Queer(y)Ing Civil Law Responses to Domestic and Family Violence

Queer(y)ing Civil Law Responses to Domestic and Family Violence offers unique, in-depth insights into the experiences of LGBTQ+ victim-survivors who have engaged with civil protection order systems.

Drawing on data from an Australian study following the experiences of LGBTQ+ victim-survivors of domestic and family violence who engaged with Victoria’s civil protection order system, this book adopts a feminist, queer and trans abolitionist perspective to challenge the assumption that the best response to LGBTQ+ domestic and family violence is a legal one. Problematising responses that fundamentally require increased investment in policing, courts and prisons despite the risks this poses to marginalised individuals and communities, this book centres queer criminology as a framework through which we can situate and critique the rigid victim/perpetrator binaries that are so characteristic of legal responses to violence. This same criminological framework also provides the tools and knowledge needed to envision an alternative, community-oriented response to harm--within and beyond queer communities. In this way, the book presents queer criminology not only as a way of understanding LGBTQ+ experiences, but also as a means for analysing the broader shortcomings of a system that more often exacerbates risk of harm than minimises it.

Queer(y)ing Civil Law Responses to Domestic and Family Violence will be useful for students and scholars of LGBTQ+ violence, as well as a valuable resource for policy makers, legal and specialist practitioners and advocates considering how best to respond to LGBTQ+ domestic and family violence.

Ellen Reeves is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool, UK. Her research revolves around the unintended consequences of domestic and family violence law reform, with a particular focus on the ’misidentification’ of victim-survivors as predominant aggressors.