Buzz Hargrove states, "We know that violence against women persists as a result of women's economic, social and political inequality." It's not what we don't know that gets us into trouble; it's what we know that just ain't so.

In fact, scores upon scores of sociological surveys over the past three decades have shown that men and women are about equally likely to suffer violence at the hands of a partner. A 1999 survey of 26,000 adults by Statistics Canada found that 8% of women and 7% of men reported having experienced violence at the hands of a partner in the previous five years.

Most often, domestic violence is mutual. Women are the sole perpetrators of violence in a relationship just as frequently as men are. By their own admission, women are as likely to initiate violence against men as vice versa. Partner violence is learned early: A recent story in the Post reported that girls are in fact more likely to agress against boys than vice versa.

Domestic violence has inexplicably become the trump card in the left-wing arsenal of arguments for all of their favourite causes. The links that Mr. Hargrove urges simply aren't there. Working-class men who bear the brunt of all of this anti-male propaganda and attendant programs of institutionalized favouritism toward women should be abandoning unions and leftist political parties in droves.

Grant Brown, D.Phil. (Oxon), LL.B., Edmonton