What can gender-based violence look like?
Abuse is a pattern of behaviors one person uses to gain and maintain power and control over somebody else. While everybody is vulnerable to abuse, women and marginalized genders are unfortunately the most likely to experience serious harm or death as a result of familial or intimate partner violence. This is why it is often called ‘gender-based violence’.
Many people assume gender-based violence means that physical violence is happening, but that’s not always the case! GBV comes in many forms - it’s not just physical.
Types of Abuse
Physical
Includes bodily harm, discomfort or injury including hitting, punching, slapping, kicking, pushing, burning, biting, torture, restraining, assault with a weapon, withholding of food and/or medical care, and/or murder.
Psychological/Emotional
Any act that provokes fear, diminishes the survivor's dignity or sense of self-worth, and/or intentionally inflicts psychological trauma as a means of exerting power and control over the individual. Psychological abuse can include criticism, degradation, humiliation, excessive possessiveness, threats (suicidal, homicidal, deportation, kidnapping children, harming family, friends and/or pets), controlling a person’s daily activities, social isolation, and/or purposeful destruction of property and/or pets.
Sexual
Includes any act of forced sexual activity, sexual harassment, unwanted sexual touching, the refusal to use protection from STIs or unwanted pregnancy during sex, and forced exposure to or participation in pornography or prostitution.
Verbal
The use of comments that are known or that ought to be known to be unwelcome, threatening, degrading, offensive, and/or embarrassing.
Economic/Financial
The misuse of an individual’s money or belongings by another individual. Economic abuse includes, but is not limited to, the withholding and/or restricting of money needed for food and/or clothing, denying the right to seek and/or maintain employment, taking personal money, denying independent access to money, and/or excluding the victim from financial decision-making.
Spiritual
Includes degrading another person’s spiritual beliefs, withholding the means to practice, and/or forcing adherence to a belief system