Why Do Men Batter?

Why would a man use the person he loves as a punching bag? It's a cliche that there's a fine line between
love and hate and that "you always hurt the one you love." Intimate relationships cause some people to
feel vulnerable and dependent. If one person loves or seems to love more than the other, those feelings will
be exaggerated in the one who loves us the most and will contribute to his or her giving the partner power
over us. For men, who aren't supposed to be either dependent of powerless, love sometimes produces
feelings of resentment, even rage, especially when the loved one who holds that power is "merely" a
female, a person who's supposed to be inferior. It can be experienced as intolerable humiliation, though it
may seldom be expressed or recognized as such. The more vulnerable the man feels, and the more
important invulnerability is to his idea of masculinity, the more he may hate the one he also loves.

Permission to Batter - Another important contributing factor is that men have society's implied permission
to hit their wives or girlfriends. It's probably true ' that most people would say men shouldn't hit the women
they love (or anyone else they care for/or who is smaller or weaker than themselves). But we've seen that
historically this idea exists side by side with the traditional assumption that men should be able to control
their wives by any means necessary. Traditional ideas die hard.

Friends may blame the victim for being in the situation at all family members may not believe that it's
happening and therapists are likely to ask what the woman did to provoke it. Although none of these
people state in so many words that they approve of the violence, denial of the battering or the implication
that the victim is at fault has the effect of giving the man a "'hitting license" - especially if the batterer is
the victim's husband. He can be quite confident that his friends and family - and perhaps even hers - will
stick by him. He probably won't go to jail or even be questioned by the police. The social sanctions that
keep most of us from acting on violent impulses don't operate in the arena of marriage.

Interpersonal Conflicts and Stresses - The question of why men batter is often confused with why men
become angry at the women they love. A relationship between lovers or family members involves a
continual chain of action and reaction, so that it's easy for a man who hits to say it's the woman's
sarcasm (or coldness, drinking, poor housekeeping, extravagance) that caused it. Therapists have often
taken this vie%,,, and a 0% focused on what the women can do differently to cause change in the men.
Certainly couples trigger feelings in each other, and often they are related simply to, expectations, needs,
and wants at the moment the exchange takes place. However, they're just as likely to be the result of a
history of exchanges between the couple.

An angry response can also be displaced from a relationship with another person. . "You're -reacting just
like my mother/ father/ third-grade teacher." Or it can be a result of stress ... real world problems like job
loss or a sick child can cause tension that easily explodes in anger, given the slightest opportunity. Yet,
one person's stress is another's challenge one becomes angry, another depressed, and still another
works it out in therapy.

Any of these situations can help explain why one person becomes explosively angry and another merely
irritated or hurt or worried. None of them explain why one angry person hits his wife, another his child, why
one goes out and gets drunk, another verbally lashes out and still another cries or becomes silent and
cold or covers up his feelings with jokes. None gives us the answer to why men batter.

Research I indicates somewhere around sixty percent of men who batter grew up in homes, where they
were beaten or they witnessed on parent battering another. However, this is not an explanation either.
What about the other forty percent? And what about those who grew up in abusive homes who don't batter
anyone? Children model parent's behavior, but they also interpret what they see and connect it with other
events, ideas, and feelings. It's unpredictable how they'll use what they see and which parts of it they'll
mimic (This means that if your children have seen their father batter, there is a possibility of helping them
interpret that battering in such a way that they won't want to imitate it).

What makes a man hit the woman he loves is a varied and complicated mix: internal stress society's
permission to hit interpreted as an individual right mimicking of violent parents or role models
interpersonal struggles with the-woman and others feelings of anger, vulnerability, powerlessness and
inadequacy and very few clear actions by the woman, the justice system or others that unequivocally
state violence is not allowed.

[From: Getting Free: A Handbook for Women in Abusive Relationships by Ginny NiCarthy, 1982]

For more information on batterers click here