“Violent men are aware that they are violent and even take pride in the manliness of it to their friends,” he said. “But, they will often deny that their violence is actually violent when questioned. Their denial allows violent men to minimize the impact of their violence on their victims, blame them for it, and ask their families and friends to collude with them by approving it.” What he means is that incidents of violence are downplayed: perpetrators tend to use phrases like “it wasn’t that bad.” They accuse victims of overreacting. They claim they didn’t mean to “hurt” her when they threw
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