this makes me soooo happy! one step further towards recognising same-sex couples as legitimate couples and unlike so many other states, no longer jeopardizing everyone's basic human rights of safety because of the bigotry from a few.

one thing that doesn't make me happy though- when feministing came up on my computer, the big advertisement at the top was for tonka toys (mostly trucks and things) with the slogan "built for boyhood". I completely understand the need to advertise- no problem- but its dissapionting to see gender steryotypes promoted on feministing of all sites.

Good move!

It reminds me, I heard that Boston law also considers it domestic violence even if it's not between married/divorced couples or blood relatives. I guess that's because of the large college student population here (and the way many students living on campus aren't assigned rooms to share with siblings or spouses).

On the surface, this looks like a great thing. But actually, it is rather problematic. The bill expands access to family court access beyond those who are married or have a child in common, to adults who live together. But it still denies access to victims of teen dating violence or adult victims who do not live with their abuser. Almost no other state in the U.S. requires a victim of relationship violence to live with their abuser in order to get an order of protection or to be 18 years old. It also conflicts with some NYS laws, which make it unclear if these NYC orders of protection would even be enforceable.
There is currently a statewide, bi-partisan bill which would grant access to family court to DV victims regardless of age or gender identity or status as dating or live-in across the entire state. The bill is much more inclusive, but it is seriously in danger of failing (it has failed for the past 20 years) if the NYC bill passes because it takes the pressure off of the Senate republicans to pass the bill for the entire state. This is a political move on the part of Bloomberg and Quinn, who could be making a much more positive impact if they could just lend their voices and power to passing the existing statewide measure rather than pulling this publicity stunt that still leaves a vast number of partner abuse survivors unprotected.

Recently there was a conference on domestic violence issues discussing, amongst other topics, domestic violence in same sex couples as well as in general discussing new research in domestic violence that seems to overturn previously held beliefs.

Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence" (pdf)
Despite what seem to be a group of well qualified researchers and speakers, I have not seen any commentary on this topic from my favorite bloggers, either to agree with the researchers and their conclusions, or to dispute them.

You may wish to take a look at them, the only person I've found to discuss the issues from this conference in any is Glenn Sacks, and you can find his conference reports here:

http://glennsacks.com/blog/?cat=88

The speakers included founders of the first women's shelters, women and men from psychology and legal backgrounds, and some of their conclusions were:

Rates of domestic violence in lesbian relationships may be higher than in other relationships. Dutton cited one study of 1,100 lesbian or bisexual women who are in abusive lesbian relationships. The study, which was conducted in Phoenix, found that the women were more likely to have experienced violence in their previous relationships with women than in their previous relationships with men.

This was is interesting too:

Dr. Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling (pictured, photo by Kevin Graft) of the University of South Alabama specializes in Juvenile, Family, and Intimate Partner Violence. Her email address is jlr@usouthal.edu.

At the conference, she co-presented the Plenary "Family Roots of Adolescent Violence in Relationships and Effective Interventions: A Developmental and Relational Perspective" with Marlene Moretti, PhD. Some of the points Jennifer made include:

1) When grappling with the emerging reality that women commit Intimate Partner Violence as often as men, she said, "Every time we tried to say that women's intimate partner abuse is different than men's, the evidence did not support it."

2) Jennifer interviewed women in shelters about whether they had stalked their intimate partners. She wanted to ask them if they had committed violence against their intimate partners, but was not allowed to. She says that 25% of the women who were being stalked by their intimate partners said they had stalked their partners too.

3) Jennifer wondered why some of the women were leaving the battered women's shelter in less than a week. The answer, she said, is that they too were engaging in violence against their partners, and in some cases had left to pick up the battle again. Jennifer explained, "We weren't helping these women because we were ignoring their paradigm."

4) Jennifer also said that many women who stay with their batterers or abusers are not staying out of fear or because of their kids. "Love has a lot to do with it," she explained.

5) She said that some of her work has been "suppressed," and that people in positions of authority have refused to publish it.

6) She believes that in some ways Intimate Partner Violence researchers have not done enough to bring their findings to the media and to present it in ways that are commonly understandable and digestible. She says that among researchers in many fields, there is a perverse desire to make the academic journals as difficult for the layperson to understand as possible. She criticized this.

People ought to be protected from anyone who would hurt them, regardless of their relationship.

While I'm glad this will include gay couples, I don't think that's where the main shift will be. By sheer numbers, unmarried straight couples are going to be more greatly affected. Considering the financial demographics driving marriage in the present day, it's going to be low income heterosexuals. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Flathead: I'm a little suspicious of the claims. Whenever I hear "well, this only comes from one source because the mainstream is suppressing it" it makes me think of Holocaust deniers and "intelligent design" advocates and other bullshit artists.

People ought to be protected from anyone who would hurt them, regardless of their relationship.

While I'm glad this will include gay couples, I don't think that's where the main shift will be. By sheer numbers, unmarried straight couples are going to be more greatly affected. Considering the financial demographics driving marriage in the present day, it's going to be low income heterosexuals. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Flathead: I'm a little suspicious of the claims. Whenever I hear "well, this only comes from one source because the mainstream is suppressing it" it makes me think of Holocaust deniers and "intelligent design" advocates and other bullshit artists.

werechick, I understand what you're saying -- feel free to look on it with a critical eye. As I said, I am somewhat surprised this conference and its findings has hardly been mentioned anywhere.

Her faculty page

Here is a page with her research

And for what it's worth, according to ratemyprofessor, four (of four responding) students thought she was a stellar professor.

I am really surprised that it has taken them this long to get a protective order in place for non-married couples. Hell, we even have that in Kansas!

HA! More progressive than New York. Nana Nana Boo boo!

But seriously, they should really get on that. I can't believe that they would leave such a huge population out of the PO. More than 4 out of 10 incidents of DV happen between non-married couples.

"People ought to be protected from anyone who would hurt them, regardless of their relationship."

I agree. There should be no loophole for someone beating up his girlfriend when he doesn't live with her, beating up a stranger when she does live with her (a la some dormitory room assignments), etc.

"more information on intimate partner violence in LGBT relationships." both

It's great to see feministing acknowledge that both men and women can be either perpetrators or victims of domestic violence, even if it's only in the context of same sex relationships.