October is Domestic Abuse Awareness Month
October is Domestic Abuse Awareness Month
Domestic Abuse Awereness Month is a time to spotlight this often underreported issue.
- 1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner contact sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, post-traumatic stress disorder, use of victim services, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, etc
- 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. This includes a range of behaviors (e.g. slapping, shoving, pushing) and in some cases might not be considered "domestic violence."
- 1 in 7 women and 1 in 25 men have been injured by an intimate partner.
Intimate partner violence happens in the LGBTQ community, LGBTQ individuals follows patterns similar to heterosexual and cisgender individuals when it comes to abuse. Specifically, abuse can take the form of physical or sexual violence as well as emotional, financial, or verbal abuse. For some, especially in the transgender community, this type of violence can lead to death.
Despite high incidences of sexual assault among LGBTQ populations, the reporting of sexual assault crimes and the utilization of sexual assault services remains low. Many members of the LGBTQ community, particularly transgender women, do not report sexual assault and do not seek help due to fears of mistreatment by and lack of competency of service providers, law enforcement, and the court system.
Mazzoni Center offers support in the form of the louts. program. lotus. is a sexual violence educational program developed in collaboration with WOAR, and lotus. trainings are offered free of charge. The program is designed to create a broad, LGBTQ-competent resource network to ensure that LGBTQ victims and survivors feel safe, supported, and liberated in accessing related services.
You can learn more about the program here:
Learn more about the lotus. program
We are also excited to announce that May Booth, our education specialist for the lotus. program will be colloborating with Relearning Sex Ed to provide information on consent and intimate partner violence.
Relearning Sex Ed is geared towards an adult audience, with the hope that the relearning that takes place will trickle down to conversations with young people. Upon completion, Relearning Sex Ed will be pitched for publication with local book publishers in Philadelphia or self-published through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. Once published, Relearning Sex Ed will be sold at-cost and donated to sexual health centers across Philadelphia and beyond to make it as accessible as possible for those unlearning and relearning their perceptions of sex and intimacy.
