INTRO: This series comes with a content note for anyone who has been through abuse or knows someone who has. Statistically, that is a lot of us. Some of what you’ll hear in this podcast is distressing. Although we know it’s important to hear directly from victim-survivors about what they’ve been through, this content may be confronting and won’t be suitable for everyone.

Please check the show notes for phone numbers you can contact to receive confidential support. There’s No Place Like Home is a Future Women podcast supported by our proud partner, Commonwealth Bank; supporting long-term financial independence for victim-survivors through CommBank Next Chapter. We acknowledge that we produced this series on what always has been, and always will be, Aboriginal land. JEX: We’ve established that message now, I think, as this as an Australian society, that violence against women is just not okay. And that now we can actually start to diversify the message to say, “Don’t forget, there are other victims”. TARANG CHAWLA: My name is Tarang Chawla, and I am a writer, lawyer and anti-violence advocate. I’m also the host of There’s No Place Like Home, a podcast about family violence that puts the voices of survivors at the centre of the story. Thanks to the advocacy and work of countless individuals, Australia is finally facing up to the scourge of family violence. However, the community and media attention has not been equally distributed. Many survivors still feel like their experiences are invisible. Today on There’s No Place Like Home, we explore stigma towards the LGBTQIA+ community – and how it compounds, and sometimes facilitates, domestic abuse. STARLADY: Trans and gender diverse people experience a significant amount of discrimination and stigma and violence in our society. And that can come from like verbal or physical abuse, direct experiences or indirect experiences of discrimination. And because of the stigma and shame, trans women were more likely to be seen as objects by men. That leads to being sometimes in incredibly dangerous situations or situations where they don’t have, you know, power, you know, there’s a loss of sort of, like power and respect. TARANG CHAWLA: Starlady is a transwoman and program manager at Zoe Belle Gender Collective which was founded to improve the health and wellbeing of trans and gender diverse people. She explains the kind of community isolation those in the queer community, and trans individuals in particular can face. In Australia, trans people continue to be subjected to stigma and ostracisation. 49 per cent of trans women and 55 percent of trans men have reported harassment or abuse in the previous 12 months.