By Brigitte Lewis

The Internet was once considered the domain of the unreal, a kind of pseudo-utopia where anything goes and anything can be said or posted, at least for young, middle-class, white heterosexual men. Yet just as society at large is called to acknowledge the ways in which privilege operates to silence all those who are not born white, into upwardly-mobile families, gendered male and also heterosexual, so too must the online world be called to acknowledge the ways in which it operates as a breeding ground for inequity and abuse.

A recent study by La Trobe University’s Dr Bianca Fileborn found that street harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people is alarmingly high. We know homophobia lives on the streets, in our workplaces, and in our political debates over marriage equality. What we really don’t know is whether this kind of harassment extends to the online worlds many of us only leave to sleep.

A huge percentage of the LGBTI population are active online. In the US, according to a 2013 survey of LGBTI people conducted by the PEW Researchcentre, 80 per cent of LGBTI respondents participate in social networking sites, such as Facebook or Twitter, compared to just 58 per cent of the general public. For me and many others in the LGBTI community, the Internet serves as a place of connection in a world that is so often hostile to particular manifestations of desire. Whether it’s for dates, information, or merely feeling seen, the net offers a space that can foster social inclusion. But, like all things, there is a flip side to this experience.

Increasing attention has been focused on digital abuse and cyberbullying, particularly around young people. The experiences of adult LGBTI people, however, have been scarcely studied, particularly in Australia. Here’s what we do know.

In 2011 MTV and the Associated Press surveyed 1,986 people between the ages of 14 and 24 in the United States. They found that that 51 per cent of lesbian, gay and bisexual people were frequently discriminated online, second only to overweight people. The most prevalent slurs were “that’s so gay” (65 per cent), “slut” (55 per cent) and “fag” (53 per cent). It’s a reminder that classroom barbs seep into the digital worlds we inhabit with seeming ease.

A year later in 2012, Queensland University of Technology surveyed 528 first year Australian university students. The study found that non-heterosexual men were more likely to be cyber-bullied than non-heterosexual women. Interestingly though, the experiences of heterosexual and non-heterosexuals online regarding abuse was actually very similar. The study’s authors reminded us that the impact of cyberbullying may outweigh the effects of traditional bullying due to the limitless audience and ability for comments, pictures and videos to go viral and therefore never have an end, either in time or location.

Perhaps the most well-known case of cyberbullying against a member of the LGBTI community is that of 18-year-old Rutgers university student, Tyler Clementi. Clementi’s roommate captured him having sex with another man by secretly using his webcam without his consent. Dharun Ravi went on Twitter to announce Clementi was “making out with a dude” which he watched with a friend and then live streamed to his 150 twitter followers. A day later Clementi committed suicide in what the media called cyberbullying but what the US courts declined to label as a hate crime. Academic Jessica S Henry calls it bias-based cyberbullying, citing anecdotal evidence that in the month of September 2010 alone, the same month that Clementi committed suicide, at least nine other men also committed suicide after being harassed online because of their sexuality.

In 2015, UK’s Stonewall found that 5 per cent of LGBT adults and 23 per cent of LGBT pupils reported that they had been the target of homophobic abuse or behaviour online in the past year. This research prompted the UK Government to launch a website to help victims of online abuse.

Closer to home, Amy Middleton and her team at Archer Magazine were recently the subject of online abuse. Archer is pitched at telling the stories of the LGBTI community in Australia that mainstream media doesn’t address and does it so well they won a UN Human Rights Media Award. But still they were attacked by a prominent blogger for their appearance, work, bios,  and identities.

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The Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence has sparked an important national debate, but that needs to be backed up by work that responds to violence in the community, and a strategy to stop it before it starts, Brigitte Lewis, Lisa Harris, and Georgina Heydon write.

After the Royal Commission into Family Violence released their findings in March this year, the Victorian Government committed $572 million towards implementing 65 of the 227 recommendations they came back with.

Innovative ideas and approaches to address family violence are urgently needed, and there are several new initiatives already doing important work.

In 2014, Victoria Police set up a specialised family violence unit called Taskforce Alexis which was trialled initially in southeast Melbourne. Taskforce Alexis provides an holistic approach to responding to family violence with both family violence specialists and police working in a single team. It has proved a resounding success with a drop in repeat offenders reported and is exactly the kind of partnership and cross-agency co-operation that the Royal Commission recommendations advocate. Following this, in 2015, Australia saw its first Family Violence Command rolled out and headed by Assistant Commissioner Dean McWhirter which provides high-level oversight of police responses to family violence.

The use of technology has also created space for innovative responses to family violence, with the SmartSafe+ mobile app winning the Victorian Premier’s iAward for Public Sector Innovation in June this year. Developed by the Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria, the app enables women to keep an online diary using written, pictorial, video, and audio entries that are then stored on a cloud account to enable security. Similarly, The Neighbourhood Justice Centre is trialling an online intervention order app which includes plain language explanations to help improve access to justice. Such technical innovations further demonstrate collaboration in action, with tech experts working together with the domestic violence sector to develop safe options for victims.

Existing specialist family violence court divisions have also been a success. Yet with more than 46,000 intervention orders finalised in 2015, more specialist court services are needed across the state, with only two operating at present.

However, there remain many other challenges to address…

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