Re-Conceptualizing Safety: Examining the Intersections of Patriarchal Violence and Survivors' Empowerment

This study contributes to literature on gender-based violence, help-seeking, legal cynicism, betrayal trauma, and empowerment using a sequential mixed method design. Beginning with a web-based survey (n = 170) followed by in-depth interviews with purposefully selected participants (n = 10), the study empirically examined and explored how individual, interpersonal, community, institutional, and policy factors influence gender-oppressed Black people’s exposure to state violence, their safety responses to violence, and their sense of empowerment as it relates to safety. The study also explored how participants conceptualize safety. The quantitative findings suggested that individual factors such as gender identity, sexual orientation, migration status, caregiver status, disability, and arrest history were associated with higher rates of state violence exposure. Furthermore, interpersonal factors such as violence in both intimate and community contexts, as well as help-seeking from formal and legal sources, were associated with higher rates of state violence exposure. Higher levels of safety-related empowerment were associated with institutional trust while lower levels of safety-related empowerment were associated with police violence. The qualitative findings found overlapping core themes of hypersurveillance, controlling narratives, system rigidity, carceral collusion, and provider incompetence associated with state violence exposure. Participants’ narratives revealed that the individual, interpersonal, and structural factors within these themes also have disempowering effects on their sense of safety. However, participants also found strength in their traumas and sources of empowerment through cultivated community. The notion of shared precariousness in collective identity spurred a politic of collective care. The study identified anger from institutional harm as a primary driver to participants’ struggles for institutional transformation. While participants had variant understandings of safety, they all expressed elements of physical/material, relational, and emotional safety. Lastly, participants envisioned a range of practices, systems and other resources needed for Black women, trans, and gender nonconforming people to be safe. These findings provide insight into the causes and consequences of state violence among Black women, trans, and gender nonconforming people and have critical implications for future research, social work practice, policy, and education.