Point taken. IMO explaining a person's reasons for bad behavior is not acceptable to me.
I think motivation plays an important role in how we view actions. For instance, if I said my parents beat me, people might conclude my parents were cruel and abusive. On the other hand, if I said my parents beat me because they were raised in a culture which convinced them that children needed to be beaten to be corrected and brought up well, people might instead conclude my parents were misguided rather than deliberately malicious.
Is that excusing their behavior? I don't think so. We can still criticize bad behavior while simultaneously understanding the reasons behind it.
The same thing applies here, IMO. Sometimes there are reasons for bad behavior, and they can lend a lot of unexpected depth to characters.
Though as you said, everyone has their own views on this.
I don't claim to be an expert on the cultural norms of nineteenth century Georgia, but is it incorrect to say that the behavioral patterns that lead to domestic abuse were similar if not the same for that period in history?
I'm not an expert in nineteenth century Georgia either so I can't say. What I can say is that Rhett is far more bark than bite when it comes to Scarlett. He occasionally threatens to hurt her ("I've always thought a good lashing with a buggy-whip would benefit you immensely") but he only physically hurts her once - when he's tying her corset strings just before Ashley's party and he pulls them too tight - and I don't see that as an example of domestic abuse, or a behavior pattern which might lead to domestic abuse.
Of course, there's far more to domestic abuse than just the physical aspect of it, but in the one sex scene which could have been abusive, it's clear that Scarlett was a willing participant after her initial fear. Their arguments don't seem to be on the level of abusive or prelude-to-abusive either.
If he really was an abuser, he picked a victim who wasn't afraid of him when he was in a drunken rage and who had previously murdered a man who threatened her. So even if his jealousy and anger remind people of the behaviors exhibited by abusive men, I think there's a lot more to the situation - and to his and Scarlett's personalities - than that.