“Bleeding Love: Raising Awareness on Domestic and Dating Violence Against Lesbians and Transwomen in the European Union” 2015 02- 2016 02

The project aims at contributing to the prevention of domestic and dating violence against lesbians, bisexual women and transwomen in selected countries in the EU. It will investigate causes of domestic and dating violence; characteristics of abusers and modality of violence. In more detail it is the first attempt to gather data on domestic and dating violence against lesbians, bisexual women, and transwomen by collecting both legal texts and regulations, as well as national legislation, and good practices to prevent or resolve the occurrence of intimate violence.

In order to achieve that the project has four main objectives:

Firstly, the project will gather comprehensive information on violence against lesbians, bisexual women, and transwomen, which is still little reported;

Secondly, it will collect, compare and divulge information regarding good practices devoted to the prevention of violence, and to raising awareness among lesbians, bisexual women, and transwomen in the EU.

Thirdly, the concern will be given to the production of unique tools for legal professionals, health operators, and public officers in the EU to deal with this sensitive topic.

Finally, the project outputs will encourage legislators to better regulate on abuses and violence against lesbians, bisexual women, and transwomen in the EU.

The project, ending in February 2016, will cover eight jurisdictions of the European Union. In particular, the countries involved are Italy, United Kingdom, Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Belgium, Lithuania, and Portugal.

The project will produce the following outputs:

  1. one comparative research analyzing causes of violence and good practices adopted to prevent or to sustain lesbian, bisexual and transgender victims of domestic and dating violence and related issues;
  2. one innovative awareness campaign targeted at the women themselves and at the general public on this kind of violence;
  3. one two-day international final conference.

“Bleeding Love” breaks new empirical and conceptual grounds, and proves significant as:

a) the first comparative study on good practices on domestic and dating violence, and related issues, against lesbians, bisexual women, and transwomen in the European Union;

b) unique development and promotion of an awareness campaign targeted not only at the general public, but also at women themselves, including effects over children;

c) exceptional endorsement of exchange of information, best practices and networking within the European Union in the area of intimate violence, with specific reference to lesbians, bisexual women, and transwomen.

LBT* Women in Lithuania

LBT* Women in Lithuania

Despite the fact the domestic violence is a criminal offense in Lithuania, the LBT* women remain to be vulnerable to this negative phenomenon due to the prevailing homophobia and transphobia. Regarding the applicability of the Lithuanian Law on Protection against Domestic Violence to the same-sex couples, there are two major concerns. First of all, due to the fact that same-sex couples cannot legally register their relationships in Lithuania, the law is interpreted as being applicable only to those couples who reside together. Taken into account the ‘undocumented’ status of same-sex couples in Lithuania, the gender-neutral provisions of the above mentioned law could be interpreted as being too vague in order to take into account the specific need of the members of the LGBT* community. To put it in other words, the law is subjected to the immediate interpretations by the law enforcement officials as confronted with the instances of domestic violence in gay or lesbian couples. Due to the prevalent social hostility against same-sex couples in the country, it could be concluded that the legal provisions do not fully cover cases of domestic violence in same-sex relationships. Secondly, none out of seventeen victim support facilities in the country openly declare themselves as being equipped to address specific need of the members of the local LGBT* community. As a result, there is a reason to believe that the system of victim support services might be reluctant in addressing the needs of, inter alia, LBT* women. The project “Bleeding Love” provides for an unique opportunity to document the perceptions by the local LBT* community towards the negative phenomenon of domestic violence, to investigate the instances of domestic and dating violence among lesbian or transwomen and to explore the readiness by the victim support service providers to assist LBT* women in need.

Informational blog articles regarding LBT* situation in Lithuania:

(1) Invisible Shadow of Domestic and Dating Violence in the Lesbian Community – Interview with Elena Dapkūnaitė (Board Chair, LGL, Lithuania)

(2) EuroPride 2015: Understanding Intersex-Talented People

(3) SAPFO Fest Lithuania: Empowering and Connecting Queer Community

(4) A Matter of Layers: When Domestic and Dating Violence Comes Second to Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation

(5) To date or not to date? When dating leaves scars and becomes a question mark for transwomen (Lithuania)

(6) The Vicious Circle: Psychologists’ Studios and Fear of Being Stigmatized As Factors Keeping Domestic and Dating Violence Concealed

(7) How Male Gaze of Porn Industry Hypersexualizes Bisexual Women and Fosters Violence against Them

(8) Asexual Perspective: When Violence is as Invisible as Orientation (Lithuania)

In the course of the project implementation period two social videos aiming at raising awareness about domestic and dating violence against LBT* women were developed. We present:

“The Second Closet” (Lith. “Antroji spinta”)

“Tiger Susy” (Lith. “Tigriukė Susy”)

Please visit the official website of the project “BleedingLove.Eu“.

Please visit the official FaceBook page of the project.

The partners: 2mIhAJ--SQaXA_Cq-IPVT2fXxh7yg9LyvTxUVMeRJFwThe project is supported by the DAPHNE programme of the European Commission:

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