Resistive Violence – 2 Part Workshop Series | ShantiWorks

Part 1 – Exploring the concept of resistive violence
Thursday 24th July 2025, 10am – 12pm
Part 2 – Advocacy-focused responses to those using resistive violence in the face of oppression
Thursday 31st July 2025, 10am – 12pm

Form: Online via zoom

People are never passive in their resistance to oppression.
However, acts of protection, of survival and resistance are often incorrectly and unjustly interpreted as aggression or violence. Victims/survivors of family violence, particularly those who have been marginalised, are often labelled as violent for resisting oppression and abuse, or for defending their lives, their dignity and their children.
Misidentification is an ongoing systemic injustice – when we respond to victims/survivors as perpetrators, and perpetrators as victims of abuse.
In this workshop we want to critically reflect on our assumptions about domestic violence, coercive control and social entrapment. It is critical that we continue to educate ourselves on victims’/survivors’ use of resistive violence, the context of the use of legal and illegal force, and to learn and challenge assumptions and responses that disproportionately harm victims/survivors of intimate partner violence, (particularly women of colour, migrant and refugee women, and Aboriginal and First Nations women).

This workshop will unpack the concept of resistive violence and consider strategies that victims/survivors use as a response to perpetrators’ coercive tactics. Making resistive strategies visible is political praxis: it is a way of contextualising intimate partner violence and survival responses to living in an intimate oppressive regime.

Hopes for this workshop
•Explore the concept of resistive violence and understand how victims/survivors of family violence may use violence to protect themselves, their dignity, and their children.
•Explore practice strategies for responding to victims/survivors using resistive violence.
•Apply a trauma-and violence-informed and intersectional approaches to working with individuals who use resistive violence.
•Recognise and explore implications for intervention, advocacy, and criminal justice responses.

Register here