Among the distinctions are the role of homophobia and heterosexism as both tactic and context of abuse. While I elaborate more on this in the following chapter, victims of same-gender intimate partner violence report that abusers use coercive tactics based on sexual identity such as threatening to “out” them to friends, family, or work colleagues and manipulating beliefs in homophobic myths. In LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence: Lessons for Policy, Practice, and Research, the only book to systemically review thirty-five years of existing research on LGBTQ intimate partner violence, sociologist Adam Messinger identified top myths, which in reductive shorthand can be categorized as the beliefs that LGBTQ intimate partner violence is rare and less severe (than heterosexual intimate partner violence), that abusers are masculine, that it is the same as all other intimate partner violence, and that it should not be discussed. The persistence of these myths often makes it more difficult for victims of same-gender intimate partner violence to recognize abuse or to identify as a victim. Additionally, widespread belief in these myths allows abusers to undermine the experiences of violence and entrap victims. For victims of same-gender intimate partner violence who do leave abusive relationships, help-seeking structures are generally best tailored for the needs of cisgender heterosexual women. Survivors of same-gender intimate partner violence often report experiences of misgendering and homophobia by responding police officers and a lack of inclusive shelter space, counseling, and resources. In addition, even informal help avenues such as friends and family may be less available to same-gender abuse survivors due to previous rejection.
Despite the fact that the literature exploring same-gender intimate partner violence and the experiences of gay and lesbian victims has expanded, transgender victims remain largely absent from the research. Decades of research in same-gender intimate partner violence oftentimes lumped trans experiences with those of cisgender gays and lesbians, and little attention has been given to how genderism structures trans victimization and presents barriers to help seeking or to the dynamics of abuse. In one of the earliest trans-specific studies available, transgender intimate partner violence experts Courvant and Cook-Daniels cited preliminary analyses from the Gender, Violence, and Resource Access Survey of trans and intersex individuals that found a 50 percent rate of victimization by an intimate partner.24 In 2006, the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence reported that of all their reporting agencies, too few had clientele who identified as transgender to garner any statistically relevant information. This difficulty in obtaining transgender samples has often led scholars to exclude trans responses in same-gender intimate partner violence studies or to use just “binary gender identity categories (i.e. only men or women),” which do not accurately represent the diversity of genders within the community.25
As a result of the lack of trans-inclusive studies, it is difficult to determine a prevalence rate of intimate partner violence for the trans community as a whole. Within recent NCAVP annual reports, transgender individuals were on average almost two times more likely to experience harassment, threats, and/or intimidation by an intimate partner.26 In a UCLA Williams Institute report that reviewed existing research on intimate partner and sexual violence within LGBTQ communities, Brown and Herman found lifetime prevalence rates between 31.3 percent and 50 percent.27
While feminist intimate partner violence research has critiqued patriarchy, more needs to be done to thoroughly examine patriarchy’s reinforcement of the system of two and only two genders and how this contextualizes experiences of abuse. Generally, feminist theorists have held that intimate partner violence is a gender asymmetrical occurrence, viewing men as overwhelmingly the perpetrators of intimate partner violence. Beyond the gendered pattern, feminists have typically described intimate partner violence as a phenomenon that exists directly as a result of a patriarchal power structure that fosters a hostile cultural climate against women and enables men to perpetrate violence against them as a means of controlling women in society.
From this cultural perspective, this violence was not “domestic violence” or “intimate partner violence,” but rather was conceptualized as “wife beating,” “wife abuse,” or “woman abuse.” Feminists’ efforts were primarily focused on highlighting the evident gendered pattern while shaping a political agenda that would ultimately change our systematic response to the needs of these women victims. In arguably one of the most cited pioneering works, sociologists Dobash and Dobash sought to examine the experiences of abused women in a battered women’s shelter through a feminist perspective.28 Commonalities in the women’s experiences led to the conclusion that batterers held rigid patriarchal family ideals. When these victims were perceived to be out of line by their abusers, the abusers would reassert their patriarchal authority in the relationship through violent means. The women expressed that their husbands had certain gender-specific expectations of them as wives and that their violence was a mechanism through which batterers regulated their lives.
While feminist perspectives were readily challenged by the more “gender-neutral” family violence scholars who sought to make oppositional arguments, feminist thoughts based on cultural power dynamics between genders shaped the early direction of inquiry and essentially all of the response systems (e.g., shelters, hotlines, etc.). As the subfield of domestic violence scholarship emerged, it framed the violence as a heterosexually cisgender phenomenon. The broader argument was that men committed the overwhelming amount of intimate partner violence and did so because of the larger patriarchal power structure that constructed women as property in marriage, along with a legal system that supported or tolerated this view and the gender socialization that fostered hostile beliefs against women in our society. While framing intimate partner violence through this perspective highlighted the gendered nature of the violence, it also limited the research to the context of heterosexual relationships with discussions of only ciswomen victims of cismen perpetrators.
Assumptions of intimate partner violence based on theoretical orientation paint the issue with a broad brush that can often prove problematic, particularly when applied to trans victims. The oversimplification of gender resulted in early work that assumed that gender was the primary form of oppression for all women, failing to consider the intersecting qualities of race, class, and sexual orientation. This undermined the experiences of women of color, lesbians, economically marginalized groups, and more.
Social theory has grown and developed with the addition of a wider scope of approaches to the scholarship. In particular, black feminist scholars, activists, and critical race theorists revolutionized various subfields by centering black women’s voices in social theorization.29 In particular, feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw addressed the intersections of race and gender in how women of color experience violence and is often credited with coining the term “intersectionality.”30 Sociologist and criminologist Hillary Potter described intersectionality as “the concept or conceptualization that each person has an assortment of coalesced socially constructed identities that are ordered into an inequitable social stratum.”31 Within any singular identity-based community, there exist a multitude of various identities (i.e., race, class, gender, sexual orientation) that alter the standpoint and experience of any particular member.
Take, for example, the recent public gender transition of Caitlyn Jenner; her experiences show starkly different realities from those who may not share her unique social position. As a successful athlete and celebrity, Caitlyn has been afforded the ability to access the best health care and transition resources available. Caitlyn advocates for the visibility of trans communities by sharing her story as a transwoman and televising many aspects of her transition via her reality television show. Despite the connection she has established with the broader trans community, Caitlyn has continued to utilize her race and class position to subordinate entire aspects of the trans population. Her personal politics, largely