A feminist analysis is applied to each of five models of clinical interventions with batterers to show how some of these approaches collude with batterers by using techniques that fail to adequately address the violence or by adopting modalities that compromise the batterers' responsibility for change. The preferred modality, emphasis, and timing of interventions give differing messages to batterers about allocating responsibility for their violence and about what preconditions to violence (if any) are expected. Clinical approaches that advocate a shared responsibility do so at the expense of the battered woman's right to expect changes without jeopardizing her safety. Therapists who attempt to trade insights, fair fighting, or reasons for men's violence miss the point of a batterer's violence, namely, that "might makes right." The most fundamental responsibility for therapists and others is to challenge that right persistently. 68 references