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Guys violent to their partners tend to be violent to offspring as well, and mothers who can't protect themselves and their kids die early and leave no lasting genetic heritage.
It's a bit of a 'just-so' story, and I think the real answer is simpler: it's mental derangement, the same as other mental illnesses. We can dress it up all we like that "well, illness X must have some benefit or else it wouldn't have survived this long, it would have been evolved away" but we can see that craziness has survived over the generations just fine.
Mental illnesses stem from necessary processes or they wouldn't exist. Indeed almost every single one is simply an acute version of a healthy and necessary mode of thinking.
Moreover I think the attraction falls of the same cliff the returns of violent tendencies do in proportion to the danger to offspring. Purposeful killers that these women can talk themselves into thinking they can get on the good side of is far more attractive than indiscriminate low inhibition brutes, but they are both more attractive than a male rape victim, all things being equal.
That's like saying cancer stems from necessary processes or it wouldn't exist. Yeah, cancer is a physical process gone wrong, but it'll still kill ya. Same with mental illnesses - there is no cosy justification for wife-beaters that "oh but this is evo-psych, she wants my violent genes so the kids will succeed, so it's okay if I slap her around and threaten to murder the kids, I'm just demonstrating my genetic fitness!"
In no way does cancer improve your reproductive fitness. However, all the things that do more than it lowers it and are carcinogenic are desirable and desired.
Nature doesn't care that an externality merely exists, only that it's negative effects are less powerful that the positive effects that generate it.
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