Conclusion

The final chapter wraps up the stories told by survivors. It takes a holistic look at the stories overall and extracts the salient takeaway messages from the experiences. Taken as a whole, the stories of these eighteen transgender survivors of intimate partner violence yield several implications in moving toward trans inclusivity in theory, research, and the real world. By weaving in overviews of the stories, the chapter highlights how activists can challenge and shape existing resources. Trans-inclusive theorization and research as well as practical interventions are discussed. The chapter locates trans-specific realities and needs within the general avenues of help seeking.

Processing Victim Identity

In this chapter participants begin to detail how they successfully exited their abusive relationship. The idea of being victimized or being a victim is one that carries with it cultural significance. Across the stories of survival and eventual exit, engrained inequalities often structured the ways in which trans victims both responded to abuse and were responded to by help providers. Participants describe a world that is rigidly structured against them as they attempted to utilize resources and avenues that are traditionally available to most IPV victims. They describe two major processes in leaving abusive relationships: walking the gender tightrope and navigating genderist resources.

Intimate Partner Violence outside the Binary

The introductory chapter situates the discussion of intimate partner violence within its current rigidly gendered framework. The chapter introduces the reader to the historical backdrop of how we have come to acknowledge IPV as a social problem and how dominant forms of thinking within the genderist and heteronormative frameworks have marginalized those who exist outside the gender binary. This chapter presents a theoretical overview of the state of IPV in the United States and introduces the key concepts of the gender binary, heteronormativity, genderism, and transphobia as they relate to understanding the survivors’ stories. Finally, the first chapter introduces the study that the book is based on and provides a summary of the study design and a table of participants.

Meanings of Violence

As a critical aspect of storytelling, participants spoke about what their experiences meant to them as trans individuals. Meaning construction in IPV involves complex processes of interpreting situations, roles, and consequences within the broader context of an existing relationship. This chapter explores how participants described the motivations of their perpetrators and how they came to understand them as aspects of controlling their ongoing transitions. Utilizing the tactful manipulation of existing hostile cultural environments, abusers controlled transition through a process of discrediting identity work. This was accomplished through altercasting and targeting sign vehicles. Participants describe and interpret how they felt their abusers were uniquely able to target and undermine their identities.

“No Man Is Going to See You as a Woman”

This chapter introduces participant narratives about the types of abuses they experienced. As participants’ stories unfold, this chapter begins to describe the salient themes in the patterns of abuse and how they uniquely affect transgender individuals. Participants detailed a combination of physical violence that was accompanied with more frequent emotional and psychological abuses. As an important theme across the stories, these attacks often targeted trans status as an aspect of control and domination over victims. Two prominent forms of abuse are discussed: genderist and transphobic attacks.

The Contexts of Abuse for Transgender Survivors

Intimate partner violence occurs within a broader cultural and social context that shapes distinct realities for transgender survivors. This chapter further develops the initial context introduced in the introductory chapter by providing an overview of trans issues while introducing the lives of research participants within the broader social structure that cultivates violence experienced by transgender individuals. The chapter provides additional details about their identities and the initial stages of their intimate relationships.