2024/06/30 by Melissa Gampe, Samantha Jeffries, Zoe Rathus · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Intimate Partner and Family Violence #Gender Politics and Representation #Sex work and related issues
paper · doi:10.5204/ijcjsd.3254
openalex publication_date 2024/06/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/17
In 2007, Evan Stark consolidated decades of feminist scholarship and advocacy on intimate partner violence (IPV) into a framework he coined “coercive control” (Stark 2007). Stark’s model was initially heteronormative. He later contended that heteropatriarchy may condition abuse in women’s intimate relationships with other women, but more research was needed to clearly understand how coercive control manifests beyond heterosexuality (Stark and Hester 2019). In this paper, we utilise the voices of 18 Australian same-gender attracted women who experienced IPV in intimate relationships with other women. The participants’ narratives, revealed through this qualitative method, provide insights into perpetrator tactics of coercive control in these relationships. Situating these stratagems within Stark’s framework, we gain a deeper understanding of this, often invisible, manifestation of coercive control. This study is essential and timely because, since Stark (2007) published his book, several countries have criminalised coercive control and some states in Australia have recently followed suit.