National Domestic Violence Awareness Project

outforhealth:

Hey tumblr friends –

Our amazingly excellent Planned Parenthood Sexual Assault Center and LGBTQ Health program teamed up to get some information out there about queer  dating violence and assault. This is such an important topic for us to raise our voice about. There are a lot of conversations happening and we think it’s essential to make sure those conversations are happening in queer spaces and with an awareness of how this uniquely impacts queer people.

Also, should you need more information, here’s some LGBTQ specific sexual assault/violence information resources:

The National Domestic Violence Hotline’s LGBT Abuse information page

This resource - including information on an LGBT specific Wheel of Power and Control - is particularly helpful as it offers some information about how LGBTQ people often experience an additional layer(s) of power and control used to hurt them given the homophobia, heterosexism, transphobia, and biphobia  that is unfortunately common in many LGBTQ people’s lives. 

 From their resources:

The specific ways that LGBTQ people might be impacted includes:

Tactics of Power & Control

•  “Outing” a partner’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Abusive partners in LGBTQ relationships may threaten to ‘out’ victims to family members, employers, community members and others.
  
• Saying that no one will help the victim because s/he is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, or that for this reason, the partner “deserves” the abuse.
  
• Justifying the abuse with the notion that a partner is not “really” lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (i.e. the victim may once have had/may still have relationships, or express a gender identity, inconsistent with the abuser’s definitions of these terms). This can be used both as a tool in verbal and emotional abuse as well as to further the isolation of a victim from the community.
  
• Monopolizing support resources through an abusive partner’s manipulation of friends and family supports and generating sympathy and trust in order to cut off these resources to the victim. This is a particular issue to members of the LGBTQ community where they may be fewer specific resources, neighborhoods or social outlets.
  
• Portraying the violence as mutual and even consensual, or as an expression of [toxic gendered] expectations or some other “desirable” trait

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs and the Anti-Violence Project in NYC, whose work is about empowering lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected communities and allies to end all forms of violence through organizing and education, and supports survivors through counseling and advocacy.

In addition, here is some specific information about teen dating violence affecting LGBTQ youth from the Human Rights Campaign.

Need help now?

RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization. RAINN created and operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE, online.rainn.org y rainn.org/es) in partnership with more than 1,000 local sexual assault service providers across the country.

When you call 800.656.HOPE (4673), you’ll be routed to a local RAINN affiliate organization based on the first six digits of your phone number. Cell phone callers have the option to enter the ZIP code of their current location to more accurately locate the nearest sexual assault service provider.