Help-seeking among lesbian,gay,bisexual and/or transgender victims/survivors of domestic violence and abuse: The impacts of cisgendered heteronormativity and invisibility

Abstract

Despite growing research into domestic violence and abuse (DVA) in lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or trans (LGB and/or T) people’s relationships, LGB and/or T people remain largely invisible in DVA policy and practice. Research evidence indicates that they primarily seek help from privatised sources such as counsellors/therapists and friends. The gap in knowledge about LGB and/or T victims/survivors’ help-seeking reflects and reinforces the success of neoliberal trends in privatising social problems by promoting self-care and individual responsibility. Using qualitative data from a mixed-methods UK study, this article offers an ecological analysis of LGB and/or T victims/survivors’ help-seeking decisions and barriers, demonstrating how cisgendered heteronormativity and LGBT invisibility permeate help-seeking at individual, interpersonal and socio-cultural levels. The conclusion argues for LGBT DVA to be recognised as a social problem rather than a private trouble. Recommendations are offered for necessary steps towards better recognising and supporting LGB and/or T victims/survivors.

Keywords

cisnormativity domestic violence help-seeking heteronormativity LGBT neoliberalism violence

An ever-growing and gradually internationalised body of quantitative research evidences that domestic violence and abuse (DVA) occurs in the relationships of those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGB and/or T) (see Badenes-Ribera et al., 2016; Barnes and Donovan, 2018; Donovan and Hester, 2014; Finneran and Stephenson, 2012). However, previous research has prioritised measuring prevalence and correlates, and attempting to develop explanations, with less attention paid to help-seeking.

Because DVA in LGB and/or T people’s relationships is often seen to sit outside of a predominantly heteronormative, cisnormative, feminist, social-structural analysis of violence and control in intimate relationships (Island and Letellier, 1991), more individualistic explanations have proliferated. In particular, the concept of minority stress has become dominant in the LGB and/or T DVA literature (Balsam, 2001; Mendoza, 2011; Stephenson and Finneran, 2017). Alongside, and reinforcing, such individualistic explanations, explanatory frameworks for understanding social problems such as DVA are increasingly being shaped by neoliberal principles; for example, the reification and expectation of individual responsibility (Donovan and Durey, 2018; Hazleden, 2014).

It is against this backdrop that we seek to address a dearth of literature examining help-seeking among LGB and/or T victims/survivors of DVA. This is a key omission, since empirical evidence indicates that LGB and/or T victims/survivors are less likely to seek support from mainstream agencies such as the police, or from specialist third sector DVA agencies (Ball, 2011; Barnes and Donovan, 2018; Donovan and Hester, 2014). The neoliberal reading of this locates responsibility for the reporting patterns with LGB and/or T individuals. However, we argue that a multi-layered, sociological approach to understanding how help-seeking is shaped is needed, that implicates broader social structures. Thus, instead of psycho-pathologising the impacts of homo/bi/transphobia, the embeddedness of these forms of oppression and hetero- and cisnormativity at all levels of interaction, from the state through to communities, relationships and individuals, must be theorised. This more holistic, sociological approach, informed by an ecological model (Heise, 1998), challenges individualistic approaches which fail to hold hetero- and cisnormative policies and practices to account and reinforce the neoliberal responsibilisation of individuals by encouraging especially LGB and/or T victims/survivors to view DVA as a private matter, requiring a privatised response.

We begin by briefly locating LGB and/or T victims/survivors of DVA in the wider DVA policy and practice context. Within this, we outline the impact of neoliberal values in encouraging more individualised, and thus less social-structural, responses to DVA. Here, the decision to seek help is predominantly conceptualised as an individualised set of practices. However, we argue that not enough account is taken of the broader socio-structural and cultural context within which LGB and/or T people live that shapes not only whether they recognise their experiences as requiring help, but also their perceptions of what sources of help might be available to them. We introduce Liang et al.’s (2005) framework for understanding DVA help-seeking, which frames our own analysis, and we draw parallels with Heise’s ecological model of DVA which helps us to conceptualise help-seeking as multi-layered and socio-structurally and culturally shaped. We next outline the methods used to collect the empirical data on which the analysis is based and subsequently offer an analysis of the help-seeking of LGB and/or T victims/survivors. We demonstrate that at each of Liang et al.’s (2005) stages of help-seeking, LGB and/or T survivors have to negotiate cisgendered heteronormativity, heterosexism and LGBT invisibility, posing multiple barriers to seeking and receiving appropriate help. We conclude by considering the implications of adopting a multi-layered, sociological approach. Before continuing, we explain our chosen terminology.

Language and terminology

The acronym LGBT is arguably becoming increasingly less inclusive of the diversity of non-normative sexualities and gender identities. To recognise that some trans people identify as heterosexual, and that identification as non-binary or genderqueer is increasing, we use the acronym LGB and/or T and use ‘trans’ as an umbrella term to include those who do not identify in binaried gender terms. We use LGB and/or T also to be consistent with the terminology that we used in our research, but without intending to exclude other non-normative sexualities such as queer or pansexual.

While there is a range of violent and abusive behaviours used in adult intimate relationships that depend for their meaning on the relationship contexts, motives and impacts (Johnson, 2011; Stark, 2007), our focus on help-seeking means that we are primarily concerned with what the UK Home Office calls domestic violence and abuse (DVA). This is where one intimate partner enacts a pattern of behaviours (physical, sexual, emotional, financial), including coercive control, in order to exert power and control over the other (Home Office, 2013). While this definition pertains to family as well as intimate ex-/partner relationships, this paper focuses solely on the latter.

The empirical data used in our analysis describe relationship contexts in which participants had used violence and behaviours that might be perceived as abusive. However, as we will explain, most interview participants were neither mutual abusers nor ‘the’ perpetrator, but instead were being victimised by their intimate partners. This article therefore troubles the construction of victimhood that follows from a victim/perpetrator binary.

Where are LGB and/or T victims/survivors of DVA? An overview of politics, policy and practice

In the last 20 years, feminist scholarship and activism worldwide has taken vital steps towards transforming DVA from a private trouble to a serious public problem (Mills, 1959). Based on compelling evidence which demonstrates that heterosexual (ostensibly cisgender) women are the largest group victimised by DVA (WHO et al., 2013; though see Donovan and Barnes, 2019, for discussion of the lack of recognition of higher prevalence rates among LGB people within the mainstream DVA literature), a feminist analysis of DVA has developed. This frames DVA as resulting from both the unequal gendered power relations operating at the level of the individual couple and the unequal gendered power relations operating across society which collude with men who enact DVA against women (Stark, 2007; Walby, 1990).

Consequently, feminists have called for transformation not only of individual women’s and children’s circumstances, and for male perpetrators to be held to account, but also for large-scale social-structural and cultural transformation to protect and support victims/survivors (Stanko, 2007) and to dismantle the unequal gender relations that underpin DVA. Such calls have had some success (see Donovan, 2017; Donovan and Hester, 2008), evidenced in the UK when the 2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government took forward and enacted the former New Labour government’s plans for a national strategy to address violence against women and girls (Home Office, 2011). This was followed by a second strategy (Home Office, 2016). There have been parallel developments in other countries such as Australia (Seymour, 2017).

While these have been key developments, albeit with much progress still to be made (Donovan, 2017), the place of LGB and/or T victims/survivors of DVA within policy and practice frameworks is much more ambivalent (Seymour, 2017). In England and Wales, for example, the Home Office (2013) definition of DVA includes all intimate relationships, regardless of sexuality or gender. This builds on the 2004 Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act, which made domestic violence protection orders and non-molestation orders available for those in same-sex relationships as well as those in non-cohabiting relationships, and those who are neither married nor civilly partnered. Subsequent DVA-related legislation and policies (e.g. the Serious Crime Act 2015) apply to abusive same-sex relationships too. However, Home Office strategies name all women and girls (including lesbian, gay and trans women) as the key beneficiaries of action addressing DVA, while gay, bisexual and trans men are not mentioned. In tandem, the main perpetrators of violence towards women are understood to be men.

This emphasis on female victims/survivors and male perpetrators in government strategies to address DVA confirms the binaried public story that DVA is a heterosexual problem. Seymour (2017: 12), in her analysis of the equivalent strategy document in the Australian context, similarly concludes that the heteronormativity suffusing it ‘reduces and quarantines both diversity and diverse experiences of violence, positioning these as marginal concerns in relation to policy development, resourcing and service provision’. In addition, specialist LGBT DVA services are few in number and insecurely funded (Donovan and Durey, 2018; Magic and Kelley, 2019); disputes over the rights of trans women to access women-only services continue (Stonewall and nfpSynergy, 2018); LGB and/or T victims/survivors are under-represented in multi-agency risk assessment conference (MARAC) referrals in England and Wales, which are intended to safeguard those at greatest risk (Donovan and Rowlands, 2011); and there are still no accredited perpetrator interventions for LGB and/or T perpetrators of DVA (Barnes and Donovan, 2016).

Alongside LGBT invisibility and exclusion which impacts on LGB and/or T victims/survivors’ help-seeking options, it is essential to acknowledge the broader, increasingly neoliberal context within which DVA research, practice and policy is being conducted and enacted. Since the rise of the so-called New Right in the late 1970s and 1980s, commentators have talked about the rise of neoliberal thinking. Rose (2000) contends that neoliberal political agendas promoting a diminished state – including decreasing taxation, the emphasis on private provision and the need for a business model for the delivery of public services (Clarke, 2005; Harvey, 2005) – have relied on the construction of the responsibilised citizen who strives for autonomous, independent (of the state) living.

While the successful responsibilised citizen is revered, failed citizens have only themselves to blame. Failure is increasingly located in the individual: personal failings, poor decisions, personality deficits, genetics, faulty brain-wiring or neuropsychology all have currency when camouflaging the failures of the slimmed-down state. Economic austerity, imposed by the Coalition government (2010–15), optimises the conditions in which neoliberal understandings of social problems and policy responses can dominate (Donovan and Durey, 2018; Rushton and Donovan, 2018).

Stanko (1997) argued that women’s ‘safety talk’ precedes more recent exhortations for the public to take preventative action in relation to crime: women have long known that they are at risk from men, have been schooled in preventative strategies to keep themselves safe and have been wary of trusting male-dominated help providers such as the police to respond appropriately. The impact of feminism since the 1970s to address the latter has been limited. The Crime Survey of England and Wales shows that the proportion of female victims of DVA reporting to the police decreased from nearly 30% in 2010/11 to just over 18% in 2017/18 (ONS, 2018). There also exists a gap of trust between LGB and/or T victims/survivors of DVA and help providers, including the police (Donovan and Hester, 2011a).

That self-care might, therefore, predominate among LGB and/or T people is borne out by literature showing that, unlike heterosexual women, whose first choice of a formal help provider is the police, for LGB and/or T people it is counsellors/therapists (Donovan and Hester, 2014). The latter’s interpretation argues that DVA in same-sex relationships is yet to undergo the social transformation that has occurred in heterosexual relationships: LGB and/or T victims/survivors’ accounts reflect an individualised, privatised response to their experiences. These findings were mirrored in the Coral Project, which studied LGB and/or T people who use violent and/or abusive behaviours in their intimate relationships (Donovan et al., 2014). Both those who reported being victimised and those who reported using violent/abusive behaviours indicated that, if they sought help at all, they approached friends first and then therapists/counsellors (Donovan et al., 2014; see also Ball, 2011; Riggs et al., 2016).

Thus, there is a need to better understand what shapes the help-seeking of LGB and/or T victims/survivors of DVA. Liang et al. (2005) argue that help-seeking is a non-linear process rather than a one-off decision/action. They identify three stages to this process: (i) recognising that there is a problem, (ii) deciding whether to do something about it and (iii) selecting a source of help. Each of the three relates to thinking processes involving interpretation of the situation that may or may not lead to an action, yet Liang et al. emphasise that they are not necessarily consecutive or automatically progressive. While this model might imply a solitary process of thinking and deciding, none of the stages are undertaken in a vacuum but are rather shaped by the social context in which individuals live. We use Liang et al.’s framework to analyse our qualitative data, identifying that, in addition to facing some of the same challenges that Liang et al. identify with respect to heterosexual, ostensibly cisgender victims/survivors, social factors related to cisgendered heteronormativity, heterosexism and LGBT invisibility add an additional set of barriers to LGB and/or T victims/survivors’ help-seeking. Notably, Liang et al.’s framework can be extended to include a fourth aspect, whereby a chosen source of support is approached. While this was the culmination of some of our participants’ decision-making processes, data on actual experiences of help-seeking fall outside the scope of this article.

Liang et al. (2005) identify that individual, interpersonal and socio-cultural factors mould the help-seeking process. This multi-layered approach resonates with an ecological analysis. Heise’s ecological model (1998) is based on previous work by Bronfenbrenner (1979, in Heise, 1998) and Carlson (1984) who develop a model for understanding behaviour that is based on overlapping layers of influence on an individual’s behaviour: the individual’s own biography and history; their family and community; the broader socio-cultural context; and the wider social-structural context they inhabit. What Heise (1998) does differently is to use the model as a way of learning what is known about the social problem of violence against women; ‘organising the existing research base into an intelligible whole’ (Heise, 1998: 266). The layers of her ecological model are ‘nested’ to illustrate interconnectedness: each layer reflects, reinforces and constructs the others. In our analysis we similarly examine how cisgendered heteronormativity, heterosexism and LGBT invisibility are reinforced and experienced at both macro and micro levels, encompassing both wider social-structural forces, community and relationship influences, and individual biography and history. However, it is not possible to isolate the impacts for individuals resulting from their sexuality and/or gender identities from the impacts resulting from the other social identities they simultaneously inhabit. Thus, an intersectional analysis is undertaken to explore the coexisting impacts arising from living within a society organised around structural hierarchies resulting from patriarchy, postcolonialism and capitalism (Walby, 2007).

The Coral Project: sample and method

The Coral Project was the first study not only in the UK, but internationally, to use mixed methods to explore the violent/abusive behaviours enacted by LGB and/or T people in their intimate relationships: a survey of LGB and/or T people (N = 872); 36 follow-up in-depth interviews with survey respondents; interviews with 23 practitioners providing mandatory and voluntary perpetrator programmes, mostly for heterosexual, cisgender men; and 8 focus groups with practitioners from multiple practice settings (e.g. youth work, individual and relationship counselling, probation, sex and relationships education [SRE]). This article focuses on the interview data from LGB and/or T participants.

With no clinical samples of LGB and/or T perpetrators of DVA in the UK our methodology was exploratory. With the help of over 200 LGB and/or T organisations who agreed to promote our survey, and also by advertising on Twitter, we surveyed a self-selected sample (N = 872) of the ‘general population’ of LGB and/or T people about ‘What do you do when things go wrong?’ in their relationships (Donovan et al., 2014b). The interview sample was drawn from volunteers from the survey, and were carefully selected through various filters to construct a sample who reported having used various (potentially) abusive behaviours; who indicated that they or others around them recognised that they had problems with jealousy, anger, control and trust; and who felt that they should change their behaviour, since we wanted to interview only those who recognised that their behaviour was problematic and/or had taken steps to change their behaviour. On ethical and safety grounds, only those whose survey responses indicated that they were not in a relationship where they were currently using potentially abusive behaviours were selected. The interview sample included 19 women (including 2 trans women), 12 of whom identified as lesbian, 1 gay woman, 3 bisexual, 2 queer and/or pansexual and 1 asexual); and 17 men (including one trans man), 14 of whom identified as gay, 1 bisexual; and 1 pansexual. All but three participants identified as white, though not exclusively white British; the remaining three identified as Chinese and mixed ethnicity or mixed heritage. In this article we focus on the 21 accounts given of relationships where violence and/or abusive behaviours were reported.

Interview questions mirrored those in the survey, allowing more in-depth exploration of their experiences of victimisation, enacting violent/abusive behaviours, help-seeking and what they thought about the availability of help for LGB and/or T people regarding their relationships. Institutional ethical approval was received and participants were informed that should anything they say raise concerns about their welfare of that of or another adult or child, we would report this to the appropriate authorities. All participants received a resource detailing national and local sources of support. All identifying features of participants’ lives are anonymised and pseudonyms are used.

Importantly, while interviewees were selected because of their potential profile as perpetrators of DVA, most, when interviewed, provided accounts of victimisation and were clearly victims/survivors of DVA. Of interest was how, because of the public story that constructs a victim/perpetrator binary, participants perceived their own behaviours as precluding them from being authentic victims. Our analysis below refers to this and focuses on the social factors shaping their help-seeking. Our analysis was thematic, whereby interviews were read and coded separately by both authors to identify key themes (see Braun and Clarke, 2006) in relation to accounts of help-seeking and using Liang et al.’s (2005) framework to assist with this. Our analysis focuses on how cisgendered heteronormativity, heterosexism and the invisibility of LGBT lives permeate each stage of help-seeking.

Findings: LGB and/or T victims/survivors’ accounts of help-seeking

Recognising that there is a problem

Liang et al.’s (2005) first stage of help-seeking involves recognising that there is a problem and defining it as DVA. Within this, they acknowledge that women’s definitions of their situation will shift over time. While at an individual level, LGB and/or T victims/survivors may at least initially minimise or deny their experiences of DVA (Barnes, 2007), a key difference for LGB and/or T victims/survivors is that this individual minimisation and denial is reinforced socio-culturally through their invisibility in most mainstream responses to, and representations of, DVA.

Donovan and Hester (2011b, 2014) argue that the success of feminist scholarship and activism has resulted in a ‘public story’ (Jamieson, 1998) about DVA, shaping people’s understanding, policy and practice. This public story presents DVA as a problem of heterosexual men for heterosexual women, a problem of physical violence and a problem of a particular presentation of gender: the ‘big’ strong man being physically violent to the small ‘weak’ woman. This invisibilises women as perpetrators and men as victims, and fuels myths that DVA between women will not be as harmful or risky as that from a man towards a woman, and that in male same-sex relationships, men are naturally aggressive and can defend themselves. Such myths and stereotypes make it difficult to tell or hear alternative stories about DVA. In addition, the binary of strong/weak constructs a victim who is defenceless and blameless.

The public story of DVA has ramifications at individual, interpersonal and socio-cultural levels. Many LGB and/or T victims/survivors do not recognise or name their experiences as DVA because they do not see themselves in the public story. Marcus, a trans man, described his first serious lesbian relationship (pre-transition) with an older cisgender woman who was very controlling and abusive. When asked whether he thought he had experienced DVA, he made a comparison to ‘battered wives’ to explain why he thought he had not:

Oh it’s a hard one…. on paper it probably seems like that [abusive] but . . . I’m not going to sit here and say that I didn’t cause problems because I was so unhappy and [that] I wasn’t a horrible girlfriend to be with…. So . . . I think it had very dangerous elements to it…. Like it wasn’t easy for her to be with me, and I kind of don’t blame her for being the way she was [pause] and…. I was never like a battered wife, you know. (Marcus, white trans man, queer/pansexual, aged 20)

For Marcus, the ‘battered wife’ provides the template of what DVA might be; he cannot see his experience reflected there and consequently he cannot name his experiences as DVA, despite the ‘dangerous elements’ in that relationship including forced sex and micro-regulation of his activities. Marcus also engages in self-blame, perceiving himself to have been a ‘horrible girlfriend’ responsible for his ex-girlfriend’s behaviour. Marcus’s self-blame is typical of many victims/survivors of DVA and is often encouraged by abusive partners. However, Marcus, in referring to his own problematic behaviour suggests that he felt himself to be culpable in precipitating angry rows which occasionally escalated to physical violence on his part as well as his partner’s. Accounts such as Marcus’s reveal much more complicated experiences of DVA, in which the role of victim is much harder to inhabit because of the way the public story has been constructed including a particular victim/perpetrator binary.

In addition to the public story of DVA, the invisibility of LGBT people’s relationships can distort LGB and/or T people’s relationship expectations and awareness of DVA. Cisgendered heteronormativity, heterosexism and LGBT invisibility result in a lack of positive role models of everyday LGB and/or T people’s relationships and a sense of being ‘on your own’. This was an issue that many participants identified, especially when they had come out later in life and lived in areas without a very visible local LGBT scene. For example, Graham described his lack of help-seeking during and after his first gay relationship at 32 with a man 15 years his junior. This was a very conflict-ridden seven-year relationship, because Graham wanted fidelity and his partner lied about sex he was having with other men. When he was asked whether he had sought help, Graham explained that had he known there was somewhere he could go he would have gone, because his Christian faith led him to believe a relationship should be for life. He says:

I’m more aware of what’s out there now and, and where to look…. But . . . when I was with Dan it . . . was very fast from meeting each other, didn’t really know that much about the scene itself or, and we kind of learnt together…. No. . . . [it] would never have entered my head to do anything like that [go to Relate or his GP]. It was just literally ‘we’re gay, there is no support there’ . . . because it was just like [a] first gay relationship, if you will, it . . . was just purely ‘well we’re on our own, there’s nobody here to support us in anything’. (Graham, white cisgender gay man, aged 41 years)

Graham lived in a very rural part of the country where, as he said, ‘when I was at school if somebody had said they were gay . . . they’d have been kicked to a pulp’, thus his sense of being ‘alone’ also speaks to his lack of role models for gay relationships when coming out into his first same-sex relationship in his 30s. This lack of role models is compounded by the difficulty of accessing information about LGB and/or T identities and intimate lives. This includes, in the UK, the lack of LGBT-inclusive SRE (Formby and Donovan, 2016), and the legacy of Section 28 of the Local Government Act in England and Wales which, between 1988 and 2003, prevented local authority-funded agencies (for example, schools, youth services and libraries) from providing LGBT-inclusive positive and normalising resources, guidance and support (Ellis and High, 2004). Similar legislation remains in many countries, such as so-called homosexual ‘propaganda’ laws in Russia (Johnson, 2015).

Lack of access to information means that the abusive partner is potentially the one who fills the gaps. Donovan et al.’s (2014b) concept of ‘experiential power’ explains how a more experienced LGB and/or T partner who has been out for longer can convince their partner that certain relationship or sexual practices are ‘normal’. Those who are in their first relationship as an LGB and/or T person are particularly vulnerable to such manipulation and exploitation (Donovan and Hester, 2008; McDonald, 2012; Ristock, 2002), making them less able to recognise that their relationship might be abusive, and that they might need, or could access, support.

Colin was 30 when he came out, also in an area of the country with very little visible LGBT scene, with no prior experience of LGBT lives or relationships, and having not had a sexual relationship with anybody. His first gay male relationship was when he was 32 years old and was a year-long, abusive one that involved financial, emotional and occasional physical violence, the latter being enacted by both Colin and his partner, Nathan. Colin was 10 years older than Nathan, had an established career and owned his home – all factors that might suggest he was structurally more powerful than Nathan – yet Nathan had been out for five years and claimed superior knowledge about what ‘being gay’ meant. As well as threatening to out Colin to his employer, Nathan undermined Colin’s lack of ‘gay capital’ by taunting him about his older age and his desire for love and marriage:

[C]onversations that we had whereby I would say, ‘I want to be in a loving or a caring relationship and I want us to get married in the future and settle down’. And he’s like, ‘You don’t have a clue. You don’t know how the LGBT community works. That’s not real-life. You’re living in some kind of straight utopia. That’s not the way that it works and that’s not the way that the scene works.’ It was, ‘You’ve got a lot to learn. You’ve got a lot to be aware of.’ (Colin, white gay cisgender man, aged 36)

The stigma and shame surrounding LGB and/or T identities, together with concerns about the prospects of finding another partner given their minority status, can result in low relationship expectations, tolerance and/or normalisation of abusive behaviours. Colin felt particularly vulnerable in this regard because, as his partner pointed out, he was ‘overweight’, ‘receding’ and older. However, this is also a product of heterosexist representations of LGB and/or T people’s relationships which associate being LGB and/or T with dysfunctional or short-lived relationships.

Deciding whether to do something about it

The second stage involves victims/survivors deciding whether or not to seek support to help them to better understand, cope with and/or leave their relationship (Liang et al., 2005).

The overarching public story of DVA resonates at this stage too. Once victims/survivors have recognised that something is wrong, they typically start to consider how their relationship would be interpreted by outsiders. This can fuel concerns that they would not be believed or taken seriously because their abuser looks like the more stereotypically feminine and weaker partner. As Amber explains:

She was super girly . . . and um so you’d never think that she could, you’d never, ever believe that she would beat me up, would be impossible, but that is in fact what happened. (Amber, mixed ethnicity lesbian cisgender woman, aged 41)

In another incident Amber recounted, her white cisgender female partner attacked her on the street. The police attended the incident (it is unclear whether they were called or were passing) and arrested Amber because, as she perceived it, she looked like the most likely perpetrator by virtue of being bigger, stronger and the more stereotypically masculine partner (see Pattavina et al., 2007). Concerns about being assumed to be the perpetrator reduce the perceived accessibility of, especially, formal sources of support. It is not clear whether Amber perceived that her ethnicity influenced the police response to the incident. However, more generally, there is evidence that Black people tend to be over-criminalised and subject to racialised stereotyping by the police (e.g. Bowling and Phillips, 2007) and thus we can assume this might also have been a factor in their assessment of who might be the most obvious perpetrator in an incident involving two cisgender women.

As well as the impacts of the public story of DVA, participants’ accounts revealed many concerns which reflect the experience of living in a society which assumes and privileges a dominant white heterosexuality and cisgenderism. The heteronormativity and cisnormativity of society stems from the legacy of the historical socio-political positioning of LGB and/or T people in society as dangerous deviants, unnatural, criminal and destined for unhappy lives which has, until relatively recently, been used by the state to subjugate LGB and/or T people and to justify discrimination, hostility and even hate (Donovan et al., 2018). The damage, as alluded to above, includes but is not limited to impacts for mental health, employment and education opportunities, social relationships with family and wider social circles (Government Equalities Office, 2018; Metro, 2016; Stonewall, 2018).

This backdrop of subjugation and distortion of LGB and/or T people’s lives and identities inevitably shapes help-seeking. Many participants raised concerns about whether formal sources of support, in particular, would understand their identities and relationships and/or believe them. These concerns were heightened when participants recognised that their relationships were especially non-normative, as was reflected by Beth, who had survived a previous abusive relationship but was currently engaged in poly and BDSM (bondage, domination, submission and masochism) relationships:

I wouldn’t really know who to go to. It’s difficult enough to be taken seriously with depression anyway. I mean when you try and throw in the fact you’re in a BDSM relationship or a poly relationship they sort of look at you like you’ve grown another head sort of thing. (Beth, white bisexual trans woman, aged 31)

Importantly, for Beth, a history of not feeling that her mental health needs have been understood by various agencies is a barrier to seeking help too, with the implication being that she considers herself too complex or unusual to be taken seriously by practitioners from whom she might seek help.

Other participants reflected that their help-seeking had been inhibited by fears of receiving an explicitly discriminatory response or of services not being able or willing to support LGB and/or T victims/survivors. Millie, for example, was being victimised in an extremely violent and abusive first lesbian relationship when she was 19 years old. After a serious assault, a solicitor took her to a local women’s refuge. However, once there, Millie explained:

[A] lady there turned around and . . . asked me . . . what the man was like and I said it’s a woman and she said ‘Oh woman don’t hit other woman, we can’t really support you.’ (Millie, white cisgender lesbian, aged 26)

Millie’s experience not only illustrates that the public story of DVA is alive in the minds of practitioners providing DVA specialist services. Critically, such experiences can deter future attempts at help-seeking.

Importantly, cisgendered heteronormativity at the socio-cultural level, such as disbelief and discrimination, can be manipulated by abusive partners at an interpersonal level to perpetrate identity abuse. This can be a particularly powerful means of control if one or both partners are not out, if the victim/survivor is or has been isolated from LGB and/or T support networks and resources, and if they lack acceptance and support for their sexuality and/or gender identity outside of the abusive relationship. Identity abuse includes experiential power; threatening to out somebody to their family, employer, faith community; telling them that no one will believe accounts of abuse because they are LGB and/or T; and making threats to bad mouth the victim/survivor within LGBT networks, or actually doing so.

For example, Jack, a white cisgender gay man, aged 44 at interview, recounted an abusive relationship that he had during his early 20s, 20 years prior to the interview, with a much older man in his 50s. Jack relocated to live with the older man after receiving help from him to secure a job and accommodation. Over 14 months, the relationship became emotionally, financially and eventually physically abusive, leaving Jack feeling ‘totally broken’. The situation was accentuated by Jack being mainly closeted: he was training to be a teacher at the time, when being a gay man was much more stigmatised. His partner threatened to out him to schools where he was considering applying for jobs, which made Jack fearful as he thought, ‘Oh my god, he’s going to tell everybody that I’m gay and I’m never going to get a job.’

However, Jack’s account reveals a combination of the impacts of heteronormativity and heterosexism giving power to threats to out, and necessitating coming out to receive help – but also the silencing effect of shame over having gotten into such a situation. He reflects that, even now that he is out, were he to be in a similar situation again, ‘I’m not even sure if I would tell my friends now, I think there’s an element of pride, you don’t want to be seen as being . . . you know, that broken in a sense.’ Such social pressures are arguably intensified by neoliberal expectations to not exhibit weakness and failure.

Selecting a source of help

Having recognised the problem and decided to take action, the third stage in Liang et al.’s (2005) help-seeking process is the selection of a source of help. For LGB and/or T people, this source is less likely to be family. While some participants described being able to rely on family members for emotional and practical support, it was not uncommon for participants to describe severed or troubled familial relationships after they had come out to parents, siblings or other family members. In Colin’s case (mentioned earlier), he did not feel able to be out to his family or many of his (heterosexual) friends for the first six months of his abusive relationship. This has implications for support both during and after the relationship:

I wasn’t seeing my friends as much and I wasn’t seeing me family as much. So when the relationship did break down, there was a massive void that he’d left behind. (Colin, white cisgender gay man, aged 36)

Moreover, for some participants, choice of help-seeking source was informed by their reluctance to fuel negative perceptions about LGB and/or T people, who they recognise have a precarious status. In Clare’s excerpt below, her consciousness of being perceived by her heterosexual peers to represent all LGB and/or T people is instrumental in her decision not to make use of an occupational counselling service when she was in, what she called, a controlling relationship:

I perceived that it would be seen negatively if it got out that I was having problems in my gay relationship um and I think there’s, there’s a, a reluctance actually for a lot of gay people to admit that there are problems, because you don’t want to give gay relationships (short laugh) a bad press, you know? (Clare, white bisexual cisgender woman, aged 35)

Relatedly, an issue that we explored in interviews was participants’ preferences for mainstream versus specialist LGBT services. What Weeks et al. (2001) called community knowledges are pertinent here. This concerns the localised knowledge about, for example, the extent to which local services such as the police are hostile and/or discriminatory or not to LGB and/or T people. Community knowledges can derive from personal experiences or the knowledge of other LGB and/or T people’s treatment from services. Clare (quoted above), for example, communicates a wider pressure to protect the reputation of LGB and/or T people by not publicly airing one’s ‘dirty laundry’.

Conversely, Julie, a white lesbian explained that she was ‘perfectly confident’ to seek counselling because:

I know one of their directors who’s a gay man . . . it’s like they’ve kind of come quite a long way. . .. I was quite confident that we would get a good reception and if not I would have complained to one of their directors (short laugh). (Julie, white cisgender lesbian, aged mid-40s)

Julie’s comment also illustrates that feeling confident to use a service and complain about a service, if necessary, rests on Julie’s community knowledge about there being a senior gay man involved in the service. Being able to see yourself/people like you in a service can be important for LGB and/or T people in bridging the gap of trust (Donovan and Hester, 2011a). Importantly, accounts such as Julie’s, though in the minority, bear witness to the ‘transformative identities’ of some LGB and/or T people who feel empowered enough to assert their rights either to approach mainstream services and/or to challenge negative responses from them (see Donovan et al., 2018). Jack, discussed above, similarly talks about being more willing to report violence and hate crime to the police now, contrasting this with previous eras where gay people may have felt undeserving of help.

Conclusion

LGB and/or T people have a long history of developing self-care and in the DVA field this is brought into sharp relief with the tendency of victim/survivors to turn to informal sources of help and/or counselling/therapy. What our participants also point to are the various social and cultural factors that cumulatively and/or in isolation construct truths about help-seeking. For example, identity abuse based on a person’s sexuality and/or gender identity can only work in a heteronormative, cisnormative society where, for example, being out carries risks for individuals and few role models exist for newly-out LGB and/or T people, making them vulnerable to being victimised through experiential power.

We have drawn on an ecological approach to making sense of these factors, using Liang et al.’s (2005) model that identifies three aspects of the help-seeking process. The broader cisgendered heteronormative context in which LGB and/or T people live their lives has been shown to substantially impact on the degree to which they are able to recognise and name their experiences as DVA. The cumulative impact of a lack of role models for experiencing intimacy as LGB and/or T people and their geographical location can result in victim/survivors feeling they have to deal with their relationship ‘troubles’ alone. The impacts of the public story of DVA, which renders LGB and/or T victim/survivors invisible, compounds the isolation and perception that DVA is best understood as personal relationship ‘troubles’, resulting from personal failings. Identity abuse and experiential power are also identified in this analysis as deriving from a cisgendered heteronormative socio-cultural context in which LGB and/or T lives remain marginalised. However, there is some evidence of transformative identities, whereby some participants give accounts of their confidence in approaching mainstream agencies for help and challenging what they perceive as a poor service. These are in the minority however, and the general account is of self-care and low expectations of mainstream providers.

Improving responses to LGBT DVA requires sustained socio-cultural transformation. Inclusive public campaigns that raise awareness of DVA across gender and sexuality and sources of help are needed to change the public story of DVA. Inclusive sex and relationships education to include discussions about love, consent and the warning signs of DVA is needed alongside specialist LGB and/or T youth provision that can provide informal SRE (Formby and Donovan, 2016). Specialist LGBT DVA provision is also needed and should be available everywhere, rather than the postcode lottery that currently exists. This includes DVA services that recognise that the victim/perpetrator binary can result in an understanding of victimisation that is too simplistic to reflect the reality of many people’s lives and behaviours while also responding appropriately to all uses of violent and abusive behaviours. It is also imperative that future research is undertaken with more diverse samples of LGB and/or T lives to ensure that the knowledge base is demonstrably intersectional in methodology and analysis; and to guard against generalisations about experiences and needs. Discussion about LGB and/or T help-seeking for DVA and service provision must be undertaken within the broader context of austerity and neoliberalism. The tendency of LGB and/or T people to be self-reliant can enable service providers to conclude that there is no need; consequently, LGB and/or T people remain absent in statistics and remain invisible as a group registering need (Donovan and Durey, 2018).

The ecological approach which we have drawn on illustrates the multi-layered nature of how wider social forces shape socio-cultural, interpersonal and individual influences on help-seeking. In turn, this justifies our argument that LGBT DVA is a social problem, not an individual one; a problem that is exacerbated by cisgendered heteronormativity, heterosexism and LGBT invisibility. Shifting responsibility onto societal institutions and challenging tendencies towards individual responsibilisation is imperative, therefore, if LGB and/or T people’s needs as victims/survivors are to be met in an effective and inclusive way.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Rebecca Barnes

Author biographies

Catherine Donovan is Professor of Sociology at the University of Durham, UK. She has spent nearly 30 years researching the intimate and family lives of LGB and/or T people, most recently in relation to domestic violence and abuse, and hate crime.

Rebecca Barnes is Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Leicester, UK. She has been researching domestic violence and abuse for more than 15 years, focusing particularly on LGB and/or T people’s experiences as survivors and perpetrators. More recently she has also been researching church responses to domestic abuse.

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