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Notes -
The question I think about is "why would a battered housewife not only stick around, but defend her husband's actions?". There's no rational reason for that, so this has to be a function (or malfunction) of some basic instinct.
I posit the basic instinct is "sell sex in exchange for resources", and that violent men tend to, for some women, result in the seller perceiving that the price the buyer is paying is high enough to labor as a very literal punching bag. Which also explains a few other weird things, like "women obsessed with serial killers".
It also explains why the modern women is choosier: on an intellectual standpoint/when women have other options, the odds they'll be selling sex for anything resembling a reasonable price is lower and they'll only consider lower prices when the "Reproduce Now" instinct turns on[1] (the flipside, of course, is that higher-quality women are now available at a bargain price if you're willing to look for them, which is to a point why so many software guys marry Asians[2] when they hit 30). The selection effects on the sexual marketplace are simply downstream of this; the reason men who can't pay as much still get laid regularly is because not every woman is Homo Economicus, and even when they are they aren't that way all the time.
The men and women who lack the instinct to min-max this way, or perceive the requirement to either be very muted or only have the cosplay of buy/sell on their minds? Those are the real "asexuals". They lose because they just want to be left alone and do their weird thing where they constantly fuck around.
[1] Buyers call this the "beta bucks"/"once she's had her fun" phenomenon; sellers usually just call it "settling".
[2] Their genetics predict a superior product even if their cultural outlook was more hostile to men on average, and it isn't... unless you also happen to be Asian.
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