Pu-LEA-se: Part 4 - My Response

So to their credit, they did phone me back, and after a rather fruitless phone conversation (interestingly enough which told me that they had Human Rights Commission complaints before), they told me to send them an email and it will get attached to the file for this publication. No big surprise there. Here's my response:

Hi There,

I would like to point out a few things here first:

1) The RCMP report is also gender biased towards women, and you take a small sampling of that report (which references research that is 8 years old) to level a clearly biased statement:

"However, the RCMP report that women are five times more likely than men to experience the most severe forms of relationship violence."

Aside from the confusing grammar, and no reference to the report, you use this statement as your means for the rest of the publication to use men as the "aggressor" and women as the "victim".

2) The RCMP report only cites three reports, of which two came from the same source. These reports are 8, 14, and 15 years old respectively.

3) You say that much of the language in your report is gender neutral. This is completely a false statement.

"Throughout this publication, the victim of assault is depicted as female; the aggressor is depicted as male."

You clearly say that at the beginning of your document, and you hold true to that claim by making statements like:

"Women from all backgrounds are abused. Often they suffer alone for a long time, not wanting to admit their spouse or partner is abusing them."

"But many women are subjected to varying degrees of physical abuse without suffering physical injury that is visible to the eye."

"No one, including a spouse or partner, has the right to force a woman to participate in sexual activity if she does not want to."

"Women stay in abusive relationships for many reasons.

"However, when a woman is caught in an abusive relationship, it is highly unlikely there will be any kind of rational discussion, either about her leaving or whether she should take the kids with her."

I am going to stop there, I am sure you are familiar enough with your own publication by now that I don't have to regurgitate it all back, but I just want to clearly illustrate to you that this is not an unbiased publication. You actually make a statement at the outset that you are going to paint men as the agressor and women as the victim, in fact, by saying that you're actually admitting there's bias.

4) You back up my claim that this publication is gender biased by sending me a link that says: "Measuring Violence Against Women" but I didn't see a corresponding link to "Measuring Violence Against Men".

Again let me make my opinion clear, I am not saying that you shouldn't report on violence against women, but I am saying that you should equally report violence on men. Here is a report, and it contains useful references that can perhaps balance your publication a little better:

http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/ncfv-cnivf/familyviolence/pdfs/Intimate_Partner.pdf

That being said, since it's not useful for me to present a problem without a solution, you could try the following:

1) Keep the statistic that you have, also showing the trend is moving downwards (it was seven times), and reference the RCMP report that you pull it from so people can educate themselves.
2) Supplement your statistic with the fact that men also suffer from abuse, use the report I provided for guidance.
3) Instead of having men as the agressor and women as the victim simply keep the verbage gender neutral. It's irrelevant to the law (of which you are educating people on, and receive monies from the government to do so) whether a man abused a woman or whether a woman abused a man. What is relevant is that there was an "aggressor" and a "victim". It actually creates MORE work for you to write that disclaimer-styled paragraph than to leave it out.

For instance some of the above sentences:


Yours: "Women from all backgrounds are abused. Often they suffer alone for a long time, not wanting to admit their spouse or partner is abusing them."
Neutral: "People from all backgrounds are abused. ..."

Yours: "But many women are subjected to varying degrees of physical abuse without suffering physical injury that is visible to the eye."
Neutral: "But many people are subject to varying degrees..."

Yours: "No one, including a spouse or partner, has the right to force a woman to participate in sexual activity if she does not want to."
Neutral: "No on, including a spouse or partners, has the right to force another person to participate in sexual activity if they do not want to."

Yours: "Women stay in abusive relationships for many reasons."
Neutral: "People stay in abusive relationships for many reasons."

Yours: "However, when a woman is caught in an abusive relationship, it is highly unlikely there will be any kind of rational discussion, either about her leaving or whether she should take the kids with her."
Neutral: "However, when a victim is caught in an abusive relationship, it is highly unlikely there will be any kind of rational discussion, either about the victim leaving or whether the victim should take the kids with them."

Can you see how easy it is to create a gender-neutral publication? I implore you to review your current publication and take some of this to heart, we have to educate people about abuse of all kinds, and in your case it's imperative that you educate people on the law surrounding abuse. Just don't forget that the law is gender blind, and so should your publications be.

Sincerely,

Me

Well, let's see how this plays out. I wonder if I should be writing the RCMP as well, and pointing out the bias. This is exhausting to say the least, but someone has to say something.