Partner Violence in Transgender Communities: What Helping Professionals Need to Know

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, there has been an increase in scholarly attention devoted to the study of intimate partner violence (IPV) within rainbow communities. While a growing body of scholarship now informs our understanding of the experiences of gay, lesbian, and bisexual men and women with IPV, comparatively less is known about IPV within transgender communities. Drawing on the published literature on transgender intimate relationships, this article seeks to provide practitioners with a foundational understanding of IPV in the lives of transgender people. Specifically, we will examine (a) methodological, political, and social barriers to the creation of knowledge about transgender IPV; (b) the familial and relationship contexts of IPV within transgender communities; (c) the prevalence of IPV experienced by transgender survivors; (d) the dynamics of IPV perpetrated against and/or by transgender persons; (e) the problematic use of the “trans panic” defense by perpetrators of IPV in legal contexts; and (f) recommendations for supporting transgender survivors of IPV in ways that are trans-inclusive and trans-positive.     

Schools must include faculty and staff in sexual violence prevention efforts

Creating a normative campus environment intolerant to sexual violence is important for prevention. While prevention initiatives focusing on students are vital, faculty and staff have a central role in supporting and sustaining a comprehensive strategy for preventing campus sexual violence. Nationwide, colleges and universities recently implemented campus climate surveys. At Emory, we decided to survey faculty and staff as well as students, motivated by our use of an ecological framing of campus sexual violence. Faculty and staff are long-term members of the community, and can provide stability and continuity that reinforces prevention efforts prioritized for students. We recommend that schools use a trauma-informed approach to guide the involvement of faculty and staff in prevention. We encourage colleges and universities to consider the experiences and needs of their faculty and staff, as professionals who serve as leaders on campus and as those who guide students through their academic experiences.     

Mortality among elder abuse victims in rural Malaysia: A two-year population-based descriptive study

Our study aims at describing mortality among reported elder abuse experiences in rural Malaysia. This is a population-based cohort study with a multistage cluster sampling method. Older adults in Kuala Pilah (n = 1,927) were interviewed from November 2013 to May 2014. Mortality was traced after 2 years using the National Registration Department database. Overall, 139 (7.2%) respondents died. Fifteen (9.6%) abuse victims died compared to 124 (7.0%) not abused. Mortality was highest with financial abuse (13%), followed by psychological abuse (10.8%). There was a dose-response relationship between mortality and clustering of abuse: 7%, 7.7%, and 14.0% for no abuse, one type, and two types or more, respectively. Among abuse victims, 40% of deaths had ill-defined causes, 33% were respiratory-related, and 27% had cardiovascular and metabolic origin. Results suggest a link between abuse and mortality. Death proportions varied according to abuse subtypes and gender.     

Violence against women in Spain and Cuba: The same reality,two different visions / Violencia hacia la mujer en España y Cuba: una misma realidad,dos visiones diferentes

This study aims to analyse the acceptance of gender violence in Spanish and Cuban populations. We analysed the influence of sexist beliefs and other ideologies that justify unequal gender relationships. A total of 230 men and women from Spain and 200 from Cuba participated by answering a questionnaire. The results showed the effect of participants’ gender and nationality as well as ideological variables (sexism, beliefs in a just world and codes of honour) that legitimise the status quo of gender violence. The male participants and the Cuban participants accepted violence against women more than the female participants and the Spanish participants. What is more, the results showed a pattern in the influence of the ideological variables that differed depending on the participants’ nationality. In Spain, the relationship between participants’ benevolent sexism and the justification of violence was mediated by codes of honour. In Cuba, the relationship between hostile sexism and acceptance of violence against women was mediated by beliefs in a just world.     

Love is Not All You Need: A Revolutionary Approach to Parental Abuse

This case story is a composite of similar family situations where the parents were at risk of harm from their teenage children and commonly the father/step‐father has moved out of home leaving the mother to parent the children on her own. Several of these cases involved physical threats to the lives of the parents. These referrals occurred in a Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health Service and a Family Therapy NGO between 1985 and 2005. This approach is offered as a complement to the widely published ‘non‐violent resistance’ approach of Haim Omer and his colleagues. We hope it goes some way to address what Lavi‐Lavavi et al ( 2013 , Journal of Systemic Therapies, 32(4), 79–93). describe as ‘the mother's plight’:

The plight of the mother continues to present a major challenge… We are also seeking ways to allow the mother more breathing space, help her to disengage from abrasive conflicts, acknowledge her contribution and sacrifice, and provide her with vantage points that may help her recognize and enhance small improvements. Hopefully, these measures will enable women to evolve from unacknowledged victims to pillars of the family’ (p. 92).

     

Belonging: women living with intellectual disabilities and experiences of domestic violence

Women with an intellectual disability are under-represented in domestic violence research, yet they are one of the most vulnerable groups who are at risk of violence and abuse. This article aims to contribute to the domestic violence field by reporting on a narrative dialogic performative study, which utilised a feminist poststructural perspective to explore significant relationships and the concept of belonging in the lives of women with a mild intellectual disability. Four in-depth narrative interviews were conducted. The study found that the women shared similar stories of devaluation and rejection in childhood and hence the women’s search for belonging contributed to their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse in domestic violence relationships. The paper argues that gendered discourses and constructions of intellectual disability regulate domestic violence as a personal problem or way of life for women with intellectual disabilities.     

社会学视角下的大学生暴力行为来源与治理

面对大学生暴力,日常追问最多的是大学生自身的心理素质、道德水平与人格修养,以及学校的安全教育与管理责任,然而由此建立的暴力治理技术依然是手足无措.因此,需要重新审视大学生暴力的治理技术与面向及其来源.实际情况表明,纠纷是大学生暴力的直接动因,抑止和治理暴力的最优方案是纠纷的及时救济,如若仓促地处理当事人或者对事件不管不问,则会埋下更大的暴力隐患.另外,要对"钉子户"进行另类治理,因为过于宏大的素质教育与安全管理对其无效.     

电影中的暴力美学

随着社会文化背景的变更;暴力美学在电影中得到越来越广泛的运用。暴力美学在电影中不仅局限于纯暴力,更多的是用暴力来推动剧情发展,给电影观众提供一种假想的心理满足。并起到传播和引导积极正面情绪的作用。     

司法介入家庭暴力研究

家庭暴力的存在由来己久,但由于家庭暴力发生在家庭内部,远离公众视线,很难被外界知晓。欧美许多国家不断加强对家庭暴力的研究,治理家庭暴力的各种法制措施不断完善。我国由于现代法制起步较晚,法制不够健全,司法机关对家庭暴力缺少全面的主动介入,导致家庭暴力得不到应有的关注和司法救济。通过对部分发达国家司法介入家庭暴力途径的研究,并结合当前我国司法介入实践,提出一些相应的方法来完善我国司法介入家庭暴力的规制。     

‘In England,they don’t call you black!’ Migrating racialisations and the production of Roma difference across Europe

This article draws on long-term fieldwork among Slovak Roma migrants, identifying processes through which a haunting figure of the Roma migrant emerges across Europe, to argue for more differentiated accounts of continuing and emerging forms of racialisation. It explores how the movement of Roma (whose bodies are marked by their racialised ‘darkness’ in Slovakia) to Britain granted them a temporary escape from this modality of branding while simultaneously exposing them to different categorisations within a re-configuring classificatory matrix. The article develops the concept of ‘migrating racialisation’ in order to empirically trace how historically developed forms of racialisation in Slovakia migrate across Europe through the movement of Roma and non-Roma migrants from Eastern Europe, as well as through particular forms of knowledge circulating within transnational fields constituted not only by Roma migrants themselves but also by various institutions for ‘managing’ or ‘researching’ ‘the Roma’. This concept allows us to analyse how the recent forms of racialisation simultaneously draw on heterogenous histories and nation-state formations, social conditions and sedimented bodily dispositions, which are re-adjusted to new social conditions, discourses and emerging forms of knowledge produced about Roma migrants over the last decade in British and European contexts.