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Queer men are victims of street harassment nobody talks about

// November 28th, 2015 // No Comments » // Around the globe, AVP news, International, Media discussion, Relationship violence, Within Australia, Within Victoria

This week we observed White Ribbon day and discussed how pervasive and destructive masculinity can be towards women.

However as Derrick Clifton writes in The Guardian, ‘uncomfortable, if not traumatizing, experiences (of harassment of gay men) get swept under the rug, or worse, internalised as something that “just happens” and shouldn’t be taken seriously’, revealing that many gay men, too, cope silently with harassment and consent issues in male dominated social spaces.

In Australia, governments are yet to turn their social policy lens and budgetary spends towards violence and harassment targeting the LGBTI community. The AVP believes that this makes Clifton’s argument, that its time to have more of a conversation about how the misogyny and patriarchy imbued in rape culture targets gay and gender non-conforming men, a very real and timely conversation to be had.

Read the full article here:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/27/queer-men-like-victims-street-harassment-nobody-talks-about?CMP=share_btn_tw

White Ribbon Day – Walk Against Family & Relationship Violence

// November 25th, 2015 // No Comments » // AVP news, Media discussion, Relationship violence, Relationships, Within Australia, Within Victoria

We in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) community have grandmothers, mothers, sisters, aunts and other family members who have been and will be victims of relationship and family violence at the hands of men.

The abuse of power within many relationships is a common thread that joins the broader community to our LGBTI community in our shared experience of family and relationship violence where patterns of power, control and violence have been passed on and learned from male family members.

With great sadness we note that one in three women has experienced family and relationship violence and that family and relationship violence is also the silent epidemic within the LGBTI community despite being the subject of increasing scrutiny in heterosexual relationships. One in three LGBTI couples experience family and relationship violence echoing the general population. Additionally many women within the LGBTI community have experienced relationship violence with men before coming-out as same-sex attracted.

We say, with determination, on White Ribbon Day, that the Anti-Violence Project of Victoria recognises and acknowledges that our joint LGBTI and broader heterosexual Victoria and Australia community, cannot be safe until family and relationship violence by men in our society is named, called out as being unacceptable and is dealt with in a way so that it cannot reoccur and is prevented from being passed-on to future generations.

Just as relationship and family violence by men in the broader community is under-reported, we acknowledge homophobia and prejudice motivated violence against the LGBTI community is another form of violence emanating from mens’ behaviour and being passed on through generations.

We call on the Australian and State governments to increase data collection on all forms of violence driven by mens’ behaviour, to develop new strategic public policy, to fund front-line services supporting all victims of family and relationship violence and increase funding and infrastructure to support a community-led response to under-reported violence in all its forms.

To Survive on This Shore is a beautiful series from the USA about the aging transgender community

// November 22nd, 2015 // No Comments » // Around the globe, International, Media discussion, Within Australia, Within Victoria

Many wonderful life stories come from the transgender community in Australia and we expect many more as society becomes aware of gender diversity within a framework that says expressing homophobia to diminish another person is not okay.

To commemorate the 2015 Transgender Day of Rememberence, the AVP would like to divert your attention away from Australia and towards the USA where Jess T. Dugan came up with the idea for the project  “To Survive on This Shore”, a series of portraits about the aging transgender community in her part of the world.

Have a look at this wonderful project here:
http://goo.gl/wFIVXJ

Shifting the debate on partner violence

// November 12th, 2015 // No Comments » // Media discussion, Relationship violence, Within Australia, Within Victoria

The AVP has known since our inception in 1997 of the connection between overtly masculine behaviour and violence in heterosexual relationships towards women and the link with homophobic violence through similar abuse of power relationships.

In this discussion,  Bianca Fileborn and Philomena Housley say “Most incidents of sexual violence, for example, are perpetrated by men against women. Likewise, men who enact certain types of masculinity – such as hostile masculinity – are more likely to be the perpetrators of such violence”.  The LGBTI Anti-Violence Project agrees.

Our “Boxer Campaign” targeted men in gyms and martial arts establishments in Victoria where masculinity could easily become hostile towards others and homophobia had the potential to ramp it out of the gym and directly into the LGBTI community.

Read the ‘Conversation’ with Bianca Fileborn and Philomena Housley here:

https://theconversation.com/beyond-gender-lgbtiq-abuse-shows-its-time-to-shift-the-debate-on-partner-violence-50238