When disaster strikes, not everyone is affected the same way. A growing body of research shows the experiences of sexually and gender diverse people are frequently very different to those of heterosexual people.
Our research in Australia and New Zealand sought to explore and make visible the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people, among other sexual and gender identities.
People who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex or queer can have quite different experiences but are often incorrectly lumped together as one “community”. In fact, there are multiple communities.
For our research, we wanted to know how disasters affected these people and communities, about their experiences with government and other support agencies and what positive experiences they’d had of resilience, coping and adapting.