I would say my feelings about this are complicated, but they’re not really. I think men who need to hit women in order to feel manly are scum.
But I don’t understand women who won’t leave, either. I understand being afraid of retaliation, and I understand the situation where a woman might be in a financial bind. But I’ve known accomplished women, one in particular who had her own money, was both a skilled markswoman and trained in martial arts and she still wouldn’t leave a guy she could probably have flattened who belittled and made fun of her.
In the late 80s and early 90s I volunteered at a women’s shelter. I will probably never do it again. A woman got one of the counselors killed by sneaking a call to her estranged husband and telling him the counselor was keeping her from going back to him. This after she had told us all the the horrible things he’d done to her and their small children, who were also in hiding.
I almost got myself hurt making my couch available to somebody who was also not sure she wanted to leave the abusive boyfriend who put her in the hospital and threatened to kick my door in. I called the police on him, which made her angry at me...she rewarded him for the black eyes and broken nose by marrying him and giving him a house full of children.
I don’t understand why some women seem to be wired so strangely.