Natal Family Violence: Crisis Interventions and Paths to Survival with LBT Persons

This chapter engages with those queer and trans persons who are at the forefront of facilitating survivors of natal family violenceNatal family violence out of their familial homesHome. Lesbian, bisexual, and transmasculine (LBT) identifying persons survive unique forms of natal family violenceNatal family violence related to their genderGender-sexual intersectional locations. The chapter collaboratively engages in experiential-analytical documentation of crisis interventionCrisis intervention in natal family violenceNatal family violence. Eight of the authors named in this chapter from the COVID-19Covid -19-induced lockdown have been directly involved with organizing ‘paths to survival’ along with LBT personsLBT persons who have migrated from various districts in West Bengal to safer spaces. How do we deploy ‘crisis interventionCrisis intervention’? What does it mean to organize ‘paths to survival’? What effects do these have on the mental healthMental health of the organizers? We conducted a reflexive focus group discussion amongst ourselves to understand the meaning of intervention, the process, and what it means to navigate familiesFamily and police along the way. We do not seek to break the silence by publicizing the particular instances of natal family violenceNatal family violence, but by engaging with the expectations of the organizers as they seek to create liveable livesLiveable life with/for their peers who are looking for a way out of natal family violenceNatal family violence. This chapter discusses the affective and methodological dimensions of intervening in instances of natal family violenceNatal family violence, and what it may mean for survival and liveabilityLiveability. We expect to join critical voices who are working to break the heteropatriarchal status quo surrounding natal familyFamily homesHome in the absence of anti-discrimination lawsLaw.