“Not Built for Us”: Structural Inequities and the Limits of Bystander Intervention for LGBTQIA2S+ Young Adults

Background and Purpose: Bystander intervention is widely implemented to prevent sexual and relationship violence (SRV), yet existing models assume that harm is readily identifiable and that individuals share common understandings of risk, vulnerability, and response. These assumptions obscure how structural inequities shape whether violence is recognized. For LGBTQIA2S+ young adults, cisheteronormativity (and intersecting forms of harm such as ableism and racism) may fundamentally alter how harm is interpreted, rendering some experiences less visible and less likely to prompt intervention. This study centers LGBTQIA2S+ survivors’ perspectives to examine how structural conditions shape recognition of violence and the implications for bystander intervention.

Methods: We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 29 LGBTQIA2S+ young adults who experienced SRV while in college. Participants represented diverse gender identities, sexual orientations, and racial and ethnic backgrounds. Interviews focused on experiences of violence and bystander responses before, during, and after incidents. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we examined how participants described processes of recognizing, interpreting, and responding to harm within social and institutional contexts.

Results: Our findings indicate that bystander intervention is constrained by structural conditions that shape how harm is recognized, interpreted, and responded to. Participants described persistent uncertainty in naming their experiences as violence, particularly when incidents occurred within queer relationships or fell outside dominant cisgender heterosexual scripts (“Was this assault or was it not?”). This uncertainty was reinforced by bystanders’ similar difficulty recognizing harm, especially when survivors’ identities or gender presentation disrupted normative expectations of vulnerability. As participants described, “my identity is distracting,” with attention directed toward interpreting identity rather than assessing risk. Recognition failures were further shaped by developmental and community contexts. Many participants described experiencing violence while newly navigating LGBTQIA2S+ identities and relationships, with limited shared scripts for identifying “red flags” and bystanders often minimizing risk in queer contexts. These dynamics were compounded by institutional responses described as “not built for us,” including services that misinterpreted distress, relied on heteronormative assumptions, or required survivors to educate providers about their identities. Participants who also experienced ableism and racism described additional layers of misrecognition, in which expressions of distress or need were dismissed, pathologized, or rendered illegible. Despite these barriers, participants identified LGBTQIA2S+ community networks as critical sites of recognition, validation, and support. In contrast to formal systems, these spaces enabled harm to be named and responded to in ways that were more attuned to participants’ identities and lived experiences.

Conclusions and Implications: These findings extend bystander intervention research by identifying recognition as a structurally shaped mechanism that constrains prevention for LGBTQIA2S+ young adults. Failures of intervention are not solely attributable to individual inaction, but to systems that render certain forms of violence less legible. Advancing social justice in SRV prevention requires reorienting bystander models to address how cisheteronormativity and ableism shape perception, credibility, and response. Prevention efforts should expand beyond individual skill-building to include structural and community-based approaches that support diverse ways of recognizing and responding to harm. This shift is necessary to develop more equitable and effective violence prevention strategies for LGBTQIA2S+ young adults.