Battered women, lots of help, battered tgirls...

[Bionca]

Domestic Violence (DV) shelters in the US and Canada are usually privately operated charities with some assistance from the gov't. Being private, they are able to restrict their services as they choose. Sadly, it is very common for shelters to offer no place for trans women (homeless and emergency shelters as well). Some are very supportive and house trans women, but a majority do not.

When criticized for this lack of support the reasons given are that a penis may bring up anxiety/fear to some of the women, or the fear that a violent man would pretend to be trans to get at the women. Essentially it boils down to SOME women's potential ick or problems with trans women is more important than the actual safety of trans women.

The other reason given is that shelters are poorly funded on donations with very little help from the state. This is true. The proposed solution is to have trans-specific shelters. There is one major problem with that. The trans population is so small and spread out that even in cities with large populations of Trans women (NY, Vancouver, LA) there still isn't enough of a population to fund these services (Drs and administration is not cheep). That's not even counting that fact that trans women largely are underemployed compared to the general population with the same education levels.

Police handling of trans cases are generally abysmal and well known. Most Trans women just try to leave an abusive situation without informing the cops. This leaves their assailant free to find them and revictemize.