ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for approaches to explaining domestic violence by men that are sufficiently nuanced for most men to be able to see both similarities and differences between themselves, and other men who have perpetrated assaults on women. It outlines the instrumentalist assumptions that continue to inform key feminist approaches to explain perpetrator behaviour. The chapter then elaborates on how conceptual developments in the study of masculinities have challenged instrumentalist explanations without fully transcending the social determinism implicit in them. Structured action theory assumes that the propensity for violence is shaped by membership in structurally disadvantaged groups. Although psychological research sometimes underengaged with the sociology of gender, and provides evidence of the vulnerabilities felt by men who behave in ways that are physically domineering. Gadd and Jefferson explain men's violence that avoids pathologizing, and hence neither overstates the differences between perpetrators and other, normal men, nor assumes that there are no differences to be explained.
