Queering Survival: Reconceptualising healing beyond heteronormative and cisnormative frames

🠘 Back to ARCSHS events

Queering Survival: Reconceptualising healing beyond heteronormative and cisnormative frames

The experiences of victim/survivors of sexual violence who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and/or asexual (“LGBTQA” people) are significantly under-researched and under-theorised. While a growing body of research has found that LGBTQA people experience high rates of sexual violence across their lifetimes, there is far less knowledge about how sexual violence impacts LGBTQA victim/survivors’ lives, how they seek support, and how they heal and recover from these experiences. This seminar will explore the results of Dr Shaez Mortimer’s doctoral research, which involved in-depth interviews with service providers and LGBTQA survivors of sexual violence in Victoria and South Australia. The seminar will focus on the stories and practices of healing by the survivor participants. Queer survivors hold “subjugated knowledge” about resisting and healing from violence in the context of ongoing oppressions, and there is much to be gained by queering understandings of sexual violence and survivorhood, including offering alternative pathways to healing.

About Shaez Mortimer

Dr Shaez Mortimer (she/her) is a researcher and community worker based on the unceded lands of the Kaurna people in Adelaide, SA. Shaez has a diverse work history including roles in domestic and sexual violence survivor support, violence prevention, education, research, and LGBTQA+ community work. Her PhD research was focused on LGBTQA people’s experiences of living through sexual violence and involved in-depth interviews with service providers and survivors. Her thesis won the 2022 Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Association Thesis Prize. Shaez has published work in academic journals such as Current Issues in Criminal Justice and Australian Feminist Studies, as well as community publications such as Archer magazine. Shaez recently started a new role at Our Watch, as Project Lead working on a new violence primary prevention initiative focused on LGBTIQA+ communities.

Access

This event will be live captioned and transcribed. If you have any specific accessibility requirement, please let us know and we will make every effort to accommodate you.