The Insider’s Guide: family violence in takatāpui and rainbow communities
9 / 5 / 25
55 min
If at any time you want some support, you can go to areyouok.org.nz or call the 24/7 Are You OK Helpline on 0800 456 450. Those details and other contacts are also in the show notes for this episode.
Experiencing family violence or partner violence can leave us feeling isolated and alone. It can mess with our minds and even make us feel crazy.
We often blame ourselves for what's happening, and it can make us feel like there's nowhere to turn. Throughout this series, you'll hear firsthand stories of people who have experienced family violence. And the reason these courageous people are sharing their stories is because they want people who are experiencing family violence to know that they are not alone, that they are not crazy, that it's not their fault, and that helpful support is available.
In this episode, I talk with Sandra and Kahukura. Sandra founded Hohou te Rongo Kahukura, an organisation dedicated to building violence free takatāpui and rainbow communities in Aotearoa. She talks more later about how and why she started it up. Kahukura work for Hohou te Rongo Kahukura. Actually, why don't I let them introduce themselves?
Kahukura: My name is Kahukura. I am the Whānau Support Worker for Hohou te Rongo Kahukura. I use they/them pronouns. I identify as takatāpui first and in English, queer, non-binary, trans. I whakapapa to Te Arawa, Tainui and Ngāti Kahungunu. I was brought up in Rotorua and have moved over recently to the Waikato.
Mick: Right, how's that treating you?
Kahukura: It's. It's different. It's a little more my scene than Rotorua, but like Rotorua will always be home.
Mick: Yeah. And Sandra.
Sandra: Yeah, kia ora. So my name's Sandra. I'm Pākehā. I'm in my 50s. I came out in 1988, so just after homosexual law reform, as a bisexual woman and I've lived there ever since in some way, shape or form, even though what that's meant for me has changed at different times. These days I would call myself a gender non-conforming woman.
And that's mostly because even though ‘woman’ has always felt like where I live, actually what woman means, especially in the pākehā kind of middle class thinking of woman, it's nothing like me. You know, people can't see me right now but [laughs] that doesn't fit me. And so some of the experiences that I've had around that include misgendering, include kind of threats around what I look like, all that kind of stuff.
I grew up in the Hutt Valley. My family whakapapas back to Canada and Scotland, two generations here in Aotearoa, and these days I live in the beautiful seaside village of Kokohuia, which is near Whanganui.
Mick: Nice, do you have a nice view at home?
Sandra: I have an incredible view at home. I get to look at it and listen to the sea all the time, yeah, which is why I moved there, really.
Mick: Amazing. Well, thank you both so much for coming and being willing to share your own story, but also to share your insights for the purpose of other people. If you're comfortable, I was wondering if each of you could tell me your own story about your lived experience with family violence or partner violence, in whatever order you choose.
Sandra: So I grew up in the 70s and 80s in a very bogan, working class community in the Hutt Valley. And when I came out, my family didn't believe me. Thought I was trying to be cool. Apparently. Apparently it’s cool. And my dad, in particular, really struggled. He believed that there weren't really queer people in the world. And he said things to me like, well, I don't know anyone, so I don't think that's- that's a thing. And I kind of left that alone at the time, because I wasn't in a relationship with anyone, and I was just kind of trying to share who I was. But when I began my first relationship with a woman, I wanted to tell my family.
It was important to me that people around me knew, you know? And at that point, my father's beliefs became really important, really. He kicked me out. I didn't have anywhere to go. I was a young person with no resources or anything like that. The way he treated me around that was quite awful in lots of ways. And what that meant was I needed- I had to move in with the person I was in a relationship with, the woman I was in a relationship with.
And that relationship became increasingly controlling and abusive over time. It started with jealousy. Why are you going out with them? Do you want to be in a relationship with them? Where are you going? Who are you going to be with? What time you going to be home? All of that kind of stuff. It graduated over time. That jealousy and controlling behaviour became more and more extreme. She would turn up at my workplace quite a lot just to make sure I was there, really. She would turn up in events I was at and make sure that I wasn't doing anything she didn't like. She punched a hole in the wall of my flat. She started hitting me.
Because I didn't have any family support, I couldn't tell my family what was happening because they didn't want to know that I was queer, let alone that I was in a relationship that was abusive.
I felt quite a lot of shame about what was happening. I didn't think domestic violence happened in relationships between women. I was really strongly connected to feminist stuff, and I couldn't describe what was happening to me. It didn't make any sense at all. And I loved her. So I was struggling with that as well. I was also struggling with everything I knew about her past. She had grown up in a really violent family, and I believed and still believe that, you know, you don't heal from trauma by yourself, that there needs to be kind of community around you and I hated how she'd been treated as a child, and I didn't want that to be how she behaved in the rest of her life. But, you know, you can't really heal someone else's trauma.
So over time, basically what was happening escalated. It was getting- there were fewer and fewer gaps between the physical assaults, which were much less common than everything else. The other stuff was much more common, the controlling stuff. One of the things that happened that I reckon is really helpful to talk about is one night we were at a women’s dance, which were really common back then. They were a cool way for women to get together and hang out and have fun. And I was dancing, and one of the women in our community ran outside to tell my partner, who was a smoker, that I was dancing too closely with another woman. And so my partner comes barrelling in.
And I was dancing with my sister, so it really wasn't very sexy. And my partner calmed down. So there was no violence around that. But the interesting bit about that is because I was bisexual, not only was my partner's ideas about who I might be hooking up with informed by the idea that bi people are ‘up for anything’ but so were the community around us.
So it was I wasn't just getting policed by my partner, I was getting policed by other lesbians who didn't agree that bisexual women were real, that bisexual woman could be trusted, that bisexual woman wouldn't be promiscuous. So in my situation, being bisexual was a really big part of what was happening in our relationship. And I didn't leave that relationship easily.
I left when we had made a plan to go to Australia, because she wanted to have therapy with her sister over there, her sister was in Australia. and she took all of the money that we had for that and disappeared, and said, if you want to be in a relationship with me, you have to agree to what's just happened.
I was like, oh, this has got to a point where for me…and I had a very good friend say to me, what do you want to do? What's okay here? And give me a very clear message that what had happened was not okay. And that was what helped me leave. The leaving wasn't easy. The day after I left, I looked at my body in the mirror and I had cuts and bruises all over my body from the last physical assault from her, which had been, she’d thrown me onto a picket fence. And I had, you know, injuries all over my body and looking in the mirror at my very damaged body was, I think the moment for me when there was no going back was like, how on earth has someone I loved…have I stayed in a relationship where this is happening? And that's when I started the process of actually kind of disentangling the hooks that were in me from the relationship.
At that point I hadn't told anyone what was going on. No one in my life knew. My flatmates knew that she punched holes in the wall. But we didn't call that domestic violence. Yeah. So, it took me ten years to name what was happening in that relationship as domestic violence. It took listening to hundreds of women when I was a social worker at Women's Refuge telling me their stories and me going, they've all experienced violence from men, but most of the things that they've experienced, I experienced in a relationship with a woman. So what does that mean? Yeah.
And then I started actively seeking out information about it, actively looking up same sex partner violence, partner violence inside LGBTQ communities, etc.. I couldn't find anything in New Zealand. I had to go overseas to find material. And that really, for me, was the start of what turned into Hohou te Rongo Kahukura. It was like, we have to have information about this so survivors don't feel like it's on us when it happens to us.
Mick: You mentioned earlier that the physical violence was not as common as the controlling behaviour. What kind of controlling behaviour was going on?
Sandra: The, the checking up on me all the time. And this was before mobile phones [laughs]. But turning up at my workplace. She was at my workplace every day.
Mick: Wow.
Sandra: Yeah. Every day. When I was going out with friends, she would turn up at some point during the night, she would just turn up in the bar. Oh, just just that I was passing through. Every time I went out with friends, I had to tell her where I was all the time. She started playing sports I played, to keep an eye on what I was doing. She…
Mick: What was she looking out for?
Sandra: the potential of me…hooking up with someone else, I guess. Yeah, like all of that. I realised after we'd broken up that she had accused me of sleeping with or wanting to sleep with every single one of my friends. Which, honestly, would be a bit exhausting, right? For most of us. You know, the reality of what she would escalate into her fears was ridiculous. And again, because I'm bi, that was all of my friends. It wasn't my woman friends or my male friends. It was all of my friends.
So it disrupted all of my relationships. None of my family and friends wanted to have anything to do with her, because she was really unpleasant to be around. And again, because I'd been kicked out from my family, this relationship was incredibly important, you know? It really was. It was where my…
Mick: She was your new family.
Sandra: Exactly. Yeah.
Mick: Is there a part of you that wishes you’d told someone?
Sandra: I didn't have the words. It wasn't possible. There's a part of me that wishes Hohou te Rongo Kahukura existed back then, because then I would have had the words, and I would have felt able to tell someone, I think. But the world is completely different now. This is 30 years ago
So I wish that survivors now know that we are here. And I wish survivors now can do that. But I think what happened for me was part of just naming that this is violence that does happen in our communities, and it doesn't always look like a man assaulting a woman. So yeah, that's a long answer to a question, but…
Mick: No, no. It's good. Was there anything in particular that led to you having the strength to look in that mirror and go, I'm actually- this is not okay with me anymore.
Sandra: I remember waking up that morning and going, I don't have any choices anymore. I don't- I'm not making decisions about my life anymore. I'm reacting to what someone else is imposing on me. And then I remember sitting with my friend and I remember her saying to me, what do you want to do? And it was the giving of that power back to me. That was the moment it started to change, I think. Yeah. That's why that's why people, survivors getting to decide what their lives looks like is so freaking important. That's what gets to disrupted in abusive relationships is your sense of control, your sense of, mana motuhake, tino rangatiratanga, sovereignty over who you are. Yeah.
Mick: And I'm guessing a reminder that your happiness is valuable. And worth prioritising.
Sandra: Yeah, totally. Because that's what gets chipped away in abusive relationships. Is your sense that you have any right to be making decisions over who you are. Yeah.
Mick: Thank you. Kahukura. Are you happy to share your story about your lived experience with family violence?
Kahukura: Yeah, absolutely. So I am the youngest of four, and I was born into a, let's say, an unhappy marriage. My dad was quite violent. My mum was overwhelmed by life and undiagnosed with a couple of diagnoses. And that bred a really different upbringing.
We were also, my parents homeschooled me. Well, my mum homeschooled me. And so we lived a really isolated, kind of toxic childhood.
So I, I jokingly say, I've come out twice. I reference two coming outs, but anyone who's queer knows that you come out thousands of times.
But the two that happened for me was one, when I was 15, I realised I was bisexual and I came out to my mum and my best friend and they didn't handle it well. And then I shut down and didn't come out to anyone else in my family.
Mick: Do you want to share anything about their response, or would you rather not?
Kahukura: When I came out, it was an instant ‘that's not real. That's not real, you're just doing it because you spend too much time on the internet’. And so it was just like, instantly like, no, there are gay people, but you’re not one of them. So I just kind of shut down that part of my life and moved on.
I moved out of home when I was about 17. I wanted to get out. I moved up to Auckland, joined the queer community so hard. Was embraced really, really beautifully by K Road and a lot of the queer people in Auckland, and that became my base to explore myself. And so that kind of started this segregation of my life, where at home I was my parents’ child and in my own life I was this queer kid, like, starting to find themselves.
And so the second time I came out was when I was about 27. I had had my child and one day I just clicked. I was like, oh, I'm, I'm not a woman. I don't know what I am yet, but I'm not a woman. And so I was with my child's father at the time, and he was incredibly physically violent.
There was a lot of sexual abuse and physical violence and controlling behaviour. And I had just given birth. I had postnatal depression. He used a lot of controlling behaviour even before I had given birth. Like he stopped allowing me to be around anyone because I was bisexual. We lived out on a farm, on a dairy farm. So I was physically isolated. All I ever had was him and my phone and my phone was policed. My phone was smashed so many times and frequently kind of using that ‘you're bisexual. Anyone's a threat to me’.
In that relationship, the violence was so bad he attempted to kill me three times. And the third time I was holding our daughter, and he was chasing me through the house with a knife. And he got to the door to get out before I did. And I was standing there in that moment being like, okay, this might be my last moment, so what's the last thing I can do? And I've wrapped my body around my daughter to try and protect her from the knife. And I was just hunched in a corner and he came up to me. He swung. And then at the last second, he stabbed the wall repeatedly, right by my face.
And so, in that moment, I was like, if I don't get out now, we're both dead. So I left that relationship. And then for the next four years I think, I stayed single because I was trying to work out my gender identity. I was trying to heal. Myself and my daughter ended up going into emergency housing, fleeing with just a car load of stuff and building ourselves up from there. We got our own house and we started to try and sort out our lives, I started to try and sort out everything. Because of my history of family violence and different sexual violence that happened towards me, I was diagnosed with complex PTSD.
And then once I had a good base and I had started working again and stuff like that, I decided that the way I heal is by trying to do good with it, right? And so I started up a local queer group, and so we started by doing monthly meetings. And we grew from five people to, just before I left, we were up to 35 people every event.
And then I got into a relationship with someone from our community who is also a trans person. We got involved really quickly. It was really intense. All of our friends joked about U-hauling, which is, you know, moving really quickly, in more lesbian spaces that's the slang.
So we were very intense and I didn't notice that it was unhealthy, even after all my experience of, intimate partner violence and family harm.
But slowly, over time, this partner started controlling who I hung out with, who I talked to, monitoring my phone, and slowly started chiselling away at my self-esteem and how I was allowed to present myself with my gender and stuff. And it wasn't anything overt at first. It was just like, oh, you look better when you wear that type of thing.
Or slowly being like, oh, isn't that a bit masc for you? Or repeatedly pestering me with questions like, but are you are you going to end up as a man? Like, is that what your goal is? And because I had no real concept of who I was yet, because I was still exploring where my gender sat. And I had come out to my family, that I was trans, and they were still struggling with getting my pronouns right, with getting my name right. They weren't a safe group to talk to, like they were still in my life. They were heavily involved with my daughter's life, but they just didn't get it.
And I kept everything a secret because even if it made me feel queasy, I didn't want to colour their perception of my girlfriend. And so I was quietly losing, inch by inch, any freedom I had.
The end to that story is I ended up presenting to ED because I was convinced that I was the problem. I was convinced that everyone else in my life would be better off, that I was just an awful person to be around. I was like, okay, the only solution here is to end it. So I ended up in ED, they sent me to respite because the ward was full and they put me on heavy sedatives.
Mick: You were at ED after a suicide attempt? or just because you were ideating..?
Kahukura: During. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I ended up in respite for two weeks. Thankfully, I got on medication that has saved my life and massively improved it. But that relationship had to get to that point where every part of me, like you said, every part of me had been eked away and I was no longer sure.
Like, I felt like I couldn't even decide what to wear because it was too much of a minefield. Like if I made coffee the wrong way, it'd be a huge thing. And it was sitting in the respite house, they were like, what do you want to eat? You can have anything to eat. What do you want to eat?
And I broke down and like hyperventilating, crying because I couldn't make the choice myself. And so that that is what did it. That was the thing where I was like, okay. And also my family were like, if if you go back, we’re kidnapping you. My mum and dad were really, really upset because that was the first time that they had been aware of one of my attempts on my life. And they were really, really shaken because they didn't like my ex-girlfriend, but they had no clue how bad it was.
And funnily enough, it was because I knew about Hohou te Rongo Kahukura. I went onto your website, and I started reading about abuse and the resources and stuff, and I was like, oh, oh wow, this is me [laughs]. This is this is what I've been experiencing for the last six months. And it did give me the tools to kind of name it.
I ended up moving towns to get away from it, and ended up working for this organisation and being able to go into people's lives and whānau’s lives that are experiencing family harm in the community, is because of that. Yeah.
Mick: And you were able to benefit from Hohou te Rongo Kahukura existing. We haven't talked about it as an organisation yet. Sandra, you started it, yeah? Tell me about what it is and why you started it.
Sandra: Yeah. Okay. Well I have worked…violence prevention and response has been my like…I don’t say career because it makes it sound like it was planned and stuff. But it's been I guess, where my heart lives forever. And I've been I've been doing this work for more than 30 years.
And for the first 20 years of that, I was working in feminist services, responding mostly to men's violence towards women, and because I was doing that work, and this often happens inside takatāpui and rainbow communities, once you have a skill, our communities come to us with questions. And so for many, many years, I'd been getting survivors coming to me and telling me stories about things they were experiencing and asking me, does this count as abuse?
Where can I go? What can I do? Can I report to the police? Those kinds of questions, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of experiences like that and trying to find places that were going to work for people, trying to find services, doing a ton of navigating things with people myself, because there wasn't anything else. I got to the point after, you know, that being the case for quite a long time of, of thinking we needed something that came from inside our communities, for our communities.
So I kind of I basically took a year off everything else to find out what our communities wanted and needed. And did that with some other folks that were involved and run by community organisations, went around the country talking to people. 18 community hui from Whangārei to Dunedin, asking communities what we wanted and needed, asking people what their experiences of harmful stuff in relationships was. Having conversations about consent. What do we know about consent? How do we practice in our lives. Like amazing, incredible community conversations. And at the end of all that Hohou te Rongo Kahukura kind of material just became, you know, we put all of that material up on the, on a website so that people could get to it and we passed it around the country.
And so there started to just be these little community things that were happening so cool, like, so wonderful. And we started getting family violence and sexual violence agencies because I'd worked in those fields for a really long time saying, hey, can you come and do some training with us? And we, knew that we needed to acknowledge the impact of colonisation here in Aotearoa, so, you know, we worked from Te Tiriti base of kind of going those values that we struggle with it, that discrimination we experience, all of that comes from Victoria- Victorian British ideas about sexuality, gender relationship bodies, families, what kind of relationships count, what kind of sex counts, all of that stuff. None of that was here before colonisation. But the end goal has always been about outing violence, finding ways for our communities to talk about the kinds of violence we experience so that we can get help so that survivors aren't standing by themselves.
We can't leave survivors feeling like this is all on them because people do, at the moment. Yeah. So it’s kind of wonderful to hear that part of your story, I hadn’t heard that [to Kahukura].
Kahukura: Oh right! Yeah, yeah.
Mick: And Kahukura you now work at Hohou te Rongo Kahukura which I probably should say for the listeners’ benefit does have your name in the title, but by coincidence, I understand.
Kahukura: By absolute coincidence.
Mick: Yeah. What do you do for them?
Kahukura: So I work as the Whānau Support Worker. So my role is I get assigned LGBTQ or rainbow community and takatāpui people who have experienced an episode of harm in the community. And so what happens is they'll have a call out where the police are involved, I get the allocation, and then I go and assess their needs and work with them and try and set them up on a path to address their needs, whether that's food support or services or medical support, whatever that is.
I can go in and walk alongside them to make sure that they are getting those needs met. A lot of the harm episodes happen in isolation, in these little bubbles. But how we should be responding to people, how we should be helping people is as a whole, as a community. Because that's the only way that we all get better together.
And I don't want one person thriving by themselves, I want our whole community thriving. Yeah.
Mick: That's great, that's great.
Sandra: Mick, can I intervene there? Because I've got- I think there's something that would be good to highlight, which is, I guess, the difference between us going in to support someone, and an organisation that doesn't know anything about our communities, and I want you to talk about that a little bit, Kahukura.
Kahukura: Yeah, absolutely. I feel very lucky. There is a certain amount of knowledge that you have from living within the queer community. So, the difference between my job responding to this harm for our community and an agency that is from with outside the community is there is a lot more trust. There is a lot more security for our clients.
When I go in and I present myself and I say, hey, my name is Kahukura, I use they/them pronouns, you know, maybe I talk about my sexual identity or whatever. They know that I'm going to respect their pronouns or their gender identity or their sexual identity. They know that they can safely talk to me about violence that they've experienced from the girlfriend/boyfriend, because there's no barrier of knowledge there.
And there's no having to delay actually getting help because you have to sit and explain your relationship to someone who doesn't understand, who doesn't know. There's no fear of accessing your service because they might deadname you, or they might misgender you intentionally.
Mick: What's deadnaming?
Kahukura: Deadnaming? OK. [to Sandra] Do you?
Sandra: Yeah, I can have a crack at that, if you like. It's using a name that a trans person doesn't want to be used for them anymore. It's an old name that people don't use, and people don't want to be called by that anymore. But lots of people don't understand quite how harmful and hurtful that is, because essentially what you're doing is you're telling someone that who they are isn't real when you use their old name.
Yeah. And it's really, really common out there in the world, aye. Especially with services, because sometimes our legal names don't match how we like to be known in the world, how we are in the world, because it's expensive and time consuming and there are barriers to changing our names on all our documents and all of those kinds of things.
Mick: I know this is a broad, sweeping question, but what unique ways does family violence and partner violence show up in the rainbow community?
Sandra: Takatāpui and rainbow folks live with different kinds of discrimination in our lives all the time. We have to come out to tell people who we are all the time. The world is not shaped for us.
It's not, we're not who people imagine within families, within institutions, all of that stuff. That makes the kinds of violence we experience really different. It makes it harder for us to ask for help. It means if you're in a relationship and you're someone who wants to be controlling your partner, you already have these tools available to you.
You can tell someone that they're not a real gay man if they don't want to have sex like this, because that gay man has already experienced lots of challenges about who he is. You can tell someone, if they were a bisexual person, that they can't be trusted in the world, and you can't let them out with their friends because that bisexual person has already heard all of that stuff in the world.
You can tell a trans person that they're not really the gender that they say they are, because that trans person has already experienced all that in the world. So it's like it gives people who want to behave in controlling ways a bigger kete of abusive tactics. Some of the things we experience are exactly the same as everyone else.
Physical assault is the same no matter who you are, no matter what gender you are, no matter what your sexuality is, but the abusive and controlling psychological behaviours, the physical things around taking away someone's gender affirming clothing, medication, taking away someone's HIV medication, threatening someone they will lose custody of their child because the state won't believe that they're a good parent if they're queer. Those things, they only have power because some of them are, you know, partly true.
There’s truth in the fact that we're not safe in the world, there’s truth in the fact that people have lost their children because of being queer or trans and and what that means is that you're dealing with kind of layers of violence in our communities, because we have to acknowledge the violence we live within before we can even look at the interpersonal stuff.
The other thing I would say is, if you are experiencing those kinds of behaviours as a survivor or a victim, how you talk about that in the world, people think family violence is men’s violence towards women. They do. That's what comes into people's heads when you talk about it.
People have resistance to hearing that women behave abusively to women. People have resistance to hearing that men can be victims. There's also we protect our own. We protect our communities. And talking about experiencing harm from a partner who is also part of our communities, no one wants to hear that. They really don't. You know, the only people who want to hear that are people who don't like us already.
So it tends to be really hard for people to talk about abuse within communities. It tends to be really hard to find places to go. Our communities tend to shut that stuff down. If the person causing harm is popular or a community leader, then the person who's saying, hey, that person doesn't treat me very well, they are more likely to be socially excluded than anything else.
Again, our services don't really understand any of that dynamic. They don't, unfortunately. And then the last thing I want to mention and then I'm sorry, Kahukura, I'll give you some space because I'm just going [laughs].
Mick: It’s great.
Sandra: The last thing I want to mention is trauma. Because of the discrimination world we live in, because we- every single person in our communities has some kind of experience of rejection because of who we are.
Some of us experience that all the time. Because of that, there's a great deal of trauma in our communities, and because of that, we excuse bad behaviour from other people in our communities. And if you're someone who is causing harm and is clever, you will mobilise that as part of your excuse. That's certainly what happened to me. My partner absolutely used oh, I've experienced lots of violence. It's not my fault. Absolutely. Or I'm going to kill myself if you leave me.
Now for us, everyone in our communities knows someone who's killed themselves. That's not, it doesn't feel like an idle threat. It doesn't feel like…it feels like something that's really real. And so the excuses for violence are different too. But Kahukura please have a crack, because I've really gone to town on that.
Kahukura: A lot of the conversations I have heard people share is this kind of separation of being Māori and being queer. And so I, I feel like I have this conversation every few months where someone who is freshly out within the community is talking about how, like, they have to choose. When they go home or when they go to the marae, they are either queer or they're Māori. You can't really have both.
And like that is something for me as well. When I go home to the marae, like I sit on my marae committee. When I go home, I'm not trans. They all think I’m a cis woman, because it's currently the only safe way for me to exist there.
Mick: I know that there are obviously some universal impacts and effects that family violence and partner violence have on the rainbow community, as a whole, but I know that within the rainbow community, there's obviously diversity as well, and there will be specific and unique ways that family violence impacts certain sections of the rainbow community. Can you speak to that? Can you speak to the impact of family violence on, say, the bi+ community or the trans community specifically, or the different sections of the rainbow community?
Sandra: Yeah, yeah, we can have a crack at that together, aye? Yeah. Part of what we think about when we think about diversity in our community is that bi+ people have relationships with people of all genders.
So, for me, I’m a bi+ woman, I'm talking about violence that I might have experience from a woman, but sometimes I might be talking about violence I’ve experienced from a male partner. So, and in those situations, my identity will still be part of how abuse has been carried out. So, if we're in a relationship and we're a bisexual person or trans person, and we realise who we are in that relationship, then our partner is responding to us being different than they expected.
That doesn't always go well. You know, if you're in a relationship with someone that you think is straight and then I say actually no I'm bi, we definitely have experiences where that leads to violence because the person who isn't in our communities feels insecure and does jealous, controlling, abusive things around identity. And I think in terms of trans folks, that's a really strong parallel, aye.
If we realise who we are in a relationship is not the gender that we thought we were when we started, or we finally feel safe enough to tell someone, you know. Then gender policing, the things that you talked about earlier, Kahukura – super common, right? You know, are you really a trans person? Do you want to talk some more about that?
Kahukura: Yeah, absolutely. So that policing that happens like, well, are you sure. Or like what's your end goal. Like what are you going to end up as, or oh that's, that's very masculine, that's very feminine of you to wear that like that constant. It's specific targeting. But also the community of trans people is really, really tiny. And you tend to see trans people and trans people together.
You also see like, oh, well, if we break up, you won't find anyone else because no one will find you lovable. And that is- feels backed up by society. So there is that constant threat of like, well, you have to go along with what I say or no one will love you. And I also feel like there is a shared thing with the biphobia that happens like, well, you’re not, a gold star lesbian or, you’re not a…whatever.
So you have to go along with what I say, because you’ll have nothing else.
Sandra: Yeah, I agree, I think there's lots of similarities there. I think if we think about, violence and relationships between men, probably some of the, the things that are distinct then again, are around, identity policing. And this is how gay men have sex.
You have to do take this role because this is how gay men have sex. So pressures to behave in particular ways that mean particular things in a relationship. You have to tell everyone in your life that you're gay now. You have to not tell anyone in your life you're gay now. You can't go to gay men's events anymore because you're going to hook up with someone, because it's why we go to things that are, that are for queer men.
The other thing I think that happens for men in our communities in particular, is how hard it is to even say ‘I’m being hurt’ when you're a man, like the idea that men could be hurt in a relationship that, it just picks away at what people think a man is, right. And I kind of think about this constantly, because when we talk about male victims in the world, most people aren't talking about men in our communities, even though men in our communities are the men who are most likely to be male victims of violence.
You know, all of the stats tell us that, all the research tells us that, but we don't have any services for that. So there's a there's a real specific scarcity around services and responses for men I think, as well as a broader kind of issue in that aye?
Kahukura: Yeah, I think as well, one of the things that I really think about for people who are masculine in our community is the forced outing, where people can threaten you with outing you to your family or your job or whatever it is, and use that as a way of controlling you, you know.
Sandra: Anyone who is not out, in any area of their lives because they don't feel safe yet. Outing is a really scary thing.
Kahukura: Absolutely. And there are some subsets of gay community or queer men community where they are out and parts of their life, but not out at home, and that is perfectly fine. They should absolutely be allowed to choose however they want to come out.
But that constant threat of being outed to someone's family is particularly dangerous for especially, takatāpui men. It is dangerous and it's scary.
Sandra: I think when we talk about people coming out in relationships and other groups that that is really relevant to is asexual people, because often asexual people will start to realise that sex means something different to them than their partner in a relationship. And then if sex means intimacy for the person who isn’t asexual, there can be a ton of pressure around ‘well this- that means we're not in a proper relationship. We need to do this, that, this, that, to be in a proper relationship’. And so I don't think we even know really about how that plays out for asexual people. I think we're only starting to have those conversations.
We’re very blessed at Hohou te Rongo Kahukura to have an incredible asexual person who's leading those conversations for us, aye, I but I think it's a part of our community historically that's been, you know, quite left out of these conversations. Yeah. And then I think, sorry, mate, got one more.
I think when we think about relationships between women, people don't believe women can be violent. So you try and kind of talk about sexual harm from a woman. No one thinks it's real. No one thinks, you know, I've, I've talked to so many people who've tried to go to a support service, so many women who've tried to go to a support service, and people haven't really believed that what they are describing is the same thing as any other kind of sexual harm.
Mick: And this is particularly in the lesbian community?
Sandra: Particularly in relationships between women. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that idea that if you're in a relationship with a woman, you know, they can't really be hurting you too much, you're probably about the same in terms of strength. All of that stuff, so completely bypass saying what we know about violence, which is it's coercive control and it's a pattern of behaviours.
Women are somehow nicer, and they won't do their mean stuff to you. Like, all of that is a massive…I'm trying to think of another word that isn’t ‘headfuck’ [laughs]. It does your head in. It does your head in, because it means that you can't describe what is happening to you, with the impact it's actually having on you. You know, violence is harmful no matter who is doing it to you.
Kahukura: I frequently get clients say, I thought dating women would be safer because they didn't expect there to be to be harm or violence. Yeah.
Mick: And so what if someone in the rainbow community is experiencing abuse, or family violence, or intimate partner violence and they feel like they are at a place where they want to access some support, what does that look like?
Sandra: We have some resources on our website for people to have a look at and think about how to do that. We strongly recommend that if you're not in the Waikato, which is the only place we have service at the moment for people experiencing family violence, we have services for people experiencing sexual violence all over the country, but for family violence only in the Waikato.
We strongly recommend taking a buddy with you before you try and engage with any service. Taking someone with you who's got your back, who understands who you are, who's going to be able to help you advocate and let you be who you are when you ask for help. So you know you don't get responses like ‘oh, aren't lesbian relationships just like that though?’ ‘Oh, is your sexuality the reason you've been abused’, ‘oh no you can't come here, we don't work with non-binary people’.
Like we strongly recommend that you get help to help navigate those services.
Mick: And what- what services, what might be the first place to go?
Sandra: At the moment the first place people go is to friends and family. Honestly, we don't go anywhere near services. We are less likely to go to rainbow community groups than we are to the police. That's what the research tells us, which surprises people.
People usually think, oh, you know, going to a rainbow community group would be fine. Well, not if they know your partner, not if they don't have any idea about confidentiality, not if they don't understand violence.
So, maybe talking to your local rainbow community group anonymously and saying, do you know if the Women's Refuge here takes trans woman? Maybe contacting people by the phone first to say hey, I'm someone who doesn't look like a woman. Is it going to be okay for me to come to you?
Like actually doing some checking first so that when you're in person going to that service, you don't get a horrible response. Those are the things I would recommend.
Mick: And you mentioned rainbow community groups. Obviously you are one. And the website, is that kahukura.conz.
Sandra: It is, yeah. We are, at the moment, the only specialist violence organisation within takatāpui and rainbow communities.
Kahukura: One of the workarounds that I have suggested in the past is if they are in a rural place that has a local queer community, if they can ask other people of a rainbow friendly GP. They don't need to disclose the- the harm, then sometimes that GP, if they are appropriate for our communities, can have those links and that information. Sometimes that works. It's not always guaranteed though.
Like you said, the services that we have are insufficient. I mean, within the Waikato region and within Waikato city, I am able to work with- with queer community. But we need more of me. We need a lot more throughout the country. Yeah.
Sandra: We have takatāpui and rainbow survivors of violence going to all kinds of places all over the country because our existing violence services aren't quite shaped for us.
Mick: If someone's listening to this podcast and they're a member of the rainbow community and they're currently experiencing family violence or intimate partner violence, what would you want to say to them?
Sandra: The first thing I want to say is you don't deserve to be treated as anything other than the beautiful human being you are. Don't let anyone tell you anything different. And if someone is telling you something different from that, if someone doesn't respect your identity, doesn't respect who you are in the world, doesn't respect how you want to present, how you want to talk about yourself, that's not okay.
It's absolutely okay to expect that people that tell us they love us will honour all of who we are. It's pretty much that simple, to be honest. When we're in relationships where people are not honouring all of who we are, whether that's about physical violence, whether that's about using words for us that are not respectful, whether it's about deadnaming us or undermining our identity or stopping us seeing other people like us…those are all massive, whopping red flags that something needs to change.
Sometimes people can change their abusive behaviour, but they usually need help to do that. It's not on you to help someone change their behaviour. Even if you love them, it is not on you. They need to do their work for themselves. And I'd also say if you were in a relationship with someone is not treating you as the beautiful human being that you are, talk to people about it. Keep talking to people about it. Don't let someone else's behaviour make you feel shame.
Whatever decision you come to around that is up to you. But don't let anyone else diminish your sense of who you are.
Kahukura: Beautiful. I think what I would say is, if you're listening to this and it hits close to home, you might be really confused or frustrated or just exhausted. And I get it. We've been there.
If survival looks like just getting through the day, do that. You deserve love and respect and to be allowed to be yourself fully, whether that's at home or at work, or on the marae, you deserve that joy and that freedom. However you survive, that is totally okay. You can work on it and get better another day, but today, just survive.
Because there is a future in which you aren't experiencing harm, and you deserve it. You really do. So get through today and know that you are very much loved and keep talking to everyone because we're out here and we care about you.
Mick: That's great. I'm curious. Why do you do what you do?
Sandra: Yeah I'm curious about that sometimes too [all laugh]. Because honestly, going to literally hundreds of meetings and going ‘what about takatāpui and rainbow people’. That's pretty knackering and exhausting and hard work, yeah. Over and over and over and over and over and over again. I do what I do because I think constantly about survivors and what options they have available to them and how I want the world to be like.
One of the things I say to survivors when I'm working with people one on one, is I say, how do you want your world to be in five years? What does it look like? And what I want the world to look like in five years is really different than now. You know? I want us to have more services for people. I want our communities to understand violence better. I want some of the hateful rhetoric that’s happening towards us to stop. I want agencies with power to step up and make it stop. Yeah, I guess I want the world to change. That's pretty much why I do what I do.
Kahukura: I think it’s, mine's pretty similar. I think as well, on a more personal level. Many, many years ago, when I was experiencing a mental health episode, I was failed at every point. And finally I was going to harm myself. And the police got called on me. And I ended up talking to this guy who works in the crisis mental health team for the police. And like, I was just fed up.
I was like, yelling and probably not very nice. I was like, this system is… swearing to high heaven. And he just gave me five minutes. He let me yell and swear. And then he was like, yeah, this is… and then he swore a lot too. And he- it was the first time in that entire day, in that entire month long saga of trying to access help, that he just gave me five minutes of his time freely, and that deeply changed the course of my life.
And so, on a personal level, it's just - I have five minutes for everyone I can and I'm going to give it. So yeah, that's why I do it. I have five minutes.
Sanda: That's beautiful.
Mick: Well, you've given more than five minutes to me today [all laugh].
Kahukura: I'm so sorry.
Mick: No, I mean that to say thank you and thank you for your generosity and your openness, but also thank you for all the mahi that both of you do to try to alleviate some of the suffering that people who are victims of abuse are experiencing. So, thank you so much.
Kahukura: Thank you for having us.
Sandra: You’re very welcome.
Mick (VO): Ngā mihi nui ki a kōrua, Sandra and Kahukura, for so openly and bravely sharing your stories and your passion for the takatāpui and rainbow community in Aotearoa.
If this episode has brought anything up for you and you want some support, you can go to areyouok.org.nz or call the 24/7 Are You OK Helpline on 0800 456 450 to speak anonymously to a safe person that's 0800 456 450. If you want to connect with Hohou te Rongo Kahukura, their website is Kahukura.co.nz.
Contact details for Women's Refuge and information for people supporting someone experiencing family violence are in the show notes for this episode. And I just want to say that Sandra and Kahukura’s stories of their own unique experiences.
Violence impacts people in many different ways, and the path to getting support and finding healing can be different for everyone too. I hope you found this episode insightful, affirming, and inspiring. If it was useful to you, do have a listen to one of the other episodes in this Insider's Guide series, and I'll see you there. Ka kite anō.
PG
Description
Experiencing family violence or partner violence can leave us feeling isolated and alone. It can mess with our minds and even make us feel crazy. We often blame ourselves for what's happening, and it can make us feel like there's nowhere to turn. Throughout this series, you'll hear firsthand stories of people who have experienced family violence. And the reason these courageous people are sharing these stories is because they want people who are experiencing family violence to know that they are not alone, that they are not crazy, that it's not their fault, and that helpful support is available.Sandra and Kahukura have both endured violence in intimate relationships. Sandra, a bisexual woman, was the victim of physical, psychological and emotional abuse at the hands of a female partner. Kahukura is takatāpui non-binary trans and suffered severe abuse from two partners. They both talk candidly about the emotional scars left by the abuse and the steps they took to rebuild their lives. They also explore the unique ways family violence shows up in takatāpui and rainbow communities.
Sandra has since founded an organisation called Hohou Te Rongo Kahukura, dedicated to building violence-free Takatāpui and Rainbow communities in Aotearoa.
** Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of or discussion about sexual abuse, attempted homicide, physical abuse, suicide and some strong language.
To connect with Hohou Te Rongo Kahukura, visit https://kahukura.co.nz/.
If you would like support, you can click 'get help now' in the bottom right hand corner of the screen to start a webchat with the Are You OK helpline, or call the helpline on 0800 456 450 to speak anonymously to a safe person.
Up Next
9 May 2025
The Insider’s Guide: surviving economic abuse
Experiencing family violence or partner violence can leave us feeling isolated and alone. It can mess with our minds and even make us feel crazy. We often blame ourselves for what's happening, and it can make us feel like there's nowhere to turn. Throughout this series, you'll hear firsthand stories of people who have experienced family violence. And the reason these courageous people are sharing these stories is because they want people who are experiencing family violence to know that they are not alone, that they are not crazy, that it's not their fault, and that helpful support is available.
When Nadia got married, she didn’t expect her husband to one day cheat on her, skip the country and leave her with over a million dollars’ worth of debt. Debt collectors were threatening to take her house and everything she owned, whilst she was struggling to provide her kids with the basics. Nadia shares openly about what it’s like to bear the heavy burden of someone else’s financial mistakes.
We also talk to Beryl who manages the family violence economic harm service at Good Shepherd New Zealand. Good Shepherd work closely with people experiencing economic abuse, helping them rebuild their lives both financially and emotionally.
** Content Warning: This episode contains descriptions of controlling behaviour, economic abuse and mention of an eating disorder.
To contact Good Shepherd NZ, visit goodshepherd.org.nz.
If you would like support, you can click 'get help now' in the bottom right hand corner of the screen to start a webchat with the Are You OK helpline, or call the helpline on 0800 456 450 to speak anonymously to a safe person.
To contact Women’s Refuge, go to womensrefuge.org.nz or call 0800 456 450.
When Nadia got married, she didn’t expect her husband to one day cheat on her, skip the country and leave her with over a million dollars’ worth of debt. Debt collectors were threatening to take her house and everything she owned, whilst she was struggling to provide her kids with the basics. Nadia shares openly about what it’s like to bear the heavy burden of someone else’s financial mistakes.
We also talk to Beryl who manages the family violence economic harm service at Good Shepherd New Zealand. Good Shepherd work closely with people experiencing economic abuse, helping them rebuild their lives both financially and emotionally.
** Content Warning: This episode contains descriptions of controlling behaviour, economic abuse and mention of an eating disorder.
To contact Good Shepherd NZ, visit goodshepherd.org.nz.
If you would like support, you can click 'get help now' in the bottom right hand corner of the screen to start a webchat with the Are You OK helpline, or call the helpline on 0800 456 450 to speak anonymously to a safe person.
To contact Women’s Refuge, go to womensrefuge.org.nz or call 0800 456 450.
Details & Info
PG
Parental Guidance Recommended for Younger Viewers.