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

Ellen Reeves

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040416471
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Civil Law
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Researching LGBTQ+ Victim-Survivors’ Experiences with the Civil Protection Order System
• 3 Seeking Safety and Justice: Queer Pathways to the Civil Protection Order System
• 4 Gatekeeping Protection: Policing LGBTQ+ Domestic and Family Violence
• 5 Binaried Risk: Pathways from Victim-Survivor to Perpetrator
• 6 Just Agree to It: LGBTQ+ Domestic and Family Violence in the Courtroom
• 7 (Un)safety and Wellbeing Following Engagement with the Civil Protection Order System
• 8 (Re)centring Abolition in Queer Criminology: Responding to LGBTQ+ Domestic and Family Violence
• Appendix
• Index