What Is Domestic Violence?

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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.

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Pregnancy & Abuse

Abuse & Immigrants

Why People Stay

Abuse in Disability Communities

LGBTQ Relationship Violence

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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.

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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.