What makes a person want to hurt their partner?
The first part of the answer, perhaps the most important part, is that it is never the victim’s fault. The abuser will often try to blame the victim, but we believe that the abuser is suffering from some deep pain and seeks to cover it up by inflicting it on someone else. A political system built on a hierarchy that gives people with power over other people permission to abuse people under them is partly at fault. A social system that encourages violence to settle quarrels is also at fault. Finally, however, each abuser must take responsibility for the injury he/she inflicts on someone else, and if the abuser were to examine and heal his/her OWN pain, that person would not need to hurt someone else. We have an entire class at City College called “The Politics of Sexual Violence.” We grapple with this question in that class.
