Beyond the Binary: Exploring the Role of Ambiguity in Biphobia and Transphobia

Abstract

A sample of 273 college students who were heterosexual completed measures of religious fundamentalism and three aspects of social cognition to test the proposition that there are key differences between the bases of different sexual and gender prejudices (homophobia, transphobia, and biphobia). Specifically, because bisexuality and transgenderism are ambiguous by nature, with bisexuality challenging the sexual orientation binary and transgenderism challenging the gender binary, it was predicted that fear of invalidity and possibly need for structure would be associated with greater biphobia and transphobia, but not homophobia, over and above the general effect of religious fundamentalism. Need for cognition was predicted to be associated with lower prejudice across homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia. Results were supportive of the predictions, with fear of invalidity being associated with transphobia and biphobia, but not homophobia, even after controlling for religious fundamentalism and the other social cognition variables.