CENTRAL POINT

"Every person that reaches out for help gives a small glimpse of their unshakable strength because simply reaching out is an act of bravery."

Domestic Violence

Domestic Violence

What Is Domestic Violence?

Domestic violence (also called intimate partner violence (IPV), domestic abuse, or relationship abuse) is a pattern of behaviors used by one partner to maintain power and control over another partner in an intimate relationship.

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Domestic violence does not discriminate. Anyone of any race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender can be a victim – or perpetrator – of domestic violence. It can happen to people who are married, living together, or who are dating. It affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels.

LGBTQ Relationship Violence

Abusive partners in LGBTQ relationships use all the same tactics to gain power and control as abusive partners in heterosexual relationships — physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, financial control, isolation, and more.
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​But abusive partners in LGBTQ relationships also reinforce their tactics that maintain power and control with societal factors that compound the complexity a survivor faces in leaving or getting safe in an LGBTQ relationship.

Are you a victim of abuse?

• “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 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 masculinity or some other “desirable” trait.

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