Distinguished from physical violence (yet often intertwined), structural violence refers to a type of violence that is often invisible yet intricately built into social structures. People’s lives are complicated, confined or even lost because of heterosexism, classism, racism, ableism and sexism. Structural violence may be less obvious and direct than physical violence, but it is just as impactful and harmful. It creates a disparity between a person’s potential reality—the life they could conceivably live—compared to the limited reality that they find themselves in.
