Time to shift the narrative
Recognizing and acting on early signs are keys to prevention
Heather Byrne says it’s time to shift the narrative around domestic and gender-based violence from victim-blaming to how to prevent it from happening.
Byrne, the executive director of Alice House, a women’s shelter, counselling and support centre in Nova Scotia, says when domestic or gender-based violence occurs, the current narrative is an automatic questioning of the victim’s response to the violence, rather than that of the abuser.
She says this blame game does nothing to help solve the problem. Instead, she wants to see this narrative shifted to determine what can prevent the abuse from progressing.
“This blaming takes the focus away from the person who is responsible and puts it rather on the person living in fear, who is not in control and has the least capacity to leave,” says Byrne. “This is what the current narrative assumes and that needs to shift.”
RED-FLAG BEHAVIOUR
Byrne says violence rarely occurs out of the blue. Instead, there are often early indicators or red flag behaviours that can progress to violence. These can include controlling behaviour, a lack of respect for autonomy, frequent demeaning or belittling and physical gestures that are violent.
“Remember that behaviour doesn’t have to be violent to be abusive. If you see these red flags, call a crisis line. If the pandemic means everyone can hear what you’re doing at home, text or email when it’s safe,” she says.
Crisis lines, she says, can help women determine how to proceed and understand if their circumstances are unsafe.
DATING, ONLINE RELATIONSHIPS
Dating someone new is also
a time Byrne says to be careful, especially if people have only spoken online before meeting in person. She says exercising caution – date in a public place and keep your home address private – is important until you get to know them better in person.
Charlene Gagnon, YWCA advocacy, research and new initiatives manager, says everyone – whether on a dating site, social media or video apps like TikTok or OnlyFans – should be mindful of how much they post on social media and who is responding, as this is often where victimgrooming begins for sexual exploitation and trafficking.
Gagnon says loneliness caused by the COVID-19 pandemic means young people are increasingly venting out insecurities and frustrations online, which gives predators vulnerabilities they can easily exploit.
“The pandemic has opened up a floodgate of access to vulnerable people, who are available and lonely and isolated and bored,” says Gagnon. “This grooming process then can lead to gender-based violence and sexual exploitation.”
SHIFTING THE NARRATIVE
Byrne says shifting the current narrative from victim-blaming to upstream, preventative conversation is key to stopping gender-based and domestic violence.
Until this happens, she says people will continue to assume that the victim’s behaviour or actions led to their being victimized.
“If we hear about a young woman walking in the park at 2 a.m. getting attacked, our automatic response is, ‘why did she do that?’ Almost as though we expect all responsibility to be on this woman to know better, rather than the person who committed the crime,” says Byrne.
“We constantly say it’s the victim’s responsibility, as though it’s this one-sided thing, instead of talking about how the perpetrator did or how they acted that led them to that point.”
With gender-based violence in news headlines this year, Byrne says the conversation has only now started to shift to what men can do to prevent themselves from becoming violent.
She points to the creation of a men’s helpline in Nova Scotia that is now accessible through calling 211 and is a place that men can ask for help without judgment and be connected with resources to help them.
Byrne says such upstream resources are vital to the early prevention of abuse, which can often escalate to domestic violence.
“Violence has the capacity to destroy people’s lives, including the abuser’s. The only person who can prevent someone from using violence is the person using it themselves,” she says.
“This upstream prevention is so important and necessary if we are to break the cycle.”