The Bully himself may have been bullied at school and learned from that experience at an early or late age that bullying is effective.

The Bully may be a football fan. In a recent World Cup game one player head-butted another. The next day, the media was full of the question: “What did the other player do to cause this assault?’’ This implication, that the victim was to blame, strongly reinforces the Bully’s belief that women make men hit them.

The beliefs of the Bully may be reinforced by societal norms such as. ‘The rule of thumb’. This phrase is said to come from a tim,e when it was acceptable in common law for a man to beat his wife with a stick, as long as it was no thicker than his thumb.