Pride in Prevention evidence guide - Rainbow Health Australia

https://player.vimeo.com/video/715415902

Marina [Rainbow Health Australia]: So, LGBTIQ+ communities experience intimate partner violence at rates that are similar if not higher than the rest of the population and they also experience significant violence within their families of origin. Really not enough attention, research and resources have been paid to understanding this violence.

We really needed a project that would look at the underlying causes of the violence - the deep social drivers and how we can act against those to stop this violence from happening in the future.

Jackson [Rainbow Health Australia]: Our evidence guide ‘Pride in Prevention’ brings together the available evidence and understandings that we have around the drivers of LGBTIQ family violence.

LGBTIQ communities and women both experience violence driven by rigid gender norms and gender inequality.

Marina: But also cisnormativity and heteronormativity. And really, what we mean by that is the ideas that male, female and heterosexual are the only normal and natural ways to be, and that there’s something wrong with bodies, identities and relationships that exist outside of these.

What we looked at is how that drives violence for LGBTIQ people, but also how it’s related to the drivers of violence for women.

Jackson: A common problem suggests a common solution.

And what we’re starting to really see is where the mutually reinforcing work can happen.

Marina: In ‘Pride in Prevention’ what we tried to do was to pull together a lot of work that other people had already done, and there was a lot of research looking at men’s violence against women and prevention frameworks and existing decades of practice.

So, what we tried to do was to bring those things together with a range of important partners to really lay the basis for us doing more around preventing LGBTIQ experiences of family violence.

Jackson: Our two LGBTIQ community led pilots, ‘Transfemme’ and ‘Safe Always’ have really helped us understand how LGBTIQ communities are real leaders in key prevention techniques.

Starlady [Zoe Belle Gender Collective]: Transfemme is a website supporting healthier relationships between trans women and cisgender, straight or Bi+ men.

It was about breaking down the stigma. In particular, I think that stigma impacts cisgender men who are often ashamed of their attraction to trans women and that shame is a driver of violence against trans women.

Carolyn [Thorne Harbour Health]: So, this project, ‘Safe Always’ is scaffolded off the ‘Pride in Prevention’ tool kit that was developed by Rainbow Health Victoria. What we wanted to do was address, at the top end, some of the misconceptions. So, we wanted to have really ordinary everyday people pictured in the campaign.

So, what people will see when they look at the campaign is everyday couples doing everyday things. And then there’s a statement in the campaign about a piece of family violence that happens after that photo or that picture has happened.

Starlady: Trans women have been asking for these resources for decades. Sadly, stigma and discrimination impact my capacity to access healthy relationships with cis men.

I’m not afforded the luxury of going out on a date, of being seen with my partners in public, and this changes that story.

Marina: The real benefit of this project has been about learning to work towards a future where all bodies, identities and relationships are respected and where we can live and love freely.

Jackson: In the next phase of this work, we hope that we can see the successes of our pilots ‘Transfemme’ and ‘Safe Always’ communicated and scaled up.

Carolyn: Because we all deserve to be safe and we all deserve to have relationships that are fulfilling and loving and caring.

Starlady: You know, so much of this project, what comes through is about that love and about that respect.

[End of transcript]

Updated 1 June 2022

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Pride in Prevention evidence guide - Rainbow Health Australia

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