Pu-LEA-se: Part 1

Brief introduction, from PLEA's page:

http://www.plea.org/aboutplea/aboutplea.htm

"The Public Legal Education Association of Saskatchewan (PLEA) was incorporated in 1980 as a non-profit, non-government organization which exists to educate, inform and empower through law-related education."

I actually like what this organization is all about, the idea that there is a non-profit helping to educate the layperson about the law is fundamentally a good idea. However, I do have a problem with one of their publications titled: "Abusive Relationships".

You can find the publication in it's entirety here.

Where I take offense is in one of the opening paragraphs:

The law applies equally regardless of sex. Both women and men can be the victims of relationship violence and abuse. However, the RCMP report that women are five times more likely than men to experience the most severe forms of relationship violence. Throughout this publication, the victim of assault is depicted as female; the aggressor is depicted as male.

Let's take a walk through this if you wish:

1) I agree, the law does, and should treat ALL abuse against ANYONE equally.
2) Yes, both women and men can be victims, we all know that.
3) What report? (more about this later)
4) So that's it. The law treats everyone fairly, but for the purpose of this partially-publicly funded publication, we are going to make men the bad guys and women the victims. Full stop.

Oh and they're right, read the rest of the publication and you'll see that they clearly follow that modus operandi that I outline in 4).

So I did what any reasonable, curious, taxpayer would do and I phoned them. I spoke to a "legal writer" and inquired about the RCMP report (which they are going to provide, and I will post). Secondly, I asked about the verbage surrounding the male agressor/female victim part, and was informed that they had discussed/debated it and decided that the language would stand. So I asked who I have to talk to about the reasoning behind all of this, and now will be speaking with someone higher up.

This type of propoganda needs to stop. Keep the publication, change the verbage. For a non-profit public legal education foundation who's aim it is to educate the public about the law, how about they actually do that and show that the law treats everyone equally.

Kinda seems like they are directly circumventing their own mission statement doesn't it?