Extreme Violence and the Invisibility of Women Who Murder: The Intersectionality of Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity Equals Silence

Abstract

Extremely violent deaths among socially marginalized populations are often invisible to society. Furthermore, extrapolating what is known about violent deaths in majority populations to highly intersectionalized populations may be inaccurate and misleading. Indeed, the majority of research on women's experiences to date has focused on heterosexual women, failing to identify and address the contextual risks for sexual and/or gender minority (SGM) women, especially SGM women of color. One consequence is that we are less informed about violent deaths among black SGM women and this greatly impedes our ability to create effective prevention interventions. We argue that an intersectional lens is essential to determining how the multifaceted confluence of race/ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual orientation operates as risk clusters for extreme violence. We make two recommendations aimed at increasing research, policy, and effective prevention interventions for mitigating extreme violence in SGM women: (1) sexual orientation and gender identity should be recorded in death reports for the decedent and the perpetrator across the administrative records and (2) sexual and gender minority violence prevention programming must be inclusive, and identify and target the drivers associated with the intersectionality statuses of racial/ethnic minority SGM women.