I was surprised, though I really should not have been, when I started chatting to people around the world on the Internet, at how many women have faced deep physical and emotional abuse from men. Not only that but the very men closest to them, the very men one assumes (and that shows how dangerous assumptions are) who would normally be expected to be most protective.
Along with this realisation came another, that where I had considered there to be abuse because it is brutish behaviour I accredited the most brutish people I could think of in society as being abusers but I could not have been more wrong. Men who hit their girlfriends and wives span all strata of society.
So to understand what goes on I have to consider wider human characteristics and fall back on the ideas of self-confidence, hatred of mothers, abuse as children any of dozens of reasons why any man, anywhere would hit a woman he also makes love too. Why any man (and a few women) would hit their partner at all even in fury and anger. I want to call these men cowards because they are but some of them do extremely dangerous jobs – the army is no stranger to assaults and soldiers are hardy cowards.
It is a puzzle I have not yet fathomed.