Queering Quantitative Stories of Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse

Abstract

Chapter 3 presents the findings from the Coral Project survey about LGB and/or T+ people’s experience and use of violence and ‘abusive’ behaviours. The approach taken deviates from more conventional approaches to reporting on quantitative data, aiming instead to queer the dominant quantitative narrative in intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA) research. We examine our ‘headline’ prevalence figures and gender, sexuality and age differences therein. We subsequently explore the heterogeneity of ‘perpetrators’ of IPVA by comparing subgroups of high/low perpetration and high/low victimisation, leading us to trouble the victim/perpetrator binary. We apply Johnson’s typology of IPVA to this analysis and we endeavour to overcome the limitations of much previous IPVA research that is incident-based and typically fails to capture coercive control and the wider relationship context. Our highly original data about the use of violence and ‘abusive’ behaviours in LGB and/or T+ people’s relationships includes findings concerning the reported motives of those who have enacted violence and ‘abusive’ behaviours, the impacts of victimisation, and the power and control dynamics of respondents’ intimate relationships. Throughout, we acknowledge that whilst our survey data offers unique insights, it is not possible to rely solely on it to understand how violence, abuse and power operate in people’s intimate relationships.