Gendered Violence ‘at home:’ Canadian News Discourses at the Intersections of Colonialism, Racialization, and Multiculturalism

As the Canadian government professes the ongoing importance of multiculturalism, a question arises: who are thought to be incompatible with this nation-building project? Public discourse in Canada around multiculturalism, belonging, and intersectional equity come to an impasse when reflecting on gender-based violence. News media coverage of intimate partner violence – a form of gendered violence – is one such place to consider these debated discourses. Previous research suggests that the news media will use terms like ‘honour killing’ or mention the heritage of non-white people experiencing or perpetrating gendered violence as a means to identify specific communities as violent, ‘barbaric,’ and uniquely ill-suited for the multicultural project. Orientalist discourses representing the helpless victim in faraway ‘exotic’ lands furthers the project of obscuring and minimizing the violence happening ‘at home.’ Conceptualizing Canada as ‘home’ must account for the ongoing colonial project and representation of gendered violence within communities longest ‘at home.’ Perplexingly, news media may distance intimate-partner violence by racializing its prevalence in faraway lands or in unwelcomed non-white communities, while also focusing on such violence within colonized communities in their backyard. Often these narratives are not drawn together. Leaning on Sunera Thobani’s framework of reading processes of racialization within the context of colonial nation-making, this paper will explore the extent to which contemporary Canadian news media differentiate intimate partner violence along cultural, racial, and ethnic lines. It will unpack what racial and colonial underpinnings and overtures in news attention to intimate partner violence communicate about belonging in a fraught multicultural nation-building project.