"the rate of mental illness among abusive men isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Nor are wife-beaters any more likely to have suffered from child abuse (with the exception of the extremely violent who choke, stalk, and kill). Brown reportedly watched his stepfather beat his mother when he was a child, but Lundy points out that only abusive men use their childhoods as an excuse for physically mistreating other people. What determines how abusive men behave, he argues, isn’t how they feel. It’s how they think — their value system. On some level, abusers have decided that it’s OK to hurt women or to treat them as objects. Maybe they have an elaborate set of justifications designed to elicit sympathy, but that’s what it boils down to"
— Emily Bazelon on why we shouldn’t feel sorry for abusive men
