Letters Editor

The Edmonton Journal

When someone "protests too much", others seek hidden reasons. And when someone demands recognition of a fact everyone else has already agreed upon, s/he is protesting too much.

Common sense and survey statistics, including those of the recent StatsCan study, agree that in assault by an intimate partner, women are much more at risk of serious physical harm. (A meta-analysis of such surveys has indicated that two thirds of this harm is suffered by women. Though the numbers are rather uncertain, this proportion is at least close to that for spousal homicide: higher than the US ratio but lower than Canada’s, which in recent years has trended up to about three fourths.)

So, though no one is questioning women’s much greater suffering on average, Shannon Sampert and Jason Montgomery (Letters, July 28) expend many words insisting upon it. Since they also promiscuously attribute motives to others, let us consider some possible reasons for their own reaction.

Black-and-white thinking: Many, especially over subjects that raise their emotions, cannot see all the "shades of gray" in reality, just extreme possibilities. Hence when their own extreme view is challenged--no matter how reasonably or factually--they reflexively accuse the challengers of going to some other extreme.

Covering one’s tracks: When finally caught after their extreme position has long been gotten away with, dishonest persons attack others to deflect attention from their own original wrongdoing.

For years, the standard publicity has promoted the extremist falsehood that only men commit partner abuse. With others, my group MERGE has long lobbied in Alberta--with some success--to get that black-and-white message replaced by factually accurate information. For this we have suffered gross distortions of our position. But everything we have actually said is still available to any who care to know the facts.

Ms. Sampert falsely labels MERGE "ultra-conservative" (Jacobins always accuse progressives of plotting to restore the monarchy; see above), and presents a grotesque caricature of our position on Alice Hansen’s bill. [For our actual views on Bill 214, see article A2 under Partner Abuse on this website.] Professor Montgomery names no names, but from past clashes with him and given recent publicity, it seems pretty clear whose views he is misrepresenting. To twist opposition to the message "only men do it" into opposition to a falsely imagined "all men do it" is a contemptible fabrication on his part.

Professor Montgomery spends much of his space developing the non sequitur "is less able to harm others, therefore is less desirous of harming others". On the basis of unstated evidence from "my experience" and what "makes sense" to him, he concludes that women’s violence is basically in defense of themselves and their children, men’s is basically to exert power.

Unfortunately, his experience evidently includes nothing from the voluminous research on family violence, for such motives have been carefully queried. From women’s own reports, self defense is the reason in only a small proportion of their violent actions. (The same has been found regarding pre-emptive strikes--a canard standardly employed by Ms. Sampert and her allies.) Instead, women report the power-and-control motive for themselves as much as they report it for men. More generally, the two sexes’ various motives for violence come out remarkably alike.

Distortions by Liane Faulder and Susan Ruttan on this subject require a lengthy response on their own. For the record, however, I refused Ms. Faulder an interview because I know her bias only too well.

Ferrel Christensen

President of MERGE and

Professor Emeritus (philosophy of science), University of Alberta

[Editor: I have written as sparely as one can while still making key points accurate and clear. I have kept the length about the same as that of Jason Montgomery’s letter alone, hence consider it reasonable to ask that this defense of my group’s integrity not be compromised by editorial abridgement.]