Destabilizing homonormativity and the public/private dichotomy in North American lesbian domestic violence discourses

Abstract

Developing and circulating community-based educational materials and offering workshops are common feminist approaches to addressing violence in lesbian relationships. This article explores the racialized exclusions in the public/private dichotomy in community-based educational discourses about ‘lesbian domestic violence’. An examination of community-based educational materials and interviews with lesbian and queer feminist educators illustrates how the public/private dichotomy produces exclusions and makes certain forms of violence enacted on certain bodies unthinkable and unintelligible. While these discourses challenge heteronormative constructions of violence, they have relied on a simple conceptual framework that has had the effect of promoting a dominant narrative or regime of truth privileging white, middle-class lesbian experiences. This article seeks to destabilize homonormative constructions by arguing for an anti-colonial feminist spatial analysis of violence in same-sex/gender relationships.

Desarrollar y circular material educativo comunitario y ofrecer talleres son formas comunes en el feminismo para encarar la violencia en las relaciones lesbianas. Este artículo explora las exclusiones racializadas en la dicotomía público/privado en los discursos educativos comunitarios sobre “violencia doméstica lesbiana”. Un examen de los materiales educativos comunitarios y de entrevistas con educadores y educadoras feministas, lesbianas y queer, ilustra cómo la dicotomía público/privado produce exclusiones y hace impensables e ininteligibles a ciertas formas de violencia ejercida sobre ciertos cuerpos. Mientras estos discursos desafían a las construcciones de violencia heteronormativas, se han apoyado en un marco conceptual simple que ha tenido el efecto de promover una narrativa o régimen dominante de verdad, privilegiando las experiencias de lesbianas blancas y de clase media. Este artículo intenta desestabilizar las construcciones homonormativas argumentando a favor de un análisis espacial feminista anticolonial de la violencia en las relaciones de personas del mismo sexo/género.

Keywords:

• domestic violence
• lesbian
• homonormativity
• whiteness
• public/private

Keywords:

• violencia doméstica
• lesbianismo
• homonormatividad
• blanquedad
• público/privado

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the interviewees who participated in this research and Dr. Lawrence Berg, Dr. Sherene Razack, Dr. Janice Ristock and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. I would also like to acknowledge the ‘Sexual and Gender Diversity: Vulnerability and Resiliency’ Research Team (funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research – CIHR) for funding. A version of this article was presented at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA in April 2007.

Notes

 1. Violence in lesbian relationships may be referred to as partner abuse, intimate relationship violence, woman-to-woman abuse or same-sex or same-gender domestic violence. Many lesbian, bisexual, queer or transgender women may not use the language of ‘domestic violence’ to define their experiences because of the heteronormative and gendered assumptions implied within the category (Chung and Lee 2002). Despite this, the term domestic violence continues to be used by some researchers and community groups to describe violence in intimate same-gender/sex relationships and to draw parallels to violence in heterosexual relationships (Ristock and Timbang 2005).

 2. The term ‘Two-Spirit’ is often used by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) people of Aboriginal descent in both the US and Canada. It is ‘presently used to describe Aboriginal people with different roles or identities, including gays, lesbians, other genders (not-men, not-women), those of multiple genders (hermaphrodites and bisexuals), transvestites, transsexuals, transgendered people, drag queens and butches. The term is also used to refer to heterosexual people who have a unique place on the gender continuum, and who are seen to have a more expanded view of the world, as a result of their ability to mediate between, and see through the eyes of both sexes’ (Meyer-Cook and Labelle 2004, 30–31).

 3. Given my experience as a queer anti-violence educator, I had a research assistant interview me as well. The transcript from my individual interview was included as data in my analysis. I interviewed five white women although one woman also identified with a specific ethnic identity (not mentioned for reasons of confidentiality). Three women identified as middle-class, one as ‘mixed-class’ and the other as working-class. Throughout the article, I have used the words ‘us’, ‘we’ and ‘ourselves’ to refer to white lesbian feminists, deliberately including myself as I am not outside the analysis and am implicated in the discussion about whiteness.

 4. Recent exceptions are the Safe Choices Program in Vancouver funded by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and the Coalition Against Same-Sex Partner Abuse in Toronto funded by the Ontario Ministry of Attorney General. The state frequently funds organizations dominated by white, middle-class professionals to do outreach to immigrant women, women of colour and Aboriginal women rather than providing ongoing core funding to these communities directly (Shin 1991). These state practices and hierarchical social relations affect the production of knowledge – such as who is funded, hired, published, and whose analysis is legitimized.

 5. Most focus primarily (or exclusively) on lesbian identity, although there have been recent efforts to include women who identify as bisexual, queer, Two-Spirit, and/or transgender, or who do not claim any of these identities. Although most materials are not directed towards transgender communities, some recent educational materials have tried to be trans-inclusive. There are also debates within communities about the strengths and limitations with a LGBT model that can problematically conflate gender identity and sexual orientation.

 6. Although workshops range anywhere in length from two hours to two days, most last from three to five hours.

 7. These kinds of relations were confirmed in Janice Ristock's (2002) research, where she found that more than half of the women she interviewed had been abused in their first lesbian relationship, and many spoke of a similar dynamic to the one that Johnston and Valentine (1995) describe.

 8. This section draws on my work in Holmes and Ristock (2004).

 9. This may stem from its usage in an influential article by Valli Kanuha (1990), ‘Compounding the Triple Jeopardy: Battering in Lesbian of Colour Relationships’, reprinted in a training manual on lesbian battering, Confronting Lesbian Battering: A Manual for the Battered Women's Movement (Elliot 1990). Kanuha's (1990) important article does not privatize the experiences of lesbians of colour experiencing abuse and clearly locates the issues within the social and political context of racism and heterosexism. Her article addresses racism within lesbian and feminist communities and the complexities of experiences of lesbians of colour who are being abused or abusive.

10. Srivastava (2005, 36–7) explains: ‘just as first-wave feminism was shaped by the backdrop of imperialism and nation building, contemporary feminist communities have been similarly shaped by representations of morality rooted in racist and imperial histories’.