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Laura sat across from me, her feelings of helplessness radiating off her shoulders. She had been trying to get a protection order from her ex-girlfriend for over a year but had been up against the biases and legal loopholes of the judicial system.

Session after session she recounted stories of stalking and harassment. Most recently, her ex had showed up at her workplace and sat in the waiting room, talking to anyone she could about Laura.

"I am humiliated!" she exclaimed. "But the police won't do anything because they say she isn't breaking the law."

"If my ex were a man, I think they would recognize the behavior as dangerous," she said, turning her head towards the ceiling. I didn't disagree. There were immediate signs of danger in her ex’s behavior, which had gone way beyond the reaction of average anger. But the police had not bothered to hide their biases against a visible Queer relationship, thus not taking it seriously.

Confronting domestic abuse is frightening enough to push anyone into a state of denial. But Laura’s reality is different simply because of who she is. My practice specializes in working with LGBTQ individuals and treating abuse and trauma survivors.

I often witness the twofold suffering they experience as members of a marginalized community—first the trauma and then the stigma. The self-doubt that abusers instill through their non-physical tactics compounded with minority stressors makes it even less likely that LGBTQ victims will come forward about their abuse.

Her ex demonstrated a clear lack of control despite Laura’s pleas for her to stop: behavior that, if left unchecked, could do irreversible damage to another human being. Interestingly, those who intended to save her from it, the police, failed to recognize this behavior as dangerous or that it would likely get worse.

Had they known that stalking behaviors were often a precursor to violence, they might have had a more appropriate reaction. But since Laura is a transwoman who is seeking support and protection from a cis-woman, one who is visibly smaller than her, society does not see Laura as "needing" protection. Or they didn't care.

Had her ex come into the waiting room with a weapon, the police would have had no choice but to react. Yet without that element, domestic abuse is allowed to continue to exist in that grey area of "not quite illegal, but still abuse," which is often unable to be stopped legally. (Unfortunately, those many police officers I work with who do see the bigger picture, and recognize the dangerous situation, are often up against pushback from a department, and laws, that do not back them up.)

This powerlessness can be even greater for victims from the LGBTQ community. Few resources exist to navigate the trauma of domestic abuse, but even fewer for victims in an LGBTQ relationship. Without adequate support, so many of my patients from this community are left to manage the abuse and resulting trauma completely on their own.

And with the ever-changing legislation, revoking many of the rights that had only recently been obtained by LGBTQ individuals, they have even less support.

To come forward about abuse in the first place, LGBTQ victims must overcome so much mistrust and fear over “outing” themself, which means many choose instead to suffer in silence. When outing oneself can bring about societal dangers and concerns, it can leave them no choice. One client put it best, "I can stay with the abuse I know, or come out, and suffer the wrath of a community and family who do not accept me."

Except, in reality, LGBTQ people may be even more likely to experience domestic violence. According to the 2010-2012 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), 43.8 percent of lesbian women and 61.1 percent of bisexual women have experienced some form of sexual violence from partners in their lives. In addition, it reported that 26 percent of gay men and 37.3 percent of bisexual men had experienced a form of sexual violence from their partners.

Trans and gender-diverse individuals, especially transwomen, also have an increased risk of being the target of violence and even murder at the hands of their intimate partners. In 2016, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) tracked twenty-three deaths of transgender and other gender non-conforming people by fatal violence in the U.S. alone. By 2017, that number was up to twenty-nine. Among those tracked, the majority were black transgender women killed by acquaintances, partners, or strangers.

We have a world where Queer people are more at risk for domestic violence, yet also less likely to receive support. Recent laws aim to protect partners from intimate violence without regard to gender or sexuality, but negative biases can still corrupt an individual’s perspective. Sometimes, those individuals are the ones in a position to end an abusive situation, such as a judge or member of the police, and their biases can be deadly. And with many of the recent legislation rolling back rights for LGBTQ individuals, their biases are becoming more and more accepted.

It seems we have created a world where outing oneself as who they are is sometimes more frightening than risking the psychological trauma and physical violence of abuse. While there are many reasons a person may not come forward about their abuse, for LGBTQ victims, the lack of universal protections against discrimination is a major deterrent.

Reporting a hate crime or abuse in an LGBTQ relationship can mean having to out yourself publicly in exchange for justice, a step that many victims are unprepared to take. Suppose they do come forward and report abuse. In that case, an LGBTQ victim still has to fear that the person handling the emergency could withhold assistance because of biased opinions regarding their sexual orientation.

The lack of protection from laws and unequal allocation of resources leaves Queer, domestic abuse victims less protected in society simply because of who they are. These laws, and subsequent lack of protection from harm, attack their very identity.