Flipping the Story on Disability and Violence

Internationally there is a growing awareness that domestic, family, and sexual violence is a social issue that results from social structures and relational contexts that have positioned women as ‘less than’ men. Alongside this growing awareness has come social action by women and their allies that aim to change these social and relational structures using an intersectional framing of oppression.

People with disabilities, especially people with intellectual disability, have been largely excluded from this social action. However, for decades they have been challenging the oppressive social and relational structures that frame them as ‘of less value’ than ‘non-disabled’ people. Aligned with this self-advocacy are social ecological models that look systemically to understand why interpersonal violence occurs, and to prevent violence. This book introduces a unique ‘flipped’ social ecological model and applies it to approaches from across the world that are working from the societal, community, relationship and individual levels to challenge the ‘vulnerable victim’ discourse through positioning people with intellectual and other disabilities as social change agents shaping their safer lives.

Divided into six chapters and providing case-examples from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, the UK, Norway, Sweden and the Global South, this book profiles work done by people with intellectual disability and their allies in the government and community-based anti-violence service sector, women’s and sexual health and disability advocacy that is contributing to the social effort to prevent interpersonal violence.

It is a must-read resource for anyone doing interpersonal violence prevention research and work and can be used as primary or supplemental reading for students doing coursework and research in disability studies, gender studies, community psychology, sociology, public health, and social work.