In study discussed in our article comparing battered and nonbattered (Forte, Franks, Forte, & Rigsby, 1996), we attempted to test empirically a symbolic interactionist theory that explained batterers' insensitivity to their partners. We also investigated battered women's management of interpersonal predicaments in relationships characterized by structurally induced power differentials. Analysis of survey data supported most tenets of theory. In contrast to men in nonviolent intimate relationships, male batterers were unlikely to adeptly take role of or to empathize with their partners. We characterized battered women's social situations as oppressive. Most of battered we studied had little social power, meager economic resources, precarious employment, exclusive responsibility for young children that limited their mobility, and few supportive others. Our research contributed to literature on domestic violence as empirical support for a model untested by social workers, a model that parsimoniously explained conflictual relationship dynamics in terms of interconnected social structural, interactional, and intrapsychic factors. We also established that male batterers' minimal role-taking inclinations and abilities should be central to understanding and reducing family violence. Starsoneck and Friedman harshly criticize both our depiction of battered and one aspect of our research methodology. We appreciate this opportunity to clarify our position and, hopefully, to aid other practitioners, advocates, and researchers in more accurately appraising our intentions and our report. The core concerns for Starsoneck and Friedman are our alleged depiction of battered as and our supposed attribution that they are somehow responsible for abuse. Our study, in their view, becomes a forum for blaming victim and a way to suggest that battered are culpable for their misfortune. Both criticisms reflect a curious misreading of published study. Do we, in fact, characterize battered as weak and as contributing to their victimization because of faulty personal adaptations? No, power and role-taking thesis explored in our study explicitly proposes something quite different. Any self-defeating perceptions or actions of battered are common to all people facing dangerous and uncontrollable interpersonal situations. We wrote, for example, that Long-term involvement in hostilities severely challenges sense of self of soldiers, police officers, slaves, prisoners of war, and battered women (Forte et al., 1996, p. 70). Furthermore, referring to battered women's heightened role-taking sensitivities (what our critics in a more biologically reductionist way explain as startle reflexes), we argued that the battered woman's adjustments to difficult conditions should be seen as strengths (p. 70) and that their problems coping with abuse stem from structurally determined powerlessness and low status, not from personal deficits (p. 70). Role-taking is very clearly described as a skill used to balance relationships of unequal, structurally determined power. We contend that societal power differentials, not personal deficiencies, are key causal factors. The use of role-taking as a response to oppression occurs for any human being in a position of relative powerlessness - people of color; domestic servants; employees; students; medical patients; children; and targets of physical abuse, rape, and assault (Forte, 1996). Moreover, nowhere do we suggest that this social process of relying on role-taking to anticipate and defend against attacks of more powerful evokes or justifies violence of powerful. Do we, then, blame for predicaments they find themselves in? Starsoneck and Friedman seem to be confusing analytic description and moral judgment. Our study examined and described lived experiences of 66 battered and 80 nonbattered women. …