ATTITUDES TOWARDS GENDER DIVERSITY AND HOMOPHOBIA IN MEXICAN UNIVERSITY NURSING STUDENTS

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Sexual and gender diversity is an expression of human identification, reflecting emotions, attractions, ideologies, and expressions that society often considers atypical. When there are behaviors framed outside the norm, inappropriate human responses such as rejection, discrimination, isolation, mockery, and forms of violence based on prejudice, stereotypes, stigmas and homophobia, the latter being an aberrant characteristic that currently hinders the integral development of LGBTTTIQ+ groups. OBJECTIVE: Identify the relationship between gender diversity and homophobia in Mexican nursing students. METHODOLOGY: Quantitative, non-experimental, descriptive and correlational study, with a cross-sectional type, applying the Sexual and Gender Diversity Attitudes Scale and the Homophobia Scale to 250 students of a public nursing university, located in the city of Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico. Results: 89.6% of the population identified themselves as cisgender, 3.2% bigender, 15.6% bisexual, and 5.2% homosexual; the young people had an average age of 20.57 years and dedicated an average of 1.28 hours to religious activities. The Rho Spearman test was applied, showing that there is a high interaction between the dependent variables of the study (Attitude towards gender diversity, Homophobia: CRS: -0.131; Sig: 0.039<0.05). CONCLUSION: It is established that attitudes towards gender diversity are directly related to homophobia, due to the fact that, when there is a prejudice regarding sexuality, the perception of people's sexual identity will be similar. Therefore, it is essential to implement training activities to prevent discrimination against the LGBTTTIQ+ community.