An Inclusive Litany

3/13/01

The New York Times reports on yet another major cultural revelation: that of widespread physical abuse among gays and lesbians. "We're just now beginning to take same-sex domestic violence out of the closet," said Jennifer Rakowski of Community United Against Violence, a San Francisco crisis intervention group. "We had to get acceptance as individuals first."

After fleeing a violent husband, Bekki Ow-Cuevas was surprised to discover that her lesbian partner would also assault her. "There was a piece of me that really wanted to believe that women are safe people," she said. A partner of a diabetic woman forced her to eat sugar, and a pair of disabled lesbians report their partners got a kick out of taking them to isolated wooded areas and leaving them there without their wheelchairs.

Part of the problem, apparently, is that police don't know what to do when they're called on to intervene in cases of same-sex domestic violence. According to the Times, "stereotypes of meek, overpowered women and rampaging, abusive men are of little help to officers responding to a battle between two men or two women. Often, the abuser is the smaller gay man, or the more feminine lesbian." "Unfortunately, we're still twenty-five years behind the battered women's movement," said Susan Holt of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, "but at least we've gotten started."