This is an excellent article and a topic that needs further exploration. I'm wondering about your thoughts regarding the issue brought up by Barry and Seager which you point out in regards to "abuse, not gender, creates pathology." In particular, the idea that abusers were typically abused in childhood and therefore go on to become abusers themselves.

While I don't deny that many, if not most, perpetrators of IPV (intimate partner violence) have childhood issues -- well, who doesn't? We've all been damaged and have had trauma in one way or another in our lives. Why do some (usually) men who struggle with issues of childhood emotional neglect, physical abuse, etc., go on to become abusers, while the majority do not? What is in their pathology that they have to take their toxic shame, damage, or whatever else they are struggling with and use it to control, gaslight, manipulate, and otherwise traumtize other people? Why do some people become Dave Pelzers while others become Mr. Hyde (alternated by Dr. Jekyll, of course)?

Of interest (and this is echoed in so many other books that I can't list them all): "Most people who are abused as children do not go on to become abusive adults. The so-called 'cycle of abuse' from childhood abuse to adult abuser perpetuates damaging myths that victimization leads to perpetration. It doesn't have to" (Natalie Collins, Out of Contrl: Couples, Conflict and the Capacity for Change, 44)

Although this issue isn't gender related per se, since women as well as men can become abusers (as you so well point out), I would still value your thoughts on why some personalities turn toward the good, and why some turn toward coercive control and other abusive behaviors, in order to supposedly deal with their past pain.