Emotional and Psychological Abuse

• Blaming the abuse on the survivor’s identity or behavior (their gender identity, sexual orientation, non-monogamy, etc.)
• Refusing to let partner associate with friends and family and LGBTQI+ community
• Telling mutual friends that partner is abusive
• Getting mutual friends to side with the abuser (or to refuse to take sides)
• Exploiting rural issues: lack of vehicle, physical isolation, lack of places for LGBTQI+ people to meet
• Exploiting partner’s low self-esteem related to their sexual orientation or others’ responses to it
• Putting partner down for refusing to play roles
• Ridiculing, discounting, or refusing to believe partner’s sexual identity; defining it as a ‘problem’ or publicly humiliating partner for it
• Demeaning partner by contrasting their ability to pass in heterosexual society with partner’s being ‘really’ lesbian or gay
• Putting down partner’s developing body

Threats and Intimidation

• Threats of suicide particularly potent given the already higher rate of suicide in LGBTQI+ communities
• Scary behavior (e.g. dangerous driving)
• Stalking
• Threatening to “out” partner to family and friends

Entitlement and Heterosexism/Transphobia

• Demanding personal service (rather than sharing chores)
• Exploiting partner’s internalized heterosexism and transphobia
• Telling partner they are ‘sick’
• Attributing partner’s fear of violence to their internalized heterosexism or transphobia
• Demanding the partner change their dress, hair, behavior, or who they associate with
• Anti-LGBTQI+ remarks
• Blaming own violence on past or present oppression as an LGBTQI+ person
• Exploiting partner’s lack of relationship experience or uncertainty about their identity

Using Children

• Threatening to out partner to their ex-spouse, or other family members who might attempt to gain custody because of their sexual orientation or gender identity
• Threatening to reveal (or fabricate) partner’s sexual orientation, gender identity, HIV+ status, mental illness, or substance abuse to courts or Child Protection Services
• Threatening to “out” partner at school where children attend

Economic Abuse

• Controlling financial information
• Making partner hand over paychecks, justify expenditures, or commit welfare fraud
• Refusing to meet children’s needs
• Not letting partner work or go to school
• Harassing partner at work. Carries the threat of outing them
• Threatening to out partner to employer. Survivors may quit their jobs rather than risk having their partners out them at work
• Identity theft: posing as partner in order to wipe out their bank account
• Denying them domestic partner benefits that they are entitled to

Sexual Abuse

• Treating partner as sexual object
• Criticizing performance or desirability
• Withholding sex
• Refusing to use protection; assaulting partner requesting it
• Forcing partner to have sex with others
• Rape

The above tactics are used in conjunction with other tactics of abuse. See types of abuse for additional examples.