Posts Tagged ‘LGBTQ’
CORA Celebrates International Transgender Day of Visibility
This Friday, March 31st marks the 8th annual celebration of International Transgender Day of Visibility. Rachel Crandall, head of an organization called Transgender Michigan, called for the creation of Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) in 2009 as a response to the lack of holidays celebrating the lives of transgender people while they are living. Prior to TDOV, November’s Transgender Day of Remembrance was the only day specifically dedicated to trans people and communities. While Trans Day of Remembrance is a day of mourning for those killed by transphobic violence, Transgender Day of Visibility is a day to celebrate trans people’s lives, empowerment, and visibility. As Janet Mock, author and activist, remarks:
“It’s a state of emergency for trans women and trans feminine folk of color. … The disproportionate levels of violence trans women of color face pains me, and so does the pervasive framing of trans womanhood being directly linked to images of victimhood and tragedy. It hurts that our names are often amplified only when we are dead, gone, inactive. …We can’t only celebrate trans women of color in memoriam. We must begin uplifting trans women of color, speaking their names and praises, in their lives.â€
Transgender people are increasingly visible in media, news, television, and movies. Trans led organizations are leading the fight against poverty, discrimination, and violence through organization’s like the Bay Area’s very own Transgender, Gender-Variant, and Intersex Justice Project (TGI Justice Project), currently headed by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a black transgender woman and community elder, and Janetta Louise Johnson, an Afro-American trans woman. “TGI Justice Project is a group of transgender, gender variant and intersex people—inside and outside of prisons, jails and detention centers—creating a united family in the struggle for survival and freedom. “
The Bay Area is also home to the Transgender Law Center where the mission is to change “law, policy, and attitudes so that all people can live safely, authentically, and free from discrimination regardless of their gender identity or expression.â€
At the Trans Youth Leadership Summit, a youth fellow named Caelan Damocles came up with a theme for this year’s TDOV that is in use by an organization called Trans Student Educational Resources. The theme is #TransResistance. “In the increasingly transphobic global political climate, we must use our newfound visibility to mobilize trans people against oppression. Speaking out, taking direct action, and educating others is critical to our safety and wellbeing.â€
This TDOV, CORA invites all community members, trans and cis alike to consider what we can do to make this world safer and more just for trans people from the exactly positions we are in. In our homes, families, workplaces, schools, and communities. A place to start is to listen to and read the words of trans people and learn more about the needs and strengths, vulnerabilities and resilience of our trans community members. Here are some places to start, and have a wonderful Transgender Day of Visibility!
We Can’t Let Increased Transgender Visibility Lead to More Vulnerability – Harmony Rodriquez
24 Actions you NEED to Take to Help Trans Women of Color Survive – Lexi Adsit
I am My Sister’s Keeper: Read My Woman’s March on Washington Speech – Janet Mock
CORA is dedicated to making sure that trans, gender nonconforming, and non-binary people have access to affirming and respectful services for survivors of partner abuse. CORA is proud to have been one of the first domestic violence organizations in the Bay Area to provide emergency shelter to people of all genders including trans men and women and gender non-conforming people as well as cis men and women. We provide LGBTQ-aware and affirming crisis counseling and mental health services, as well as coordinating with other LGBTQ-serving organizations and groups in the Bay Area. For more information, feel free to contact our LGBTQ Clinical Victim Advocate, Angelynn Hermes at AngelynnH@CORAsupport.org.
Meet Our New LGBTQ Clinical Victim Advocate
This summer, CORA extended our Mental Health Services team with the newly created role of LGBTQ Clinical Victim Advocate. This position provides individual and group therapy to survivors and engages in community outreach and education with a special emphasis on working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and questioning (LGBTQ+) survivors. Angie Hermes stepped into this new role. Angie comes to CORA with an MSW from San Jose State University, B.A. in French and Economics from the University of Southern California, and a strong commitment to providing quality services to trauma survivors.
Welcome, Angie! First, tell us a little about what brought you to CORA.
Angie: My interest in trauma grew from my own healing journey. After facing gender-based violence and dealing with PTSD in my life and seeing it affect the lives of many dear friends, I became interested in how individuals and communities heal and reclaim power, health, and wellness. As an undergrad, I organized with others against campus sexual violence, years before it was a national headline issue. For me this transformative and empowering work always happened within my community of queer folks, feminists, anti-racist and social justice student organizers. A few years later, when I volunteered as a peer counselor on a rape crisis hotline, I knew I wanted to make my life’s work providing support and witness for people on a path to heal from trauma. One social work degree later, I’m getting to do just that at CORA.
What excited you most about the LGBTQ Clinical Victim Advocate position?
Angie: In addition to being a survivor, I’ve been an advocate for LGBTQ rights since middle school. It took me a few more years to realize loud-mouthed passion for equal treatment was also a hunger for belonging, community, and justice for myself as a bisexual and queer woman. I never imagined I would have the opportunity to merge my passion supporting my own community of LGBTQ folks with my trauma work. I am thrilled to live and work in a time when our view of “domestic violence†has expanded from an issue of men abusing women to acknowledge that people of all genders, sexual orientations, and relationship types are dealing with abuse in intimate relationships. Yet I know many barriers still exist for LGBTQ individuals who are trying to access services. I am so excited to work at an organization that recognizes the unique needs of LGBTQ survivors, and honored to be entrusted with working to meet those needs.
What kinds of support do LGBTQ survivors in particular need?
Angie: First, organizations need to send a clear message that our services are here, available and ready to work with LGBTQ people. CORA has long been at the forefront of creating a welcoming environment and appropriate services for LGBTQ people. One of our organization’s first leaders was an out lesbian woman and CORA was one of the first shelters in the area to house men fleeing domestic violence in the 90’s. Yet LGBTQ people have heard a lot of “no’s†from domestic violence agencies in the past; providers have denied that abuse can happen between two women, shelters have refused to house trans women, trans men, or cis men, and crisis services have referred anyone with a “male sounding voice†to batterers intervention. Thankfully the domestic violence and victim’s services world are moving past these mistakes and building programming that is not only non-discriminatory, but actively welcoming and supportive.
Second, LGBTQ people face discrimination in society. That creates a barrier to coming forward about abuse. Some survivors may feel they have to hide the abuse in their relationship in order to not “damage†public perception of LGBQ relationships or of trans people. It is never ok for a society to isolate survivors this way. We must end the stigma, oppression, and marginalization LGBTQ people face. Until we do, we are forcing LGBTQ survivors to pick between closets, either hiding their relationship abuse or hiding their identity.
Third, and most importantly, we need to center those LGBTQ people who most often experience violence, discrimination, and exclusion in society. This includes poor and homeless LGBTQ people. It includes black and indigenous LGBTQ people and LGBTQ people of color. It includes LGBTQ sex workers. Trans people, in particular trans women of color, experience much higher rates of interpersonal violence, including being killed by strangers, intimate partners, and acquaintances. We must center and include LGBTQ people living with HIV/AIDS, those with addiction or mental health needs. LGBTQ youth and elders both are at higher risk for partner abuse and must be included. Our services and work with LGBTQ communities are only as strong as our work with the most excluded and underserved.
How can readers support LGBTQ survivors?
Angie: Same as with any survivors, listen, believe them, and follow their lead on what, if anything, they want to do. Know that relationship abuse affects LGBTQ people, and include them in discussions about partner abuse. When you’re not sure, use gender neutral worlds like “ex†“spouse†“partner†to refer to people’s significant others, don’t just automatically assume the person is straight or cis, or the abuser is a man. Open up and learn about LGBTQ issues, culture, needs and strengths—take the initiative to educate yourself and you’ll find your world infinitely richer for it. And, if you are really passionate, volunteer at CORA and ask about opportunities to support LGBTQ communities and individuals. We need all the hands, heads, and hearts we can in the work to make sure all relationships are based on love and respect.
Domestic Violence in the LGBTQ Community
Domestic violence. When we hear those words, often a disturbing image flashes instantly into our minds. We see a man and a woman; the woman is cowering in terror as her male partner grabs her wrist in one hand, the other hand is raised in a fist. This is an all too common scenario. According to Community Overcoming Relationship Abuses (CORA) website, “A third of Americans say they know a woman whose husband or boyfriend has physically abused her in the past year.†Let that sink in. Domestic violence is a massive issue that penetrates through socioeconomic status, race, gender, gender identity and sexuality. The latter two identity labels are not what immediately jump into our minds as we picture violent relationships, if at all. CORA has recently been pushing to make known their inclusive services to folks of varying sexual orientations and gender identities. It’s okay if you’re asking yourself why this is important. As a volunteer at CORA, working on their community outreach and crisis line teams, as well as planning and executing staff training and awareness training around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) domestic violence issues, I hope to illuminate why CORA’s services are so necessary for a community that is often discounted and silenced.
Before we jump into any lengthy discussions on LGBTQ domestic violence, we should absolutely have a common vocabulary. Gay is a term often applied to men (although it can refer to anyone) and implies a same-sex attraction. Lesbian is a term often applied to women to denote they are sexually attracted to other women. Bisexual usually refers to an individual sexually attracted to two or more genders. When someone is transgender, their gender identity (their sense of being a male or female) does not match with their actual biological sex. So for instance, someone may be born as a male, but they feel like they’re actually female. This often leads to going through the process of transition, such as taking hormones or receiving body-altering surgeries. There is no right or wrong way to transition, and various folks go various lengths in this process. So, being transgender actually doesn’t have a particular impact on sexual orientation, only gender identity. Queer folks are those who want to identify in a way that doesn’t put them into a box, but denotes they are from the LGBTQ community. For example, I identify as queer and as a gay man, the former denotes that I do not conform to any typical pattern of sexual orientation or gender trends of mainstream society. Finally, domestic violence, as defined by CORA, is, “a pattern of behavior in an intimate relationship where one partner seeks power and control over another intimidation, coercion, violence or the threat of violence. The abuse may be emotional/mental/verbal, physical, sexual, spiritual or economic, and often becomes more frequent and severe over time.†With definitions out of the way, we can begin to look at how domestic violence intersects with the LGBTQ community. This issue is highly insidious and downplayed, yet the numbers warrant attention and action from both service providers and community members.
When we think of issues pertaining to the LGBTQ community, we often think of marriage equality, workplace non-discrimination, or school policies surrounding bullying. While these are undoubtedly important issues, they often eclipse other issues that need to be addressed in our communities, such as partner violence. It is too easy to think of the biggest issue pertaining to folks from this community is being barred from marriage, however domestic violence is often a taboo subject and silenced. The truth is that domestic violence occurs with LGBTQ couples as much as with heterosexual couples, if not more frequently. CORA describes that in the US, a woman is abused every nine seconds, discounting queer couples. There are few reports from queer couples, there is a likelihood of low reporting by couples for many reasons, so the true extent of the issue is unknown. There is a paucity of information available regarding violence in transgender and bisexual relationships, especially as these communities often experience more violence than any other group. Research funds and interest often focus on lesbian and gay males, which leaves bisexual and transgender experiences unexamined; this can be due to difficulties in studying these communities or a number of other reasons. Lesbians and gay men’s experiences are slightly better documented. While the numbers do not agree, as many as 50% of lesbians will experience intimate partner violence in their lifetimes and 40% of gay men. Research often points to folks aged 30-39 experiencing violence, however young adult and teen dating are rarely examined and so it is unknown which groups experience more violence. For heterosexual couples, CORA designates that ‘One in five female high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner.’ Again, what does this mean for LGBTQ youth? The true numbers, if we could see them would likely be staggering.
There has been research about violence experienced by gay men, lesbian women and bisexual individuals in California, and, while not comprehensive, it shows how insidious this issue is. In 2010, nearly 28% of lesbians and gay men and 40.6% of bisexual individuals experience intimate partner violence in adulthood (UCLA, 2010). These numbers are incredibly high, and don’t even account for the transgender community and teens or young adults. California has a large LGBTQ presence, meaning that thousands are affected by this issue daily. This means that domestic violence service providers have a community in dire need of support and services that are not receiving them.
So if the problem is this bad, why don’t more people talk about domestic violence in various queer communities? There are a lot of obstacles that differentiate violence in the LGBTQ community from heterosexual violence that make advocacy and intervention difficult. The LGBTQ community often doesn’t cite partner violence as an issue, focusing on other issues to debate. Additionally, there is a fear of the general population seeing queer relationships as ‘dysfunctional’ by discussing partner violence, when these relationships are already highly marginalized. Often, survivors and abusers share a support system, making it hard for survivors to receive help in receiving support and leaving. There is high risk of sexual orientation or gender identity being blamed for abuse in the first place, as well as self-blame by the survivor for being queer, which creates more difficulty in finding the will to leave. LGBTQ individuals lack relationship role models as well; while this is slowly shifting due to more visibility of queer couples in the media, there is still not enough healthy, realistic relationship modeling. Finally, institutional barriers hinder ease of access when leaving an abusive partner. Law enforcement often have difficulties differentiating abuser from survivor and will arrest or place emergency protective orders on the survivor. Worse yet, law enforcement might be prejudiced themselves and decline to do anything. Service providers for domestic violence also usually service heterosexual survivors only. In particular, many shelters only work with women with male abusers, excluding the LGBTQ community from counseling and shelter resources. Even when transwomen or lesbians are able to access shelter spaces, the staff of these facilities are often not trained in LGBTQ issues. This leads to same-sex abusers being able to also enter a shelter space with survivors or staff, re-traumatizing survivors through prejudice, insensitivity or ignorance.
That’s a lot of information to take in and a fair amount of it makes the situation for the LGBTQ community look pretty bleak when it comes to relationship abuse prevention. However, there is hope as several groups work to advocate for this community in California. CORA is one of them and I’m proud to say they provide services to the Bay Area that are desperately needed, especially being surrounded by some of the most heavily LGBTQ populated cities in the state. CORA boasts beautiful offices that are outfitted with visual cues indicating it is a safe space for queer survivors. As you walk in and meet with various team members you will feel heard and respected, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. The staff constantly holds trainings to increase their knowledge about various issues and populations, including the LGBTQ community, so they are open and prepared to meet with these clients. CORA offers many services to their clients, including a 24/7 crisis hotline, legal support, in-person counseling, support groups, community education and an emergency shelter. Their emergency shelter is open to anyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation or gender identity, which is exceedingly rare to find, but vital to set an example for other organizations to follow. As a gay man, working with CORA started me on a mission to advocate for the issue of domestic violence in the LGBTQ community. They are extremely dedicated and passionate about their work and have been making incredible efforts to serve the LGBTQ community more effectively.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Todd Ryser-Oatman is a former volunteer at CORA, working on the community education and crisis line teams. He is currently a counseling psychology doctoral student at the University of Kentucky. His research interests center on LGBTQ issues, including domestic violence, as do his counseling interests.
References
Zahnd, Elaine; Grant, David; Aydin, May Jawad; Chia, Jenny Y.; & Padilla-Frausto, Imelda D.(2010). Nearly Four Million California Adults Are Victims of Intimate Partner Violence. UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. UCLA: UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4nb2h5bg