Looking at my own situation I can see how culture and upbringing have played into abuse. My upbringing was very egalitarian. My mom works as a nurse and my dad was a navigator. They were very equal and but had some "traditional" values. My mom originally just wanted me to marry well, but she accepted my career choices. My dad is very supportive of my career. I've always believed that women can achieve what they want.

I'm married to a guy who wanted a trophy wife, someone to look good and take care of the house. That was his upbringing. He would be perfectly fine if I sat on the couch all day and ate bonbons and filed my nails so long as I did everything around the house. His upbringing also made him a neatnik, someone who frets when something is a tiny bit out of place at home. He is very cold and critical, something that his mother was. I'm going to say that he chose his wife poorly to meet what he considers to be the ideal relationship.

I also have a friend turned stalker for whom I can see clear cultural and upbringing issues in his abusive behavior. I met him as part of a 8 to 10 person group devoted to anime, fantasy gaming etc. He was very shy around women and kind of a lost soul. At about the six month point of our friendship it was like he flipped a switch and became someone different. He declared his undying love for me and became this arrogant, overwhelmingly emotional person. He made these outrageous and abusive demands of me - that I abandon my friends and family, I cease all contact with any other male, I pay attention to him 24/7, I give up my job, I take him in and support him financially and that I be available for sex whenever he wanted. Never mind that I'm married. I frequently confronted him on his views of how women should behave and how it was downright medieval and regressive, but he saw his attitude towards women as normal and that she should obey and submit to him. He told me his culture limited any contact that he had with women and that he could only interact with a woman he was romantically attached to. So, basically, he had no idea how to treat women or talk to them as human beings. They were some sort of mystical taboo.

Knowing his family I can see where some of these attitudes come from. His parents are immigrants to the US and have very hardened attitudes about relationships. Their view was that I should submit to his will. Again, never mind that I'm already married. His upbringing was abusive and he was frequently beaten and was also sexually abused by a male relative when he was young. His father has an attitude of beating his children into submission for a quiet home. My friend said that was common practice where his parents were from. I would explain that they were in the US now and that was not acceptable. I would also explain that, as a 21st C American woman I wasn't going to give into his regressive notions of what a woman has to do. He would freak out, throwing tantrums and destroying his room, over and over, calling me all sorts of horrible names. His behavior was beyond abusive.

One other weird cultural issue/paraphilia that would come into our interaction was his absolute obsession with white women. With all of the media hype on beauty he saw white women as the pinnacle of beauty and the measure of success for a minority man to possess one. Before we saw his violent outbursts, my friends and I tried to set him up with other women who more closely matched his viewpoints. He would lose his marbles when he found out they weren't white. He had this other bizarre paraphilia in that he told me that his lifelong romantic dream was "to cuck a white guy with a white girl." My being married just drove him harder.

I tried to reason with him that I was the absolute worst choice for him as a romantic partner. Never mind that I'm already married. I'm very independent, my work is 80% male and most of those males are alpha types, my work would prevent my giving him 24/7 attention, I hate clingy guys, and we were such a huge mismatch in terms of looks, physical shape, education, financial status and career. I told him that he would be miserable with me.

But I strongly believe that his upbringing and culture drove many of the abusive behaviors and attitudes that he had.

Anyhow, that's my female experience on the subject.