Chapter Four (continued)
One Student Tells the Rest About Wife Beaters and Their Motives

Excuses Abusers can Make, and Myths About the Reasons Why Abusers Behave the Way They Do

Naomi carried on, saying, "Making excuses and blaming others for the abuse can be a way abusers can divert people's attention from what's really going on in their minds to justify their abuse.

"Some excuses they make can seem convincing. But it should always be remembered, and ought to be brought home to abusers, that since they're adults, they're capable of taking responsibility for their actions, and that it's their own duty to do so, so they could change their ways if they actually wanted to. It seems the real reason why most of them don't is that they feel justified in doing what they do.

"Abusers can use a whole range of excuses for their behaviour, for instance claiming to their partners that the reason they want to restrict who their partners talk to and spend time with, so they can't see their friends as often as they used to, or the reason they're so quick to assume they must be cheating on them when they find them talking to another man, is because they were hurt badly by a previous partner who cheated on them a lot, and that's why they became jealous and started finding it difficult to trust their partners.

"Or if they have a temper tantrum after being asked to clear up a mess they made, they can claim they got to react like that because a former partner would often boss them around and wanted to control their every move. Or they can claim that the reason they have affairs or want to be non-monogamous is because they were hurt so badly by a previous partner that they can't trust anyone to stay with them, so they want to keep their options open. Abusers can often think of excuses for any of the controlling or upsetting things they do.

"Really, someone who was genuinely hurt in a previous relationship so they know how it feels would likely not want to do things that hurt a current partner, or at least not want to use the way another partner treated them as an excuse for it, since they would worry their partner would feel the same way as they did if they did that, and they would know that wouldn't be nice.

"It can be enlightening for abuse victims if they manage to track down the previous partners of their abuser, and no matter how they feel about them at first because of what they've been told about them by their abuser, they listen to their side of the story. Chances are they'll realise there are a lot of similarities between the way they're treated and the way the abuser treated their former partners.

"Abusers instinctively know that if they can play on the sympathies of their victims by telling them about how they were mistreated in the past, their partners will assume it's the reason for their behaviour, and won't go looking for other ones and get closer to finding out the truth.

"Another excuse abusers can make is that they love their wives or girlfriends so much that they can be hurt by them much more easily than they could be by someone they don't care about, whose opinions don't matter to them, and whose behaviour doesn't bother them so much. But although caring about someone might mean you're hurt by criticisms they make of you more than you would be if others made them, it doesn't mean that most people would be more likely to be abusive in response to them. So there's obviously more going on.

"Abusers tend to try to justify themselves by saying their hurt feelings make them lash out and get abusive. But hurt feelings don't make most people do that; and there are lots of loving relationships that don't get abusive when one of the partners hurts the other; so there's obviously more to the reason why they're abusive than that.

"And a lot of abusive men are very fond of someone else, such as a family member, but they don't abuse them. So they must know really that it's not automatic that they're going to get abusive towards someone they care about who upsets them.

"Another thing people can mistakenly believe about abusers is that they get abusive because they hold in their feelings too much, so they build up and build up until the abusers can't take it any more and explode, so what really needs to happen to stop them being abusive is if they get in touch with their feelings more, so they can express them before they get pent-up enough to cause problems.

"But the author of this book says that isn't what happens, in his experience of having spoken to loads of abusers who've been on his programme over time. He says most of them don't repress their feelings, and a lot of them are much more in touch with their feelings than the average person is, enjoying talking about them, and having an exaggerated sense of how important they are, so their feelings come first, in their opinion, before the feelings of their children and their partners. They often talk about them till their partners are fed up of hearing about them. And if an abuser doesn't feel happy, his partner has to drop everything till she's sorted out the problem that's causing his bad feelings, even if that means pausing the kids' birthday parties, or even their meals, or giving the children less attention than they need when they're ill, because her abuser thinks his feelings and problems come first.

"or a partner of an abuser can feel as if she needs to repress her own bad feelings and put her attempts to fix problems in her own life on hold, because her abuser's demanding attention because he's unhappy about something.

"The author says it's not an abuser's own feelings he needs to get in touch with; it's the feelings of his partner and children that he disregards and doesn't think enough about that he ought to think of more. He says he often tries to steer a conversation with an abuser away from his feelings, which he loves to talk about, and onto discussion of the way he thinks, including the way he thinks dismissively about his partner's feelings. But abusers keep trying to bring the conversation back to their own feelings, which are what they feel a lot more comfortable talking about, thinking they're the important thing.

"But their selfish focus on themselves and their own feelings is partly what keeps their abuse going, because their bad feelings are often stirred up by the toxic way they think, and they think their feelings are way more important than anyone else's. "Abusers can seem to be holding in their feelings till they can't take it any more and have an abusive outburst, because some of them become quiet and withdrawn for a while before they explode angrily, with their tension seeming to rise and rise; but it isn't really because they're not focusing on their feelings that they do that, but because of the way they're thinking and brooding on their own feelings while their tension's growing, with it not occurring to them or them not caring to think about the feelings or needs of anyone else. And then they erupt into abuse when they just decide to.

"Another myth about abusers is that they just have aggressive explosive personalities. But a lot of them are only abusive towards their wives or girlfriends; they behave normally with everyone else, and some can even seem sensitive and gentle to others, while being vicious with their partners. Or when they do get aggressive with others, it's usually with men who unwittingly stir up their jealousy by looking at or talking to their partners a bit too much for their liking.

"Some abusers are actually loving to their partners at first but intimidating towards other people. Having a partner like that might make some women feel safe, because they think their man will be good at protecting them; but sooner or later, the abuser will change and become intimidating towards them too.

"Some abusers are highly-educated, such as being businessmen or college professors. That might be a surprise; but it seems that a decent education won't automatically make someone less abusive. A lot of abusers might be under-educated; but it's a myth that they all are.

"Another myth, and an excuse abusers often use themselves, is that they just lose control of themselves. But it's often possible to guess that it's not really true by the way the abuser behaves. For instance, the author of this book spoke to one abuse victim whose husband would fly into insane-seeming rages and smash things, sometimes important things, and then leave for a while and come back seeming ashamed; and she thought he was just losing control; but the author asked her whose things he smashed, and she thought for a while and then said she'd just realised that he only ever smashed her things. If he really wasn't in control of himself, he'd have smashed his own things as well, even if they were important.

"He asked that woman who cleared up the mess afterwards, and she said she did. He said that if her husband was genuinely sorry for what he'd done, he'd help.

"His book says abusive men in his programme often claim to be totally out of control of themselves when they abuse their partners; but he can tell it's not true when he asks the ones who claim that a question and gets revealing answers: He'll ask them why they haven't done worse things than they have.

"For instance, if one of them caught his partner talking to a friend on the phone, called her an abusive name, snatched the phone out of her hand and threw it across the room, and then shoved her so she fell down, he might ask him why he didn't kick her in the head while she was lying there at his feet.

"The abuser will tend to be shocked that he could suggest such an idea, and say things like that he wouldn't have done such a thing because the children were watching, or that that could have killed her or caused her a serious injury and he didn't want to do that, or that he was afraid someone would call the police, or if the fight got any louder the neighbours would hear, or that he'd never want to do something as serious as that to her. The answers prove that abusers are in control of themselves really.

"The author says that on extremely rare occasions, a man will say he doesn't know why he didn't do something worse. But almost all the time, abusers are very well aware of why they didn't. So he thinks they must be considering things even while they're being abusive, such as whether they could get hurt themselves, or whether they might get in trouble with the law.

"And they'll never do something that they themselves consider to be morally unacceptable, even if they're well aware that other people would think it is; they can always justify what they did. The author says he's never known one to say that what they did was totally unjustifiable and wrong.

"So he says that basically, an abuser's main problem is really that he's got a distorted sense of right and wrong, and he thinks his view is more justified than other people's.

"He says one question he sometimes asks the abusers on his programme is whether they've ever got so angry with their mother they've had the urge to call her a bitch. Half or more of them typically say they have. But when he asks them if they ever have called her that, they seem shocked and say that's not a thing people should ever do to their mothers, no matter how angry they are with them. And yet they don't see any problem with calling their wives or girlfriends names like that, which indicates that they have a belief that it's OK for a man to behave in a controlling or abusive way towards his partner, just not his mother.

"The author says some abusers like to play mind tricks on their partners to make them think they must be going crazy, as well as abusing them in other ways, such as one who said he would dim the lights, and then when his partner said they'd gone dim, he'd insist that they were as bright as ever. And another one would hide something his wife needed, and when she'd got worked up with the worry of not being able to find it, he'd put it somewhere in plain sight when she wasn't looking, and insist it had been there all along.

"And other intimidation or demoralising tactics they use can often be pretty calculated, such as accusing their partners of cheating on them to put them on the defensive, when they've done something bad that they think they might be questioned about, and they don't want that, so they accuse their partners of things to divert their attention away from it onto feeling the need to defend themselves.

"A lot of abusers might genuinely believe they just lose control during an argument; but if they're questioned about the thinking processes that led up to their abuse, they'll realise or begin to admit to themselves that there was a point when they actually gave themselves permission to let loose.

"Another bit of evidence that abusers don't just lose control of themselves is that they can calm down pretty instantly if the police arrive, and talk to them in a friendly way, doing their best to convince them that nothing's wrong, or that they acted in self-defence. It can be easy for the police to believe them, since their partners can be so worked up with emotion by then that they actually do seem to be the crazy ones.

"Another myth about abusers is that they just get angry too easily, and that it would help with their relationships if they got anger management training. There's more to the reasons they do what they do than that. And conventional ways of cooling off, such as going out for a walk to use up energy and distract themselves, and separate themselves from the person they've been arguing with for a while, don't work, because their thoughts will just keep stirring up their anger more and more, such as thoughts of being treated unfairly, because a lot of them expect to be put first in everything.

"To show how entitled they think they are, the author says a woman's son went missing for a couple of days, and she spent a lot of time making frantic phone calls to people her and her husband knew to find out if he was with them, and driving around looking for him, as well as asking the police to help find him, and getting a radio station to put out an appeal to see if anyone knew of his whereabouts. But in all that time, her abusive husband was getting more and more angry, till he yelled and swore at her for ignoring him, as if it just didn't matter to him that she was spending the time doing what she could to find her son because she was worried about his safety. A lot of men would have probably helped with the search instead of brooding over being upset at being ignored; but abusers work themselves up into a fury with their distorted opinions of how unfair it is that they're not being treated the way they've come to believe they're entitled to be treated, as if it's a given that their own needs and wants are always the most important things.

"It's possible to tell that anger isn't the reason abusers are abusive, because they tend to be abusive in several other ways too, not just angry ones. For instance, a lot of them cheat on their partners, and often lie to them, and try to keep them isolated from their friends and families, to stop anyone giving them support and possibly encouraging them to leave the relationship. They can be controlling all the time, angry or not.

"Another myth about abusers is that they must be mentally ill. It's easy to think that, when they do things like having dramatic mood swings, going from happy to abusive in seconds, or sounding paranoid, accusing their partners of unfair things like plotting to harm them. But the author says the 'great majority' of the men who've been on his programme for abusers function perfectly well in the other aspects of their lives, such as work. They're perfectly capable of thinking logically, and interpret most things in life accurately. They can hold down good jobs, and don't hallucinate, or anything like that. They can be diagnosed as having personality disorders though. But the reason they behave the way they do isn't because they're out of touch with reality; it's more to do with the system of beliefs and values they hold. When they behave as if they're crazy, it's often to get something they want, such as intimidating their partner into silence so they can more easily control her or a situation, so they can get their way.

"Rates of mental illness rise among the most severe abusers, such as those who abuse their partners so badly it puts their lives in danger or kills them; but even among those, a lot of them don't seem to be definitely diagnosable with a mental illness. And among those who are, their mental illnesses aren't all the same. So more must be going on. It seems their illnesses or disorders interact with their abusive natures and beliefs to make them more dangerous than they might be if they just had abusive natures.

"Another myth is that abusive men must hate women because a woman did something terrible to them in the past.

"In reality, their attitudes tend to have developed because of the influence of the culture around them or family members as they were growing up, and the way they came to believe they were entitled to treat women, or at least wives and girlfriends, as a result of the beliefs they picked up because of what they learned from that kind of thing.

"The author of the book I read about abusers says research has shown that most men who have abusive mothers don't tend to develop particularly harmful attitudes to other women; but a lot of men whose fathers abused their mothers and disrespected their daughters do, learning by example from them that they're the bosses of women they have intimate relationships with, and that those women are worthy of contempt because they're beneath them. They pick up the attitude from their fathers that women and girls are inferior to men, and that they're entitled to have their wives or girlfriends serve them all the time, and that they have a right to get abusive if they like. A small minority of abusers do hate women, but most of them don't, although a lot of them have the attitude that they're superior to all females, and feel contempt towards them. But some don't show any outward signs of that until they're in a serious relationship with one, who they expect to be continually served by.

"A lot of abusers might claim they were treated badly by another woman and that's why they're abusive, not realising that that suggests they're somehow unable to distinguish one woman from another and behave like a responsible adult who's capable of making thoughtful decisions about the way they're going to behave. But a lot of them will be lying or exaggerating, maybe getting some kind of malicious glee from the thought that they're making the woman they're abusing think another woman caused it.

"A lot of abusers actually have close relationships with some women, such as their mothers or sisters or female friends. And a fair few of them manage to content themselves with having a female boss, and show respect for her, at least to all appearances. So their abuse can't be motivated by some kind of instinctive hatred of women they developed because they were badly mistreated by one, that causes them to get abnormally angry with them all. And why would they even want a relationship with a woman if they hated women?

"The author says that abusers range from those who manage to get on allright with most women they're not having an intimate relationship with to those who show contempt and a feeling of superiority towards most women they come into contact with. He says most of the men in his abuser programme have the attitude that their wives or girlfriends are there to cater to their needs, and aren't worth taking seriously, and they hold that attitude towards other women besides them, especially towards their daughters. But it's learned behaviour.

"Another myth is that abusers abuse because they're scared of getting too emotionally close to their partners, so they abuse them to prevent it happening, or that they're especially scared of being abandoned by them, and that's why they often get more abusive if they try to leave. Some psychologists have interpreted their behaviour that way. But it doesn't really make sense to do that, for a few reasons:

"It might seem as if abusers do what they do because of a fear of abandonment, because a lot of them are very jealous and possessive, and get nastier if they think a break-up might be coming. But surely anyone who was genuinely scared of abandonment would try not to behave in a way they knew might provoke their partner to want to break up with them in the first place, like by abusing them. And a lot of people are genuinely afraid of being abandoned by their partners but don't abuse them. So there's obviously something else going on.

"And almost all murders committed after a break-up are committed by men. If fear of abandonment caused them, women would surely be murdering their male partners just as often, since women are often abandoned by men, unless women are somehow immune to being scared of and upset by abandonment, which almost certainly isn't the case.

"As for the idea that men abuse their wives to prevent them from becoming too emotionally close to them, the worst abuse normally happens after there's been a period of distance and increasing tension between a couple. And abuse happens in cultures where marriage has nothing to do with love too. And a lot of men who actually do have a fear of intimacy aren't abusive.

"Another myth is that abusive men have low self-esteem, and that if it was higher, they'd feel better about themselves, so they wouldn't feel bad enough to get abusive. A lot of abused women have tried and tried to make their partners feel better about themselves, doing whatever they can think of to boost their egos, in the hope that their partners will be pleased so they'll stop being so abusive. But the abuse continues just the same. Sometimes it might take longer for the next eruption of abuse to happen, but in the long-term, the special treatment is likely to actually make the abuse worse, because the more an abuser's partner caters to their needs and praises them, the more of that treatment they'll come to expect and demand, and they'll be abusive when they don't get it, say if an abuser's partner's not feeling well or doing other things so she isn't catering to his wants as much as usual.

"After all, abusers already have the attitude that they're entitled to be served by their partners. So if an abuser's partner starts giving him special pampering treatment, he'll come to expect it as the norm, and likely demand even more, and get nasty if he doesn't get it, not because not having it lowers his opinion of himself so he's upset, but because he feels superior and entitled to demand special treatment from his partner, and blames her if he doesn't get as much of it as he wants, and feels entitled to intimidate her into giving it to him, or to punish her for not coming up to the special standards of care and obedience he feels as if he's entitled to require.

"Rather than low self-esteem, high self-esteem is often part of the problem, and the feeling of superiority abusers have over their partners. The author of this book says that in the early days of his abusers' programme, he and his colleagues used to arrange for men who seemed to have changed a lot during the first months they were there to speak on television or to high school students about how they used to behave, and what had happened in their minds that had caused them to change. But they had to stop doing that, because they discovered that with their egos swelled by all the attention and praise for having changed, the abusers would feel like stars, even more superior to their partners than they'd believed they were before, and they'd soon abuse them badly some more.

"An abuser might like to convince his partner and any therapists he's made to see that he's got a low opinion of himself and that's the problem, or else to go along with it if people assume it's the case, because he'll enjoy the things his partner does and a therapist advises her to do to try to remedy the situation, like praising him and letting him have all his needs and wants catered for, and not criticising him.

"Abusers can be self-critical and seem ashamed and guilty about their abuse after an episode of it, at least in the early days, and if they realise someone else saw it. But that isn't a sign of low self-esteem; and the guilt will likely fade pretty soon. And the more they get away with their abuse, the less guilty they'll often feel about it over time, because they'll get used to being able to do it without being made accountable for it by anyone whose opinions really matter to them, and they'll think of ways to justify themselves more and more.

"If low self-esteem was the cause of abuse, then with all the ridicule abusers tend to heap on their partners, it should mean their partners turn into abusive bullies as a result, because of the low self-esteem it must cause in them. But that doesn't tend to be the case. So that's evidence that low self-esteem isn't actually the cause of the abuse.

"Another excuse for abusers is that abusers' bosses at work treat them like dirt so they feel powerless, so they take it out on people at home where they can make themselves feel powerful again.

"A lot of abusers use the opposite excuse - that they're in upper management at work and used to ordering people around, with no boss to order them around, and they have trouble adjusting their behaviour when they get home. It can be that the more power they have in the workplace, the more submission and catering to their needs they'll demand at home.

"Evidence that an abuser's bad work situation isn't to blame for his abuse is that the author of this book I read says that in all his years of running an abusers' programme, he's never once known an abuser's behaviour to improve because their job situation improved. And a lot of them are popular and successful outside the home.

"It's similar when some people try to explain abuse as often being a result of racial discrimination that oppresses a man so he needs to make himself feel powerful again by asserting his authority at home, and gets abusive as a way of dealing with the frustration the discrimination causes. A lot of abusers are actually in positions of power in their workplaces or have good jobs. And there's no reason why being oppressed wouldn't make people more sympathetic towards the feelings of other oppressed people, rather than being the other way around. Besides, racial minorities are no more likely to abuse their partners than men in the majority.

"Another myth is that abusers abuse because they don't have good communication and conflict resolution skills and aren't good at stress management, so they just need training in those things. But the author of this book says there've been lots of studies that have shown that abusers are no worse at doing those things than other people are. They can get through stressful situations at work and with their parents and siblings without getting abusive. The problem is that an abuser simply doesn't want to resolve conflicts with his partner as peacefully as possible; he likes being abusive.

"Another myth is that there are just as many abusive women as there are abusive men, but that it's difficult to realise it because abused men are ashamed to admit what's happening to them. There certainly are men whose partners persistently ridicule them and try to control them and are even physically violent towards them, and they're reluctant to tell the police for fear of being laughed at for being a wimp who can't control the situation or something. But if it was as common for women to violently abuse men as it is for men to abuse women, police would be arresting more women anyway, because the author says these days, a lot of calls to the police are made by neighbours who are worried by hearing screaming and things smashing and so on, rather than being made by victims of abuse themselves. The author says a third of the physically abusive men who've been in his programme for abusers have been arrested because someone other than their partners called the police.

"So if it was as common for women to be violent to men as it is for men to be violent to women, we'd likely know about it. More evidence that it isn't the case is that it's rare for men to run away to refuges in fear for their lives because of a partner's abuse, or for stories to surface of men trying to call the police but being prevented from doing so by their partners blocking their way or cutting the phone lines and so on, the way it's common for abused women to experience that.

"Women can be ashamed to admit they're being abused as well as men; but they'll want to do it when the need outweighs their shame; so surely if a lot of men are suffering the problem, that would more often happen with them too.

"The author of this book says that abusers often like to play the victim, and that they can claim to be battered men when they're really the ones who start the abuse, or they'll claim that their partners made verbal assaults on them that were just as bad as the physical assaults they themselves made on their partners. He says one man who'd stabbed his wife in the chest tried to justify himself by claiming that she could stab him in the heart with her words. He says some abusers justify themselves by exaggerating the impact their partners' words have on them, saying that although they can win a physical fight, their partners know how to hurt them better with their words, so things even out. They can say that even while they're much better than their partners are at using put-downs, sarcasm, distortion of what their partners say to make them look bad, and other verbal ways of devaluing their partners.

"Another myth is that abuse is as bad for the abuser as it is for the one he's abusing, so they're both victims. The author doesn't say who actually believes that. But he says it's obviously not true when you compare the lives and states of mind of abusers, who can abuse for decades and yet still have successful careers and a lot of friends and good health, with their victims who are worn down by years of being controlled and emotionally and physically hurt. He says abusers usually perform better on psychological tests that can be given to them when courts are deciding child custody disputes after divorces than their partners do, because of the effect on their partners of the trauma of having been abused for so long. Abusers benefit from their controlling ways, trying to isolate their wives from support, and intimidating them into always putting their needs first.

"Another myth, and an excuse a lot of abusers make that their partners believe, is that it's alcohol or drugs that make them abusive. Their wives or girlfriends often think there wouldn't be a problem if only they could get their abusive partners to stay sober. But while alcohol loosens people's inhibitions and impairs their judgments, and they can become a more extreme version of who they are when they're drunk, a man who didn't want to be abusive wouldn't be. A lot of abusers even plan their abuse before they go out, and then drink alcohol so as to purposely make themselves feel less self-conscious, so as to be able to enjoy their abusiveness more, and so they can have a good excuse for it the next day.

"They're still in control of what they do when they're drunk. For instance, the author says a man confessed to him that he'd beaten his wife recently while he was drunk, and she'd ended up with bruises all over her legs. He asked him where else she had injuries, and he said, as if it should be obvious, that he wouldn't have injured her somewhere where the bruises would show when she went out, such as on her face. The author says he's heard lots of men say similar things after they've beaten their wives when they've been drunk or high on drugs.

"And then if abusers who are addicted to alcohol are made to go on recovery programmes, some of them can get less abusive at first, which gives their partners hope that it really was the alcohol causing their abuse problem and they're changing; but really it'll be because they're so focused on the efforts involved in giving up alcohol that they've got less energy for abusing them. Then later, they can go back to being just as abusive as they were before, just swapping the excuse that they were drunk for other excuses, such as that any complaints their partners make are stressing them out so much without the drink to help them cope that they just can't handle them. And abusers who've been at their worst when they're drunk can get accustomed to being violent without alcohol after a while and go back to being just as bad as they were before.

"Some alcohol or drug abusers egg their partners on to drink or take drugs with them; and some abusers who aren't addicted to them manipulate their partners into using them, and then after their partners become addicted, if they complain about their abuse, the abusers will discredit them by claiming that since they're addicted to substances, they must have misremembered or made up what happened under the influence. So their partners can be less likely to get justice.

"Naturally, their partners likely won't have an inkling that that's their abusers' real motive for encouraging them to drink more or take drugs when they first do it. And their abusers almost certainly won't reveal their genuine reasons for their abuse.

"Abusers won't reveal their true motives to their partners, so they're left to puzzle it out for themselves. And they actually like it when their partners are confused about why they're abusing them or believe their excuses, partly because it means they're not going to be challenged about the real reasons why they do it - the fact that they've come to believe they're entitled to, and they like it.

"After he writes about the myths about the reasons abusers abuse, the author of this book talks about the real reasons why they do it."

A Bit of Humour Breaks Out

One of the group said, "This is depressing! I feel as if I need a bit of light relief. Maybe I could go on one of the swings in the park for a while."

Another student teased good-naturedly, "Na, you'd probably break them. We could do a bit of comfort eating instead."

They all decided to get some food and drink.

When they'd sat down after getting some, one of them said, "There's an Internet forum I go to that has a section for where people can write updates about their personal lives. I was reading one person's the other day, and she said she was finding it difficult to get up in time to go to her 'marital arts' classes. At first I wondered what marital arts were; but then I realised she must have meant to say martial arts. Then I read further, and she said things like, 'The sword movements are so cool!', and that she was learning enough tai chi in the classes to be able to practise at home. So that's what marital arts classes teach!"

The students giggled, and one said, "Just imagine if someone emailed a friend of theirs, telling her there was a 'marital arts' class starting up for women, and the woman decided to go, hoping it would improve her marriage, so she went along, even though she didn't know anything else about it. And then just imagine if the instructor said, 'At some point in the future I'll teach you all some super-cool sword techniques. But today, team up into pairs, and I'll show you several ways you can throw your partners.'

"The woman might think, 'What? I thought this class was going to be about things like developing better communication and conflict resolution skills, and cooking nicer things, and things like that!'"

The students grinned.

Then one said, "My sister started doing a martial art when she was a teenager. There were a few girls at her school who used to throw little things at her in one of their lessons, and she didn't like it. But the first week she started martial arts, she told them she'd started it, and they were too scared to bully her after that, as if they thought she must already have learned some scary techniques!"

One of them asked, "They can't use real swords in martial arts, can they?"

Another one said, "I don't think so. I think they just use stylised things that are sometimes made of wood. I'm not sure though."

One of the group said, "Someone once told me on a forum that a couple of hundred years ago, two American politicians, one who was a vice president and one who'd been a treasury secretary, had a duel where the vice president shot the other man dead, and later lost his job for it. They'd both been involved in duels before.

"I joked, 'Perhaps the world would be a better place if duels were legal for politicians now, and in fact encouraged!'

"Then I said it would be good if instead of dragging their countries into war, political leaders would have duels against each other nowadays, so they were the only ones to fight. So instead of going to war in Iraq, George Bush and Saddam Hussein would have just fought a duel against each other.

"One of the men on the forum said it would be great if politicians started having duels, and that he'd love to be the referee if politicians started solving their countries' disputes like that.

"I joked, 'You'd like to referee them? Of course, if you wanted to referee the Bush-Saddam duel that sadly never was, it would have meant flying to a location midway between Iraq and America. To be fair to them both, it would have to have been as close to the midway point as possible. If that meant in the sea somewhere, you'd perhaps have had to tread water the whole time, as would they. After all, no one would want to damage a perfectly good ship by taking it out there for them to duel on, risking it getting bullet holes in it.

"'So, bearing in mind that that kind of thing would be a condition of your refereeing, would the job still be acceptable to you?'

"He said he still liked the idea.

"There was someone on that forum who was standing as a political candidate for the Green party in Canada. He didn't get in. But he used to insult me with all kinds of gross crude insults, for some reason. One day after he'd done that, I joked that I'd like to hear him stand up and say those things in the Canadian houses of parliament."

Another student said, "I was walking down the road with a relative not so long ago, and we'd turned off the main road a few minutes earlier and it was much quieter. She remarked that it was, and just after that a car went by. She joked, 'One got away.' I joked back, 'It's escaped! Call security!'

"Just a bit earlier, she'd mentioned that politicians were attending this big conference to discuss what they should do about climate change, and she remarked that they'd probably all flown across the world to be there in their carbon-emitting private jets. She joked, 'They should have been made to walk there.'

"I joked back, 'Yeah, right across the sea. Or at least they should have been made to swim the Atlantic to get there.'

"She said, 'They could have gone across it in a rowing boat.'

"I joked, 'That would take a while. Probably a good thing.'"

Naomi Talks About the Reasons Men Abuse Their Wives or Girlfriends, and Some Tactics They Use to Justify Themselves and Degrade Their Partners

Then the conversation got serious again, as Naomi said, "This book I've been reading about wife beaters says dictators of countries have the same mentality as them, believing their people are theirs to do what they like with and that they're entitled to be harsh with them if they like. They'll often try to make sure they come across well to their people, even if it means telling all kinds of lies about and cruelly repressing anyone who opposes them. And they'll often blame groups of people they're oppressing for their oppression, or for the reasons why their countries are in the state they're in, such as by claiming those people have been victimising the people of their countries so they need to be punished and put down.

"Anyway, The author of this book I read about wife beaters says abusers tend to think they've got the right to control their partners and punish them for what they see as disobedience, when 'disobedience' might in some cases just be a woman's attempts to stand up for her rights or do something for herself instead of devoting all her time to serving him or staying under his control. So an abuser can think of the relationship a bit like one between a child and an oppressive parent, where the wife has to do what she's told, - although abusers can resort to some pretty childish ways of punishing their partners, such as smashing their things.

"Some abusers control their partners more than others, or some parts of their lives more than others. Some, for instance, will tolerate their wives having their way when it comes to some decisions about the children, but fly off the handle if their wives are reluctant to change the television channel when they want to watch something on another one.

"An abuser will expect his wife to defer to his opinions as the superior ones, and to do whatever it takes to satisfy his needs, although he'll likely never be fully satisfied, because he'll think she could always be doing more. And he'll likely believe he's entitled to do just what he wants with no criticism from his partner.

"Although an abuser will be controlling, he'll likely insist that his partner's the controlling one if she tries to get him to be more responsible or to behave better.

"When an abused woman gets angry with her abuser, no matter what he's done, he's likely to try to persuade her and other people she's just crazy and hysterical. Having as much power over her as he wants will partly rely on him discouraging her from putting up a resistance to his demands and ability to do what he likes. Anger is a challenge to his authority that he won't like.

"The reason an abuser will often be so angry is because he has such impossible demands on his partner that it doesn't take much at all for her to displease him by not meeting them. He feels entitled to have his high expectations met all the time, no matter what. If he were to lower his unrealistic expectations and stop feeling entitled to be so demanding, his anger would diminish.

"Another thing abusers often do is to twist their accounts of things so it makes it seem as if their wives and girlfriends are the abusive ones, and they're the victims. For instance, when some abusers attack their wives, no matter how seriously, they'll get indignant at any attempts at violence in self-defence their wives make, and consider that any more violence they commit against their wives is justified as self-defence or punishment.

"They can give accounts of arguments and abusive incidents where they don't even mention what they themselves did to trigger off the problem, making it look as if their wives or girlfriends just yelled at them or did other things for no good reason. Their partners' side of the story can sound very different. For instance, an abuser might say his wife just nagged and criticised him for about half an hour till he just couldn't take it any more and insulted her and walked out. But he might completely fail to mention that he'd been saying abusive things all day to her before that happened, and that he's exaggerating the amount of time she had a go at him for, as if he thinks his abuse of her is so much the norm he doesn't even notice he's doing it, or thinks he's totally entitled to do it, but that it's an offence for her to stand up for herself and have a go at him.

"The author of this book says abusers distort what he says to them just as much as they distort their accounts of incidents between them and their partners. Or it could be called deliberately misinterpreting or exaggerating it.

"For instance, if he tells one of them that intimidating their partner's unacceptable no matter how angry they are, they might say, 'So we're expected to just lie down and let our partners walk all over us?' Or if he says a partner's criticism is no excuse for calling them nasty names or abusing them in other ways, an abuser might say, 'So you're saying we should let our partners do whatever they want to us and we're not allowed to lift a finger to defend ourselves?' Or if he points out that they've got double standards, and that they should live by the same rules as they expect their partners to live by instead of expecting much stricter standards of behaviour from their partners than they're willing to live by themselves, they'll insist he told them they should live by much stricter rules than their partners are entitled to, because it's OK for women to get away with what they want but it isn't OK for them.

"Interpreting things in an extreme way that makes them sound stupid gives an abuser an excuse not to think seriously about what's being said, so as to have to consider whether he should actually do something about it. He'll believe he shouldn't have to, but that he's entitled to just dismiss it with ridicule.

"Abusers feel disrespectful of their partners, and tend to think of them as less intelligent and sensible than themselves, and even less sensitive. Of course, if someone's always being put down and interrupted, their intelligence won't have a chance to shine through; and it must be difficult to feel compassion for others when you're worn down by abuse. So any beliefs the abusive partner came into the relationship with about how women tend to be less intelligent and competent and sensitive than men will likely be reinforced. An abuser will have believed in his superiority from the start, and the more reasons he decides he has to feel superior, the more superior he'll likely feel.

"And the more he thinks of his partner as being there to serve his will and be abused, the less he'll think of her as a human being with feelings. So abuse tends to get worse over time, with a lot of abusers seeming remorseful at first, but then, as their contempt and devaluing of their partners gets worse the more they get used to thinking of them as objects worthy of abuse, the more they'll abuse them without even a glimmer of regret afterwards, and the worse the abuse is likely to get. The more they come to think of their partners as less than human and worthy of contempt, the fewer qualms of conscience they'll have about abusing them, so they can start abusing them in worse ways without many qualms of conscience at all. And then once a new level of abuse has just become the norm for them so they don't feel any shame about it whatsoever, escalating to a worse level of abuse doesn't seem to be much of a big deal to them.

"Abusers tend to dehumanise their partners by calling them degrading names, sometimes planning what to call them and using the worst insulting words they can think of in an aggressive way. So their own actions dehumanise their partners in their minds. And then their increasing dehumanisation of them lets them carry on abusing them without feeling any guilt. Meanwhile, their partners will be feeling degraded and unsafe. But their feelings won't matter to the abuser, because he'll think of his partner as so far beneath him that he doesn't see why they should. If she protests about the way he treats her, he'll often try to get out of any responsibility for it by blaming her for the mistreatment.

"On the other hand, a lot of abusers will make deep declarations of love for their partners, both to them and to outsiders. They can make claims like, 'I told her she'd better not ever try to leave me. You've got no idea how much I love her', and, 'The reason I abuse her is because I love her. You hurt the ones you love the most'.

"But genuine love involves having a caring concern about the well-being of someone, wanting the best for them, and wanting to make them feel good about themselves. The kind of thing abusers mistake for love might be a strong sensation, but it doesn't have anything to do with caring about whether their partners have happy fulfilling lives. They'll likely instead care a lot that their partners tend to their needs.

"They've likely never genuinely loved anyone, so they mistake the sensations they feel for love, because they've got nothing to compare them to so they don't know the difference.

"An abuser might very well feel a strong desire to be loved and cared for by his partner. He'll only give her love when he feels like it though. A lot of abusers try to convince their partners that their abuse is proof of how strong their loving feelings are towards them. But their strength of feeling probably has a lot more to do with feeling strongly that their partners should devote themselves to their care without ceasing than actually caring for them, so their abuse really is connected to the feeling they call love, but only because the feeling's mostly about loving to be treated well, and they believe they're entitled to be abusive if they're not getting enough of the care they demand.

"As well as their idea of love being to do with wanting to be cared for by a partner who isn't having their attention diverted or being encouraged to give themselves a break from their abuser by outsiders, so they can give all their attention to them, when they use the word 'love', they can be referring to their desire to be sexually satisfied by their partners whenever they want, or the desire to possess and control them, or the desire to impress others by having such a partner.

"Even if an abuser kills his partner, he can claim it was because he loved her so much, and it might be called a crime of passion, for instance if he claims he felt sure she was cheating on him and he couldn't stand it. But if a parent killed their child in a rage they got into after their child did something they didn't like, it would never be called a crime of passion. It would just be called murder, and the parent would be thought of with contempt and anger. So the fact that there's a difference means there must be something wrong with the explanation that it was love that drove abusers who killed their partners to their murders.

"One tactic abusers often use is manipulating their partners to get what they want. There are lots of different ways they can do that. They'll know women wouldn't want to stay with them if they were abusive all the time, and getting what they want by bullying all the time would tire them out in any case, and might even make a lot of them feel a bit guilty. And varying the control tactics is possibly more fun too.

"Manipulation can also be used as a way of upsetting their partners, or making them doubt that they know best, or making them feel bad about themselves. Abusers can believe that the worse their partners feel about themselves, the less confident they'll be about trying to leave the relationship and make it on their own, or about finding someone new. One reason they can belittle them is to try to actually cause that effect, to manipulate their partners into not having the courage to try to leave them, so they can keep control of them. But they can just enjoy upsetting them too. And manipulation can also be used to stop their partners complaining about their behaviour so much. But it can sometimes be used to persuade their partners they really do love them, and that they're sorry for what they've done and want to change. Or it can be used on a partner's friends and family, to get them to persuade her he isn't that bad really, if she's thinking of leaving or complaining about him.

"One manipulation tactic a lot of abusers use is to try to stir up their partners' emotions when their partners are trying to stand up for themselves and trying to make a change in the relationship. If their partners criticise them or say they're thinking of leaving for a while, some abusers will seem upset, and protest that that has to mean their partners can't love them any more, and probably never did. Their partners might start reassuring them that they do love them really, to soothe them, and then forget about making any criticisms they were planning to make before, or decide it's not the appropriate time for them.

"Abusers can be good at changing the subject when their wives or girlfriends bring up criticisms of their behaviour or requests that they change, such as by making accusations against them that they'll feel the need to defend themselves against, so the conversation ends up being all about something else, which abusers will have an easier time talking about, and which lets them off the hook, because their partners will likely forget about what the conversation was originally supposed to be about while it's going on.

"Abusers can also cause their partners to doubt their own sanity or the accuracy of how they perceive what's going on. For instance, some abusers might sometimes be obviously angry, but deny it indignantly if their partners say they don't want to talk to them while they're angry. The abusers might tell them they're not qualified to tell them how they're feeling. If they do it often enough, some women might wonder if the way things seem to them is really accurate, and whether they're not really good at detecting true anger, and whether they might be over-reacting, and should just accept yelling as fairly insignificant.

"Or an abuser might be sulky or moody for some time, and then deny he ever was. If that keeps happening, some women might wonder if they're interpreting things correctly, and whether the fact they've been interpreting things the way they have could mean there's something wrong with them or the way they think about things.

"Partners of abusers can get upset with frustration because their abusive partners won't admit to their moody or controlling behaviour; and then an abuser can claim that his partner's agitation and upset is evidence that she's crazy and over-emotional.

"Abusers can have no problem insisting their partners are feeling something, even while they deny feeling something their partners perceive them to be feeling, like anger. They'll often change the subject of an argument so it's all about their partners' feelings, rather than being about their abuse, as their partners were hoping it would be. Or they can twist their partners' words to make them look bad, so instead of a conversation being about the subject a partner brought up, the partner gets on the defensive, so it ends up being about her trying to convince her abusive partner that she didn't say or do what he seems to have thought she said or did.

"For instance, if a wife or girlfriend of an abuser says it would be nice if her partner could take a bit of responsibility for childcare, an abuser can give reasons why taking on all the responsibility for it would be impractical, for instance because he already has a full-time job. It won't matter to him that his partner didn't ask that he take on the whole responsibility. A partner of an abuser can leave the argument wondering if she's incompetent and so bad at expressing herself that it was easy for anyone to misunderstand her, not realising that at least some of the misunderstanding was deliberate.

"A lot of abusers often lie to their partners, partly to get them to do what they want. For instance, some might claim that everyone they've spoken to thinks they're justified in doing what they do, when that might not actually be true at all.

"Another manipulation tactic abusers can use is changing the way they behave unpredictably, sometimes going from seeming to be happy one minute to being hostile the next. It can be a way of squashing any direction the conversation's taking that they don't like. But it can also be a way of keeping their partner cautious about what she says, worried that speaking her mind or behaving in any little way her partner doesn't like will provoke an angry outburst. So it can be a control tactic.

"Another thing abusers can do is make their selfishness look like generosity or concern for their partners. For instance, they can claim that the reason they don't let them stay out late enough to come home after dark is because they're worried they might be attacked by some psycho, when it's really because they want them there when they get home from work to make their dinner and make them comfortable. An abuser might use concern to disguise his motives a lot of the time; and it might be a long time before his partner starts to suspect what's really motivating his demands.

"Abusers can like to play the victim with their partners as well as with other people, so their partners will start feeling too sorry for them to complain about their behaviour too much. For instance, they might talk about having been abused as children to soften their partners' hearts, so they start to excuse them a bit, perhaps changing their minds about demanding they take full responsibility for their behaviour. And then they can start to excuse their future abuse a bit, which will be just what an abuser will want.

"An abuser will likely try to convince his partner to blame anyone but himself for his abuse, including herself, sometimes claiming her 'crazy-making' behaviour drove him to it, for instance if she yelled at him because in reality she was so angry with him for being abusive. He might interpret that kind of behaviour as hysterical, rather than as being an emotional reaction to being abused, and try to convince her she must be a hysterical person because of it, instead of being a mostly sensible one.

"Abusers often have no problem lying to their partners about the reasons they want them to do what they want them to do, making it look as if it's for the best, when it's really only in the interests of the abuser that they behave the way they want them to.

"Abusers can also cause their partners to mistrust their friends and families, who might otherwise persuade them to try to leave them, by turning them against their families, and turning their families against them, by telling them about complaints they made about each other, or being rude about people in their families to their faces to put them off wanting to be around them and their partners, or telling them lies about things their partners supposedly said about them to alienate them against them, or charming them to make them think they're nice, and then telling them bad things about their partners to put them off them, that are sometimes exaggerated; and other things like that.

"A partner of an abuser might not realise why her friends and family don't want to be with her so much any more, or why there seems to be something wrong with her that makes her over-react to things her abuser says, or why she ends up feeling like the one who must be to blame for his behaviour. She might genuinely come to believe there must be something wrong with her."

There's a Bit of Humour Again

One of the students said, "That's bad. You know, this is a heavy conversation! I need to go and get some comfort food again."

They all decided to do that.

When they were back, one of them said, "Imagine if it was possible to transport wife beaters and other criminals back a few centuries in a time machine and leave them there. I suppose it would only be fair to dump them in a sparsely populated part of the world like a desert, or they'd just cause trouble for the people they were dumped among.

"Just imagine if historians one day discovered that some of the wars in the past were actually started by hordes of 21st century criminals who'd been transported back in time, and then banded together and caused havoc.

"Imagine if there was a report on the news one day that said, 'Historians have always thought they knew when and where Napoleon was born. But now they've discovered that he actually originated as a burglar, who was really born in France in 1985, and was transported back in time by a time machine scientists recently developed. They now believe he invented a story about his origins, because he didn't think people around at the time would believe the truth, because he was dumped on a sparsely populated mountain top so hardly anyone saw it happen, and hardly anyone knew of the existence of time machines in those days, because criminals are always dumped in unpopulated areas, and not allowed to take modern equipment back with them, so news about them being dumped there doesn't often get out, and no one would believe it anyway.'"

One of the others said, "Imagine if there was a miscarriage of justice and someone got sent back in time, and then it was discovered they were really innocent. Maybe a search party would have to be sent back in a time machine to try to find them and bring them back. Imagine how hard it might be to find them!

"But imagine if it was announced in parts of America that still have the death penalty now that it was going to be scrapped, and instead, serious criminals were all going to be transported back in time to the America of the 1500s and left there.

"Mind you, other people might want to be transported back there too for fun. I suppose you might get time machine tourism, with lots of rich people clamouring to be sent back in time for a while for the adventure. Some of them would be in trouble if they were sent back in time a few hundred years and then the time machine broke down so they couldn't get back again! Mind you, I suppose if time travel got to be really popular, there might be scheduled time-travel flights, like you get with trains and buses, so if a time machine broke down, they'd be saying to each other, 'Don't worry, there'll be another time machine along this time tomorrow; maybe we can go back on that.'"

One of the group said, "Imagine if there wasn't a time machine due back in the area for another few weeks. They wouldn't be able to buy food, because they wouldn't have the correct kind of money. Imagine some of the richest people in the world going back in time and then turning into burglars and beggars because it was the only way they could get food."

One of them said, "Hopefully they'd at least manage to give up those habits when they finally got back here. Wow though, I wonder how much it would improve society if it was routine to send wife beaters back in time, so there ended up being far fewer of them here."

Another one said, "Well, it wouldn't be good for the societies they were sent back to. Imagine if history books in schools one day said, 'There was a lot more violence in medieval Europe than there is in the Europe of today. This is now believed to be at least partly because so many present-day wife beaters and other criminals have been sent there.'"

The students grinned.