Queering Narratives Of Domestic Violence And Abuse

This book is the first to focus on violent and/or ‘abusive’ behaviours in lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender, non-binary gender or genderqueer people’s intimate relationships. It provides fresh empirical data from a comprehensive mixed-methods study and novel theoretical insights to destabilise and queer existing narratives about intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA). Key to the analysis, the book argues, is the extent to which Michael Johnson’s landmark typology of IPVA can be used to make sense of the survey data and accounts of ‘abusive’ behaviours given by LGB and/or T+ participants. As well as calling for IPVA scholars to challenge heteronormativity and cisnormativity and improve IPVA measurement, this book offers guidance and a new tool to assist practitioners from a variety of relationships services with identifying victims/survivors and perpetrators in LGB and/or T+ people’s relationships. It will appeal to academics and practitioners in the field of domestic violence and abuse.​

This book examines how women experiencing domestic violence employ strategies of resistance and survival, and how narrative therapy helps them define their identities and resist abuse. It demonstrates how an understanding of this resistance can help practitioners effectively intervene and support these women in transitions from abuse to safety.

Often pushed to the margins, queer, transgender and gender non-conforming survivors have been organizing in anti-violence work since the birth of the movement. Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement locates them at the center of the anti-violence movement and creates a space for their voices to be heard. Moving beyond dominant narratives and the traditional “violence against women” framework, the book is multi-gendered, multi-racial and multi-layered. This thirty-seven piece collection disrupts the mainstream conversations about sexual violence and connects them to disability justice, sex worker rights, healing justice, racial justice, gender self-determination, queer & trans liberation and prison industrial complex abolition through reflections, personal narrative, and strategies for resistance and healing. Where systems, institutions, families, communities and partners have failed them, this collection lifts them up, honors a multitude of lived experiences and shares the radical work that is being done outside mainstream anti-violence and the non-profit industrial complex.

Although love is the hallmark of humanity, it is not widely discussed in social work and other related professions with respect to its potential connection to abuse. In this groundbreaking book the author argues that, while love and abuse should not co-exist, they often do. Using a feminist narrative approach, stories about love, abuse, and social work are told with the purpose of understanding domestic violence and other forms of abuse. Based on interviews with 84 women of varying ages in Canada and Australia, the author shows how the pain and shame of intimate abuse can leave its mark on the bodies, minds, and souls of victims/survivors long after abusive episodes have ended. Additionally, Fraser also discusses the importance of hope, "enlightened witnesses," income support, and educational opportunities for women who refuse to renounce love relationships altogether, but are instead trying to foster relationships that are respectful as well as erotic.

This powerful book recounts the process of a study that examines personal narratives of abuse survivors by assessing the relationship between narration and teller empowerment. The narratives, which include survival stories of rape, incest, and battery, were collected in personal interviews, transcribed, and coded for emergent themes. Results of the study indicate that narrating experiences of victimization and abuse is a necessary step in moving from victimization and survivorship, and is an essential way for victims of abuse to become empowered. The book discusses in detail the fundamental steps in acquiring narrative research. Special attention is paid to the precautions and implications of conducting research on sensitive material. Through its examination of the data collection and analysis processes, Taking Narrative Risk will be beneficial in coursework in communication studies, performance methodology, and narrative analysis.

This book draws on interviews carried out over a period of eight years, as well as novels, films, and domestic violence literature, to explain the role of storytelling in the history of the battered women’s movement. The author shows how cultural contexts shape how stories about domestic abuse get told, and offers critical tools for bringing psychology into discussions of group dynamics in the domestic violence field. The book enlists psychoanalytic-feminist theory to analyse storytelling practices and to re-visit four areas of tension in the movement where signs of battle fatigue have been most acute. These areas include the conflicts that emerge between the battered women’s movement and the state, the complex relationship between domestic violence and other social problems, and the question of whether woman battering is a special case that differs from other forms of social violence. The volume also looks at the tensions between groups of women within the movement, and how to address differences based on race, class or other dimensions of power. Finally, the book explores the contentious issue of how to acknowledge forms of female aggression while still preserving a gender analysis of intimate partner violence. In attending to narrative dynamics in the history of domestic violence work, Hard Knocks presents a radical re-reading of the contribution of psychology to feminist interventions and activism. The book is ideal reading for scholars, activists, advocates and policy planners involved in domestic violence, and is suitable for students of psychology, social work, sociology and criminology.

In this captivating book, activist and scholar Gill Hague recounts the inspiring story of the violence against women movement in the UK and beyond from 1960s onwards, examining the transformatory politics behind this movement through an important historical and international lens.

Women and families within the criminal justice system (CJS) are increasingly the focus of research and this book considers the timely issues concerning experiences of punishment, abuse and justice. With insights from frontline practice and from the lived experiences of women, the collection examines prison experiences in a post-COVID-19 world, domestic violence and the successes and failures of family support. A companion to the first edited collection, Critical Reflections on Women, Family, Crime and Justice, the book sheds new light on the challenges and experiences of women and families who encounter the CJS. Accessible to both academics and practitioners and with real-world policy recommendations, this collection demonstrates how positive change can be achieved.