Violence also exists within lesbian relationships, let's talk about it (without exploiting it)
A comic book communication campaign to break the silence on violence within lesbian relationships . It was launched by the Lesbian and Anti-Violence Line, which, since 2017, has welcomed lesbians, bisexual women, trans people, and non-binary people experiencing violence in their relationships .
Created in collaboration with Roman cartoonist Francesca Amato (aka Frad) and the Comunicattive agency, the campaign uses comic strips to recreate the context of "bar chats" between friends, addressing common stereotypes one by one, with the aim of dismantling them and highlighting the fundamental role of the social context in reproducing or interrupting violence in intimate relationships.
"It's not easy to talk about this type of violence," says Irene Bilei, a worker at the Lesbian and Anti-Violence Line, "because it's often exploited by the right to deny the specificity of male violence against women. But, on the contrary, it's precisely the social pervasiveness of gender-based violence that ensures it also occurs in lesbian relationships. Not only that, but it's often the discriminatory context that creates the conditions for gender-based violence , giving rise to power inequalities within the relationship." This is an extremely delicate task , which begins first and foremost with the need to dismantle the idea that violence in lesbian relationships doesn't exist.
Since 2017, Linea Lesbica has welcomed women kicked out of their homes by lesbophobic parents , who find themselves financially dependent on their partners and thus exposed to threats and violence; trans* people for whom the threat of outing in the workplace or other contexts constitutes a tool of control and blackmail in the hands of their partners; and people who have internalized lesbobitransphobia to the point of reproducing it through judgments and insults towards their partners.
"In recent years," Bilei emphasizes, "we have first and foremost brought to light a type of violence that tends to go unreported and is often denied. This violence, for us, has the same origins as the structural and systemic gender violence that permeates the lives of all individuals, and which ends up reproducing itself even in lesbian relationships. This is why we talk about heterosexuality and cispatriarchy . Because there are undoubtedly specific characteristics, but on the one hand, the discriminatory context does not benefit the building of healthy relationships, and on the other, it also shows a lack of 'imagination' for how to create diverse emotional relationships. This is why we tend to reproduce the same mechanisms as heterosexual couples."
In April, Linea Lesbica brought the topic of violence in intimate relationships to the international conference organized by the European Lesbian* Community, held this year in Rome. This opportunity for discussion drew more than 700 lesbian activists from around the world and has already borne fruit, leading to the launch of an anti-violence project in Moldova.
You can contact the Lesbian and Anti-Violence Helpline on Mondays from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM or Wednesdays from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM by calling +391 3359732. Calling does not imply any obligation to report the incident, and the decision to undertake or discontinue a process to escape violence is always the caller's. The support is free, and confidentiality and anonymity are guaranteed.
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