Ladd & Skinner, 2002). Whenever recognizing external sources of support, these may serve as protective factors against the emergence of negative consequences for victims.

In addition, through Multiple Correspondence Analysis, we were able to identify four different patterns to peer violence in schools along with their respective possible effects. Analysis of these patterns results in the observation of the specific characteristics of each pattern, aspects that respectively served to name them: pattern one – male violence; pattern two – female violence; pattern three – violence with slighter perceptions of the impact; pattern four – violence with greater perceptions of the impact.

Boys turned out to be the youngest victims (aged from five to 14 years old). The victimization took place during school breaks, during classes and in the school neighbourhood.

Victims have told teachers and friends about the violence. Furthermore, the type of violence was psychological, and while it generated negative feelings it did not lead to refusals to attend school. Girls were older victims (aged over 14 years old) than boys, with violence occurring throughout the school environment. Girls informed friends about violence but did not report it to teachers (patterns one and two).

Some studies about bullying indicate that victimization takes place at an early age and that violence decreases with age (Matos & Carvalhosa, 2001; Olweus, 1994). In this regard, increasing age acts as a protective factor for these young people. We may explain these literature data by taking Pattern one into account, since victimization occurs to younger people in this pattern. Contrastingly, we may report that victimization occurred with older students in Pattern two. However, there is a fundamental difference in these two patterns regarding the sex of victims, i.e. victimization of boys occurred earlier than that of their female peers.

With regard to the context where homophobic bullying took place, these are specific in Pattern one whereas Pattern two encounters widespread locations of violence. One possible explanation for these results encapsulates the following: in Pattern one, the victim's evaluation of the occurrence of violence might lead him/her to adopt coping strategies whenever facing violent contexts and, consequently, avoiding violence, in particular, telling teachers about violence or even purposefully socializing with other people identified as harmless and non-threatening. For girls, and as the locations of aggression remained not specific, possible violent situations might prove more difficult to predict and, therefore, they do not trust institutional support networks.

Some studies indicate that boys – more than girls – may simultaneously be the victims and also the perpetrators of bullying situations (Matos & Carvalhosa, 2001; Olweus, 1994). These findings are consistent with our research results; when identifying the aggressor's sex, boys were always present, even when the victims were female. We encountered no event in which the perpetrators were exclusively female.

Pattern three more closely relates to violence, with slighter perceptions of the resulting impacts (from the victim's perspective). In this pattern, we found both male and female victims. This group stated neutral feelings towards the situation of violence, and when telling friends and teachers about the violence, they spoke only about psychological violence, perhaps because the victim perceives this pattern as having lower levels of impact on him/herself. One possible hypothesis for these results may drive from the victim having chosen suitable coping strategies, particularly talking to teachers and friends about violence.

Both Pattern four and Pattern three include both male and female victims. In Pattern four violence took place nearby school and during classes, occurred across diverse age ranges with the violence both physical and psychological in nature. This is the only group that features physical violence and negative feelings, including the refusal to go to school. Victims perceived violence as having the largest impact on their lives, encouraging negative feelings and refusal to attend school. This result is strongly associated with the existence of two types of violence (psychological and physical) and its reiteration, increasing the severity of violence. Rivers (2004) denotes that these people may develop post-traumatic stress because they have experienced bullying in school, motivated by homophobia among their peers, for a long time.

A central feature – which is cross-cutting to all patterns, relates to the absence of sharing this information with the family. This result was also returned by previous studies on this subject (Kochenderfer-Ladd & Skinner, 2002). One feasible explanation for the fact that victims did not talk with their families about the violence might interrelate with fears over losing family support as disclosure implies revealing a non-normative sexual orientation. This may represent the central motive to silencing violence.

Although we might have predicted that non-normative sexual orientation constitutes a risk variable for the occurrence of homophobic bullying, this was not confirmed. Violence was also perpetrated against people who identified themselves as heterosexual but probably due to the perception they were homosexual or bisexual. This perception may stem from stereotypes as regards the behaviours and attitudes of homosexual and bisexual people. However, some confusion about the meaning of gender identity and sexual orientation does seem to prevail. For instance, there are boys who perform more feminine behaviours and girls who perform more masculine behaviours. These behaviours are more commonly associated with a non-heterosexual orientation than with a non-normative gender identity.

For school communities to act preventively towards situations of homophobic bullying in schools, learning is required about who these victims actually are, as well as the settings which are most conducive to the occurrence of violence. This conveys our main goal in developing this study due to the need to identify the patterns whereby homophobic bullying occurs in Portuguese schools.

In understanding the four patterns of homophobic bullying, this study acts as a guide for the prevention of future violence situations, recognizing people, contexts, ages and characteristics that make one person vulnerable to such abuse.

Therefore, this study represents one contribution towards the development of tools of action able to strengthen sexual citizenship in young people attending Portuguese schools, and giving education professionals the guidelines to enable them to act differently with students. Thus, we need to encourage the development of studies rendering this type of violence visible, enabling evaluations and interventions to occur earlier and on a more specialized basis and, overall, contributing to the eradication of social exclusion and violence in school contexts.

Increasing awareness about homophobic bullying may also endorse an understanding of bullying in general and thus ensuring all boys and girls benefit and correspondingly providing a greater substance to multifaceted and multi-sectoral interventions (Mishna et al., 2009). As part of the educational community, society and families hold a clear responsibility for violence at school in general and for homophobic bullying in particular. Therefore, an integrated and entirely inclusive intervention is crucial (Méndez, 2007) to eradicate such violence and develop strategies to recognize, accept and integrate differences (González & López, 2009).