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1 October 2017

Our Watch, 2017

Our Watch released a literature review into primary prevention of family violence against people from LGBTI communities in Australia.

The primary objectives of the literature review were to analyse existing research with respect to family violence involving LGBTI people; and facilitate a greater understanding of what is required to prevent family violence against this diverse population.

The report concluded that:

“Significant steps have been taken over recent years to challenge the discrimination and
prejudice directed towards people from LGBTI communities. These to some extent, acknowledge
the significant harms caused to people from LGBTI communities, and the implications for their
individual and collective mental health, and general health and wellbeing.

To prevent family violence against LGBTI people necessitates the challenging and transforming
of binary categorisations of sex and gender, as well as societal heteronormative gendered
structures. In line with the work being done to prevent violence against heterosexual,
cisgendered women and their children, challenging prejudicial attitudes towards LGBTI people
and transforming hierarchical and harmful notions of gender are key actions to prevent all forms
of violence against people from LGBTI communities. As such, it is important to acknowledge that
violence against people from LGBTI communities does not occur within a vacuum. Negative and
discriminatory societal attitudes, norms, and behaviours (historical and contemporary) towards
LGBTI people influence, justify and condone family violence against LGBTI people, including by
LGBTI perpetrators. This serves to keep the issue invisible in the public domain.

Efforts to address societal gender structures are fundamental in preventing violence against
people from LGBTI communities. However, to be more inclusive of LGBTI people and
communities requires a reframing of family violence prevention work that comprises a more
expansive understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality structures, and a model that looks at the
interactions and intersections of dominant constructions of biological sex, gender and sexuality.

Without addressing and challenging the drivers of violence against LGBTI people more broadly,
that is, the perpetration of discrimination, disadvantage and violence against LGBTI people by
socio- structural systems, it is unlikely that the issue of family violence against LGBTI people will
be effectively addressed and prevented. Likewise, without addressing and transforming the
gendered structural inequalities that continue to oppress and disadvantage women, preventing
violence against women and LGBTI people will remain elusive.”

View the full report here.

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