Eddie Mendez used to think of domestic abuse in its most common form: a man battering a woman. But last year, he was convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence against his male partner and ordered, as part of his probation, to enroll in a program at Chicago’s Center for Domestic Peace.
The center, which has been offering group counseling services to abusive heterosexual men since 1997, only last year began offering similar services to gay and bisexual men who batter their partners.
“I never saw myself in that situation,” said Mendez, 40. “But I look back and realize that I was angry. I was an alcoholic. I was a mess.”
This October, the center has engaged in a number of activities for Domestic Violence Awareness Month, including encouraging people to support the White Ribbon Campaign, which asks participants “to not commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women and girls.” The center tweaks the pledge to include domestic partners.
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The center’s 26-week program helps men — relatively few women go through the program — convicted of domestic battery understand why they lash out when they feel disrespected and how their abusive behavior is rooted in the unreasonable need for power and control. The goal is to change the abuser’s behavior.
Michael Feinerman, the center’s co-executive director, said the men in the program, no matter their sexuality, often struggle with how they define “authentic” masculinity.
“A big part of our work is trying to challenge them not to buy into conventionally available definitions about what it means to be a man,” Feinerman said.
In the general population, the incidence of domestic violence is about 25 percent, and that’s about the same for men in gay relationships, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.
While common threads exist among abusive men no matter their sexual preference, some aspects make domestic abuse among gay men unique.
“In some parts of the gay community, there’s a lot of bigotry, bias and violence,” Mendez said. “We’ll address each other as queens and homos and use all kinds of unbelievably derogatory words. And you begin to feel — as victim or abuser — that abuse is a part of the culture. And that’s absolutely not true.”
Feinerman said some abusers may rely on a victim’s unwillingness to report the abuse because he fears police won’t take them seriously.
“Many gay victims aren’t aware that the Illinois Domestic Violence Act applies to them,” he said. “They don’t think that what’s happening to them is domestic violence.”
Feinerman said some gay men who arrive at the center have been victimized in other relationships and sometimes become the aggressor, deciding not to be abused again. In addition, some abusers have grown up in situations in which homophobia and heterosexism are internalized.
“The man may find himself having hostile feelings toward gays even while dealing with his own realization that he’s gay,” Feinerman said. “And by the time he realizes he’s attracted to people of the same gender, he’s already absorbed the attitudes about what he has to do to be respected.”
The center, now located on the Near West Side, was founded as the West Side Domestic Abuse Project in 1997. Over the years, it has offered individual services to gay men because it wasn’t safe for them to join groups with heterosexual men.
But Feinerman said individual intervention isn’t the best therapy. The group dynamic allows men to work together in a safe environment to identify and solve problems. Mendez said that’s exactly what being in a group of gay and bisexual men allowed him to do.
“I felt safe and free to open up,” Mendez said. “I realized that even when I wasn’t drinking, I could be aggressive and violent. It comes from my child abuse issues that were emotional and verbal. That combined with my alcoholism. What’s different is that I stopped drinking and I learned to be aware of my anger.”
In Chicago, the Howard Brown Health Center and the Center on Halsted have been working to increase awareness about domestic violence in the gay community. And the city has a hot line (877-863-6338) that anyone can call, which is run by the Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network.
Feinerman said they’re trying to recruit mentors who haven’t been violent to support men who have gone through their program so they don’t become repeat offenders.
Mendez said he will work on his domestic violence issues for the rest of his life, in the same way he’ll battle his alcoholism.
“If I start to feel physical, it’s almost too late,” he said. “I now know to catch it way before it escalates.”