I am pleased to see that police and medical workers in Hampshire County are receiving more advanced training in dealing with intimate partner violence, and that the Gazette is reporting on this (“First responders get a primer on intimate partner violence,” Oct. 5).
But for me, it looks like an instance of “too little, too late.” In my youth in the mid-1990s, my partner and I lived in a fairly progressive college town in a Rocky Mountain state. Our relationship was rocky as well. Before it dissolved, I verbally abused her and she responded with minor but escalating physical abuse.
We sought help, which was inadequate, to put it mildly. When we called the local domestic violence shelter, a lesbian counselor chastised us, saying we had to get our act together by ourselves because if our neighbors called the police, the responding officer was required by state law to arrest one of us. We each saw a different psychotherapist; neither was experienced in dealing with depression or domestic violence, but they were lesbian- and gay-friendly.
I’m not sure whether the gap was in the Gazette’s reporting or at the Oct. 3 conference hosted by the Northwestern district attorney’s office, but 25 years after my personal experience with same-gender intimate partner violence, first responders need to be educated far beyond “many victims also include women and men living with a partner of the same sex.”
In 2019, this should be obvious. We anti-violence advocates, LGBTQ or not, need to make everyone aware that gender is a spectrum, and those of us who don’t fall into the categories of “women” and “men” are particularly targeted for violence of all kinds.
The Valley, with its public and private schools from Holyoke Community College to the south up north to Greenfield Community College, has a large population of nonbinary and transgender people. During my 13 years here, I’ve heard a number of stories, via social media and word of mouth, of at least two police departments in the upper Valley mistreating transgender residents and visitors.
This isn’t unusual, as police officers often receive no education in working with trans people. Trans women are especially vulnerable — the number of reported murders of trans people annually in the U.S hovers at two dozen, and most victims are trans women of color.
This isn’t happening only in large metro areas. In January 2018, many of us attended the memorial service at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence for Christa Leigh Steele-Knudslien, who created the Miss Trans New England beauty pageant and later was brutally killed by her husband in their home in North Adams. Christa had lived in this area for years and had many Valley friends and co-activists.
So I applaud any efforts to educate first responders about intimate partner violence. This education needs to be continued and considerably expanded, as quickly as possible. People’s lives are at stake.
Michele Spring-Moore lives in Northampton.