Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on There are buttons they can push.

During the second year of the pandemic, I was listening to a frightening story on the BBC as the UK government declared a new period of lockdowns. There was no consideration for women who lived with violent men. A woman reported that she was listening to the news with her abuser as Johnson made the announcement. I don’t recall if it was her husband or not, but he looked over at her and said “Let the games begin.” He knew that he had her isolated. It was chilling, and I had that same feeling that I get when I am watching a horror movie, that I want to turn it off; but it was even worse because it wasn’t a movie nor fictional but a very common reality for many women and especially during the pandemic.

It’s been my observation in reading and listening to abused women, and some studies I had read in college, that such men use the unpredictability over whether or not they will be menacing or violent to keep their victims off balance and it’s a way to control their behavior. The buttons are hidden, and their victims will be tentative on whatever they say or do in order to avoid accidentally pulling a hitherto unknown trigger for rage. The claim that their victim is responsible for the violence is post-hoc justification.

What happened in Parliament during that debate mimicked what these men do, and they full well knew the effect that they were having on their female colleagues.