Oppressed Pride - Exploring the professionals recognition towards LGBTQ persons vulnerabilities under collective patriarchal violence and oppression

Abstract

Honour related violence and oppression is a relatively new phenomenon in Sweden that received political and medial attention in the 1990's. A lot of research has been made since then in order to understand the phenomenon and to improve the interventions against it. Most of the focus have been on women under HRVO, which stands for the majority who falls victim for this crime. This study aims to bring forth more shades of this phenomenon by exploring how professionals identify and give recognition to the needs, vulnerabilities and obstacles for sexual minorities who seeks aid from public services, as they've become targets for patriarchal violence and oppression. This is done by presenting three different vignettes of LGBTQ persons who are exposed to different forms of HRVO during semi-structured interviews. Twelve respondents from three different professional categories were interviewed: social welfare officers, counsellors and housing personnel. The participants in the interviews varied from one up to four simultaneously. The gathered results tells of several important aspects in the work with HRVO cases, among them are: refreshing and enhancing the professional's knowledge, being able to adapt to the client's needs and to grant a safe environment for the client during the ongoing assessment. The results also show difficulties for the professionals, such as facing conflicting legislation, whether HRVO is seen as a patriarchal phenomenon or a cultural relativistic phenomenon and high workload.