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Think, Re-think:
Domestic violence in lesbian, bisexual and trans relationships
Connie Burk, AABL/Northwest Network of Bisexual, Trans and Lesbian
Survivors of Abuse
First, the Stats
Domestic violence happens in same sex relationships at about the
same rate as in heterosexual relationships. The National Coalition
of Anti-Violence programs conducted a 10-year study in 10 U.S.
cities which documented domestic violence at a rate between 25-33%
in same sex relationships. A 1991 study found that 46% of the women
responding had experienced 2 or more incidents of physical violence
in their relationship (Coleman, 1991). The Survivor Project in
Portland, OR is currently conducting a study of trans people
regarding domestic violence.
Many survivors of same sex abuse indicate that they do not access
mainstream domestic violence programs because the agencies are
ill-equipped to handle the complex intersections of homophobia,
abuse and isolation common for bisexual, lesbian and trans
survivors. Many programs are uncertain how to support these
survivors or are reluctant to address homophobic, biphobic or
transphobic behaviors and attitudes of staff and program
participants. However, more and more programs are considering these
barriers and beginning to train staff, develop procedures and create
values that will allow them to provide competent, safe support for
lesbian, bisexual and trans people.
This article is offered to provide some baseline information
regarding domestic violence in bisexual, trans and lesbian
relationships as well as to frame a number of questions regarding
our Movement’s analysis of domestic violence. I encourage advocates
to examine and critique our thinking in regard to these issues. It
is my intention to keep the values of survivor agency/autonomy,
survivor safety and batterer accountability central to my analysis
of domestic violence.
To examine some of the differences between the experiences of
lesbian, bisexual or trans survivors and the experiences of
heterosexual survivors, we can start by looking at a few of the
tools batterers use to establish and maintain abusive power over
their partners.
Isolation
Because of heterosexism and homophobia, few people grow up having
information about what an empowered, nurturing gay relationship
could look like. Movies, books, music, and jokes routinely represent
queer people as perverted and unnatural. We see love stories that
romanticize heterosexual relationships—even when they are premised
on violence or coercion—but we see few if any representations of gay
people as loving, stable and happy. Heterosexism prevents us from
having access to our own queer culture and to the information that
would teach us how to thrive in queer family.
Abusive partners can point to the multitude of images that represent
gay people as sick and violent and say, “See, this is what it means
to be gay. You will have to toughen up if you are going to survive.
I am not abusing you, I am only showing you the ropes.”
Also, homophobia sets us up to be isolated when we are coming out as
lesbian, trans &/or bisexual. Often when we come out, our friends
and family subtly distance themselves from us or overtly disown us.
Sometimes internalized homophobia can cause us to withdraw from
people in anticipation of their rejection. Often, lesbian, bisexual
and trans people are “allowed” to participate in family activities,
work functions, church celebrations and other sites of community
only as long as we keep silent about relationships and our lives
with our partners.
Batterers can manipulate this insidious form of isolation to enforce
their abuse. If a survivor’s mother says she is worried about her
daughter, the abuser can always insist that homophobia is motivating
the mother’s concern. And when our friends are saying things like,
“That woman is no good to you. I would never put up with that from a
woman—why don’t you find a man and settle into a decent
relationship” --it’s hard to argue that homophobia is not at play.
If we want to be supportive of trans, bisexual and lesbian survivors
of abuse, we will have to examine our own homophobia with the same
diligence that we examine victim blaming.
While people are particularly vulnerable when they are first coming
out, the interplay between the isolation created by homophobia,
biphobia and transphobia and the isolation created by batterers can
be devastating to any survivor—even if she has been out for years.
Sexual Abuse
Like the issue of isolation, the pervasiveness of sexual abuse by
perpetrators of same-sex domestic violence has strong roots in
heterosexism. Most of us grow up with distorted and conflicting
messages about sex. For trans, bisexual and lesbian people, we are
confronted with the ceaseless message that our sexualities are
abnormal and shameful.
There is a lot of silence about sex in our communities. When we do
make space to discuss it, we can become very invested in our sexual
lives being seen as uniformly chosen, powerful and natural—partly
because of our struggle to prove wrong the heterosexist stereotypes
about our lives.
This silence, broken only for an occasional round of “everything’s
fine here”, creates a very vulnerable space for batterers to
exploit. Survivors are unlikely to disclose sexual abuse, or if they
do—may feel intense shame for discussing such a taboo subject.
Sometimes batterers will use sexual abuse to intensify isolation and
control, while never otherwise physically abusing their partner,
simply because they know the silence around sex and sexual abuse
will prevent their partner from disclosing or seeking support.
Threats
Threats to out survivors as having queer identities to family,
employers, ex-spouses and others are a significant tool batterers
use in maintaining systematic power and control over their partners.
For example, a survivor may fear losing his children to an
ex-partner if he is outed as an FTM (female-to-male) transsexual
man.
Wisconsin was the first state in the Union to enact state-wide civil
rights protections for gay, lesbian and bisexual people.
This law protects gay, lesbian and bisexual people from being
discriminated against in housing, employment and public
accommodations. Prior to this law, it was legal to fire a person
from a job because she was a bisexual woman, for example. Domestic
violence advocates should learn about this law and its enforcement
in Wisconsin. When educating in your communities about same sex
domestic and dating violence, share this information with people—it
is likely that many people will not know what their rights are or
how they could report discrimination. It is also important to learn
about the limits of these laws. Are the protections enforced? How?
What custody cases have been before judges in your area? Have gay,
lesbian, bisexual and trans people been awarded custody of their
children? How have ‘dissolution of property’ cases been handled?
Trouble-shooting with a survivor about coming out at work, school,
church or where-ever an abusive partner might be threatening to out
them can be a powerful antidote to the threats. Is there someone who
might be open to hearing that she is trans? Can she come out to a
supervisor who has supported her on other issues in the past? How
about a neighbor or family member? Listen carefully. Don’t dismiss
her fears.
It is also vital not to minimize or dismiss physical threats made by
women who batter. Sometimes advocates assume that a batterer who is
a woman will be less dangerous—whether she is abusing her partner
physically, sexually and emotionally—than a man who batters. To be
blunt, this is a myth. Though this article does not have the space
to itemize the stream of brutalities that survivors report, suffice
it to say they are as varied, terrifying and immobilizing as those
survived at the hands of male batterers.
Using Children
Many sexual minority and gender variant people co-parent children.
Like heterosexual families, some parents adopt, some utilize donor
insemination and some have blended families from prior
relationships. Although many people co-parent, few children have two
legal parents of the same gender. In most cases of adoption, only
one parent is allowed to legally adopt the child. In other cases,
the birth-parent is the only parent with legal rights regarding the
child.
When a survivor who is being battered in a same sex relationship is
not the birth-parent or legally adoptive parent, to leave the
violent partner means to leave her child. In these cases, it is
extremely rare – virtually unheard of – for a court to award
visitation (much less custody) to the survivor. Even in the few
instances when a survivor has legally adopted their partner’s
biological child, it is rare for courts to award custody to the
adoptive parents.
As for heterosexuals, these custody battles are long and expensive.
Unlike heterosexual custody cases, however, in many communities it
is difficult to find attorneys with substantive experience in
pursuing these cases.
Safety Planning in Small Communities
Like faith communities, immigrant and refugee communities and other
close communities—it is often very easy for lesbian batterers to
gather information about their trans, bisexual and lesbian partners.
Most towns and even larger cities have only one or two places where
people “in the life” gather for parties, evenings out, etc. While it
is a myth that all queer people know one another, it is true that
the size of our communities makes overlapping friendships,
partnerships and other relationships a common occurrence.
Unlike safety planning with women in less insular communities,
safety planning with survivors of same sex domestic violence must
include plans for routinely running into her batterer, being in
meetings and community events with her batterer, being seen by and
seeing her batterer. If we don’t work with survivors to anticipate
and plan for such meetings, survivors lose community because it is
impossible to stay safe. Supporting survivors to reconnect and build
community—in spite of her batterer’s attempts to intimidate, isolate
and humiliate her—is a major role of our program.
It is also important to recognize that women who are battered by
their female partners may be accompanied by their batterers to the
women’s bathroom, a women’s changing room, a doctor’s examining room
and even a domestic violence shelter. Women have told stories of
being asked about domestic violence by emergency room nurses while
their violent partners, who were assumed to be a helpful friend or
sister, looked on. Of course, it is wonderful that nurses are asking
about domestic violence, however, we must be aware of our
assumptions about survivors’ lives and what impact these assumptions
can have on their access to support. In short, it is impossible to
assess levels of physical danger without considering batterer access
to the survivor and so-called “safe” women’s space.
Gender variant and sexual minority survivors tend to access their
close friends for support primarily—if not exclusively. Many of us
have extreme distrust for law enforcement, mental health systems,
physicians and other institutions which have historically
incarcerated and institutionalized us in order to enforce
homophobia, racism and classism. As the recent brutal rape of a
Haitian man in New York City by police who believed he was gay
attests, this violence is not simply historic. While this terrible
attack in New York has rightfully received national attention, we
each know of violent or humiliating encounters with police in our
own cities and towns that go unreported and unaddressed. Even where
law enforcement and other systems are working diligently to address
systemic racism, classism and homophobia within their
agencies—officers on the scene rarely have enough time, support or
expertise to successfully determine who is the primary aggressor in
same sex domestic or dating violence cases.
As we continue to seek system reform, we remain aware of how
batterers manipulate current institutions. Batterers may call the
police and report their partner as the abuser, especially if they
believe their own class, skin color, age or other privilege might
work against the survivor. Batterers may make false child abuse
reports or throw away a trans person’s monthly supply of
hormones—knowing that the consequences to the survivor will be
compounded by the institution’s heterosexism and transphobia (as
well as racism, ageism, anti-Semitism or any other oppressive
attitude).
What is the survivor telling you about her experiences with these
institutions? Support survivors in using their critical thinking
skills as well as their intuition in determining when and if it is
safer for them to contact these institutions than not. Be prepared
to advocate for survivors who choose to make these contacts as well
as those who don’t.
Using Vulnerabilities
While advocates often talk and learn about how batterers use their
strengths to manipulate survivor’s vulnerabilities, we rarely talk
about the reverse--how batterers use their vulnerabilities to
manipulate a survivor’s strengths.
Sometimes women who batter have experienced violence in their
past—they may have survived childhood sexual assault, gay-bashing,
battering and/or other forms of violence. These women may use their
prior experience surviving violence as an excuse for their current
behavior. Some batterers insist they cannot be held accountable for
their abusive behaviors because they originally learned them as
survival skills. One survivor who was battered by a woman who had
been abused as a child put it this way,
“I spent my whole time trying to support and protect her. I saw how
badly her family continued to scare and hurt her. I thought I could
be strong enough for both of us. I didn’t want to be the next person
in her life to let her down. Over time though, I began to dread
waking up to another day with her. Whenever I tried to make a
decision for myself or see my family, there was a consequence. She
would attack our friends as soon as they left the house. I began to
hate people who made her mad or upset her because I knew she would
take it out on me. Whenever I tried to confront her on her abusive
behaviors, she became angry, frightened and accusative. But I also
saw how hard she worked to stay present in a world that had hurt her
since she was a baby. I saw how hard she tried to fight off her own
fears—even if that meant projecting them onto me. It wasn’t until I
finally was able to move away that I made the connections between my
experience and domestic violence—even though we both worked at a
domestic violence program while we were together.”
Accountability
It is important to hold people who are engaged in battering their
partners accountable for their abuse—even as we have compassion for
them. Becoming accountable for the abuse they are perpetrating is an
important step for batterers to heal from whatever violence they may
have experienced. We also recognize that people who systematically
take power and control over other people are with us in our
communities most all of the time. When attempts are made to
ostracize or isolate batterers, we find that 1. the person simply
moves to a new community where people are unaware of their abusive
behaviors, 2. the community divides over the choice and blames the
survivor for the division, or 3. the survivor is the one ostracized
instead of the person using power over. We continue to be challenged
by the need to build community based systems of accountability for
batterers.
As we develop those systems, we remain aware of batterer’s access to
women’s “safe space” such as confidential shelters, women’s
anti-violence collectives, Clothesline Project shirt making tents,
support/education groups, etc.—it is necessary for programs to
evaluate their own safety and confidentiality procedures. Do you
screen for abusers prior to intaking someone into your program? Have
you received training to help you successfully conduct these
screenings? Finally, do you routinely communicate your processes for
maintaining safety and confidentiality to lesbian, bisexual and
trans people?
Toward a new (retrieved?) analysis
In order to begin to understand same sex domestic violence, we must
be willing to think critically about our analysis around domestic
and dating violence. In an attempt to make our message understood in
a sound-bite world, we have dropped much of the complexity that is
necessary to understand women’s experiences with violence and abuse.
In the workbook, In Our Best Interest (Minnesota Program
Development, 1987), this need for complexity was addressed over a
decade ago in a passage written by an education group facilitator:
I used to think that battering was caused by sexism in our culture
and that men battered women because they were socialized as males to
be more powerful than women and control them. Women were the ones
being beaten because they were socialized in our culture to submit
to male authority. I was deeply challenged in that perception when I
began to read about lesbian battering. My first assumption, when I
came to accept that [lesbians batter their partners] too, was that
it was women imitating heterosexual relationships. That myth was
shattered when I discovered that women active in the women’s
movement and operating from a feminist ideology physically battered
their partners. My entire thinking on the relationship of sexism to
battering was shaken to the core. This is when I first began to
understand the pervasiveness of patriarchy. Patriarchy is not only a
gender issue, but a form of dominance and control that permeates the
thinking of all human beings subjected to patriarchal environments.
I began to see battering not just as a gender issue, but as a much
deeper manifestation of the concept of power and dominance in our
culture. I also began to see that the enemy was not men or males.
While males definitely enjoyed more freedom, privilege and status in
a patriarchal structure, I no longer believed that if women ran
things instead of men, everything would change and be
better. This realization made me understand how complete the
cultural transformation must be in order to realize a non-violent
society. (p. 18)
A definition of patriarchy that considers only sexism—instead of
examining the complex interconnections of racism, colonization,
classism, biphobia, transphobia, homophobia, anti-Arab oppression,
anti-Jewish oppression, anti-fat oppression, ableism, ageism and all
forms of oppression—will invariably marginalize the survivors from
these oppressed groups.
We see this marginalization occur over and over. In her book,
Compelled to Crime, Dr. Beth Richie writes about the increasing
number of survivors of battering, particularly African-American
women, who have been incarcerated. Many First Nations women have
continuously called for an analysis of domestic abuse that names the
violence committed against their whole family—not only women. They
have addressed colonization as the driving force behind violence in
their families. If we are to build a movement that can actualize a
world free of violence—first we will have to adopt an analysis that
looks beyond sexism alone as the fundamental cause of battering.
Then we will have to place this analysis at the center of our
everyday work so that support groups, shelter policies, house
meetings, counseling protocols, and coordinated community responses
incorporate complex understandings of culture stealing, forced
removals, coerced labor, incarceration, orchestrated poverty and the
many other issues that are central to marginalized women’s
experience of violence.
In order to begin to seriously address the experiences of lesbian,
bisexual and trans survivors of domestic violence—we must be willing
to expand our understanding of the roots of violence and the
conditions which will support liberation. We have to look at
relationships between women in our movement—how do, for example,
heterosexual as well as sexual minority women use white skin
privilege and class privilege to establish and maintain power over
their co-workers, women in their communities or with survivors? In
patriarchy, we are conditioned to access our un-earned privilege to
take power over others as well as to internalize the beliefs of
those who have power over us. We have to intentionally work to
divest of our power over other people, to root out internalized
oppression and to build communities based on shared values of
accountability and empowerment in order to end domestic violence. |
