From rights to reality: gender essentialism and subjective wellbeing among LGBTQ+ youth in Buenos Aires

Argentina may be considered a regional leader in gender and sexual diversity policy, yet relatively little is known about LGBTQ+ adolescents' lived experiences. As a first descriptive step toward addressing this gap, this study examined differences in essentialist beliefs about gender and sexuality and subjective wellbeing among secondary school students in Buenos Aires, comparing LGBTQ+ youth with their non-LGBTQ+ peers. Data were collected through an anonymous self-report questionnaire administered to 1,037 students (ages 16–18) across 21 public and private schools. LGBTQ+ status was derived from independent measures of gender identity and sexual attraction, yielding an estimated LGBTQ+ prevalence of 23.5%, a figure that challenges potential assumptions about the group's representational size in school settings. Results indicate that LGBTQ+ students report significantly lower subjective wellbeing than their non-LGBTQ+ peers, particularly regarding perceived social support and optimism about the future. At the same time, LGBTQ+ students exhibit significantly lower levels of essentialist beliefs about gender and sexuality, both in their normative judgments of gender roles and in their beliefs about the biological basis and immutability of gender and sexual attraction. A control task on shyness showed no group differences. Together, these findings showed the coexistence of lower subjective wellbeing and less essentialist beliefs about gender and sexuality among LGBTQ+ adolescents, within the legal and institutional context prevailing at the time of data collection, highlighting the need to examine how formal rights relate to adolescents' lived experiences of inclusion.