The article deals with taboos and breaking taboos, the normalisation and de-normalisation of violence in gender relations. For a long time, violence in gender relations in Germany was treated as a ‘private matter’ and thus as non-political, but women’s movements, victims’ initiatives and feminist protests have used strategies of deliberate taboo-breaking to initiate a public discussion of gender-based violence. This development has led to the establishment of legal norms (such as the Istanbul Convention) to prevent and combat various forms of violence in gender relations. Nevertheless, as the article shows, this is not a linear, progressive development. Various examples are used to discuss the waves, breaks and inconsistencies in the thematisation of violence against women and gender-based violence: As can be seen from the public thematisation of obstetric violence, forms of gender-based violence have been taboo until the recent past. Other forms of gender-based violence are being scandalised again with changing forms of protest (especially in the area of domestic and sexualised violence) – and thereby also extended to new actor constellations, institutional settings and ‘phases’ of violence, as can be seen, for example, in the thematisation of secondary victimisation by so-called support systems, the judiciary, police, health care, media, psychosocial professions.