In this paper, we consider how ideologies about heterosexual working class masculinity play a symbolic role for middle-class, educated men in the context of a batterers’ treatment programme. We suggest that the middle class, educated men who are the focus of this paper create identities for themselves by a process of differentiation, in particular, by distancing themselves from the majority of the men in the batterers’ group who supposedly embody a heterosexual working class masculinity. More specifically, we argue that this kind of identity construction is an integral part of the middle-class men’s accounts of their violence: by differentiating themselves from those who they represent as ‘real abusers’ they manage to diminish and minimize their responsibility for their acts of violence against their domestic partners.