Gender-Based Violence Definitions and Terminology

When a person uses words or actions to control, frighten isolate or take away another person’s self-respect. Emotional abuse is sometimes called psychological abuse. It can include: put downs, name calling or insults; constantly yelling at someone; keeping someone from seeing family or friends; making fun of someone’s religion or faith, not letting a person practice it (spiritual abuse); controlling what someone wears, where someone goes, who someone can see (in the case of adults); preventing someone from going out, taking classes or working if the person wants to (in the case of adults); threatening to have a person deported if the person doesn’t behave a certain way; making threats to harm another person; destroying a person’s belongings, hurting a person’s pets or threatening to do so; or bullying (intimidating or humiliating someone, including on the internet) 

Some forms of emotional abuse are crimes: stalking, threats to harm someone, harassing someone on the phone, intimidating someone on purpose or counselling (advising) someone to commit suicide. Many other forms of emotional abuse are not crimes, but they often have long-term negative effects and sometimes lead to criminal acts later on. 

When someone uses money or property to control or exploit another person. It can involve: taking someone’s money or property without permission; withholding someone’s money so the person cannot pay for things; making someone sign documents to sell things that the person doesn’t want to sell; forcing someone to change his/her/their will; or not letting someone have access to family money to meet the person’s or the person’s children’s basic needs. 

Violence that is committed against someone based on their gender identity, gender expression or perceived gender. Gender-based violence can take many forms: cyber, physical, sexual, psychological, emotional and economic. Neglect and harassment are also forms of gender-based violence. Violence and abuse can have negative effects that span generations and this often leads to cycles of violence and abuse within families and sometimes whole communities.

Gender-based violence includes physical acts as well as words, actions and attempts to control to degrade, control, humiliate, intimidate, coerce, deprive, threaten or harm another person. Examples of gender-based violence/abuse include: physical abuse; sexual abuse (adults); sexual abuse (children); emotional and psychological abuse; criminal harassment or stalking; technology-assisted violence; neglect; so-called “honour” violence; early or forced marriage; financial abuse.

Human trafficking involves the recruitment, transportation, harbouring and/or exercising control, direction or influence over the movements of a person in order to exploit that person, typically through sexual exploitation or forced labour. It is often described as a modern form of slavery. The Criminal Code of Canada (Criminal Code) contains the tools to hold traffickers accountable and includes four specific indictable offences to address human trafficking, namely sections 279.01 (Trafficking in persons), 279.011 (Trafficking of a person under the age of eighteen years), 279.02 (Material benefit), and 279.03 (Withholding or destroying documents).

Many other Criminal Code offences can also apply to human trafficking cases including kidnapping, forcible confinement, uttering threats, extortion, assault, sexual assault, prostitution-related offences, and criminal organization offences.

Happens when a traumatic event not only affects people who experience it, but when it also affects their children and sometimes, grandchildren. For example, children of Indigenous peoples who experienced trauma from residential schools are at higher risk for depression. Other examples of the long-term effects of the residential school experience include loss of traditional knowledge, poor community health, intergenerational stress, disparities in the social determinants of health and disruptions to ethnic and cultural identity. Intergenerational trauma is a significant issue for some Indigenous communities. For these communities it is often related to residential schools as well as historical and political contexts.

(Sometimes referred to as domestic violence) is physical, sexual, or psychological harm that happens in intimate relationships, including marriages, common-law partnerships, or dating relationships. Neglect and harassment are also forms of intimate partner violence. It can take place while the relationship is ongoing or after it has ended. Such violence can occur in opposite- or same-sex relationships, and can be one-sided or involve both partners.

In Canada, it is illegal to share intimate images without consent.  An “intimate image” is a visual recording of a person made by any means (e.g. picture or video) in which the person is nude or exposing his or her genitals, rear end or breasts, or is engaged in explicit sexual activity if: 

1. at the time the recording is made, there were circumstances that gave rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy (e.g. a picture taken by a person while in their bedroom); AND
2. at the time the recording is shared without consent, the person who is in the recording still has a reasonable expectation of privacy. It is expected that if the person who is in the image had a reasonable expectation of privacy when the recording was made the person would retain the expectation of privacy, as long as s/he does not subsequently share the recording with others or post it online, etc.

The intentional use of force against a person without that person’s consent. It can cause physical pain or injury that may last a long time. It includes: pushing or shoving; hitting, slapping or kicking; pinching or punching; strangling or choking; stabbing or cutting; shooting; throwing objects at someone; burning; holding someone down for someone else to assault, or locking someone in a room or tying them down.

Any sexual contact between an adult and a child under 16 is a crime. Child sexual abuse happens when a person takes advantage of a child for sexual purposes. It does not always involve physical contact with a child. For example, it could happen when an adult makes sexual comments to a child, or secretly watches or films a child for sexual purposes. Sexual abuse of a child includes: any sexual contact between an adult and a child under 16 years of age; any sexual contact with a child between the age of 16 and 18 without consent; or any sexual contact that exploits a child under 18. 

In Canada, the age of consent for sexual activity is 16, but there are some expectations if the other person is close in age to the child. 

In addition, children under 18 cannot legally give their consent to sexual activity that exploits them. Sexual activities that exploit a child include prostitution and pornography. They also include situations where someone in a position of authority or trust, or someone the child depends on, has any kind of sexual activity with the child. A person of authority or trust could be a parent, step-parent, grandparent, older sibling, teacher or coach.

(1) Child sexual exploitation: the act of coercing, luring or engaging a child, under the age of 18, into a sexual act, and involvement in the sex trade or pornography, with or without the child’s consent, in exchange for money, drugs, shelter, food, protection or other necessities. Child sexual exploitation of an individual under the age of 18 is clearly defined and interpreted as child abuse.

(2) Sexual exploitation (general): any actual or attempted abuse of a position of vulnerability, differential power, or trust, for sexual purposes, including, but not limited to, profiting monetarily, socially or politically from the sexual exploitation of another.