Does cognitive dissonance perpetuate misogyny, or just reflect it?

At the risk of being flippant... Cognitive dissonance: because in the real world we can't put sexist boss in a gimp mask. (God, I love the film 9 to 5 - why are there no films that good coming out of Hollywood now? Yet another example of how sexism has become insidious and under the radar and the fight for equality is going backwards.)

The classic marker of abuse is being informed, one way or another and usually several times a day, that it: isn't happening; is your own fault; you deserve it. That gives people very conflicting emotions. I wouldn't say all abusers are necessarily resolving into thinking abuse is ok either, like I said it's bottle-and-lash-out, at least some of it.

People can also go through experiences they'd rather forget or re-write, or have re-written for them. That can give you a very nasty mental health problem.

That's what I think anyway.

Oops, cross post with Jeanne - my "both" was meant as an answer to OP, not a response to the abuse question.

Both, I'd say. It's a negative feedback loop. You're in what seems like an impossible situation (misogynist boss at work, say), cognitive dissonance becomes your coping strategy (well documented in psychology literature - because you're powerless, it's this or go nuts), the cognitive dissonance then causes you to shift the blame onto other people (it's not him, it's Brenda in accounts being all bra-burny, and I'm doing fine because I'm sensible enough to laugh at his "banter"), which in turn means his misogyny never gets challenged and gets even worse.

Now of course, it may be that the situation only "seems" impossible, and that by collectively challenging it you could deal with the real problem, him. But on an individual level this is immensely risky. A little bit of cognitive dissonance plus throwing Brenda to the sexist lions brings an instant, if modest personal payoff (modest because it's never as big a payoff as misogynist boss is getting from his behaviour, but you're a hell of a lot better off than Brenda). Collective action has a potentially high pay-off (you end up with a workspace where everyone gets treated equally, hopefully via the sacking of misogynist boss), but equally carries an extremely high risk (you and Brenda are out of a job, and bringing sex discrimination cases for constructive dismissal is a very uncertain process).

Definite short-term advantage to getting angry over upset if a bloke walks up to you and tries something on. In anger you can hit back (if not too surprised, in which case you'd freeze).

Men, well, at a guess they are socialised to be more likely to bottle and then lash out as well. So they'd get a double whammy. Probably why statistically male abuse victims go on to abuse while females find themselves becoming victims. Also that puts them on to the depression route.

But it is a bad path to be on in the long term.

Why be angry? Because it isn't that tiring initially, it can be quite energising, at least in the short term. And it is a barrier between you and getting upset, which is tiring.

For example a friend of mine was so aggressively 'feminist' she saw and raged against risks and sexism that clearly wasn't there, for example being near drunk young chavvy men she would say 'we are going to be beaten up' 'they said I had a nice arse bastards' etc she was convinced people were 'always' raped in this park or another and got really angry if anyone said anything different. It took her a long time to enjoy living anywhere because of the risks she had read about and transposed onto everything around her.

The sad thing is that if you tell people at work, for example, that they are disadvantaged, they (as a group average) will under perform and thus open up a justification for slowing progression and lowering wages for that group (theres workplace reasearch about this) the work around working class self-imposed aspiration limiting and rural self-imposed aspiration limiting is another example the 'city jobs are 'fantasies' for regional rural poor but 'possible realities' for urban wealthy, even where similar low quals. form the route in.

I think this can be transposed to feminist dissonance too perhaps?

People like the comfort blanket of their own constructed anger. The more false that belief is, the more aggressively its defended, particularly whenit is at most risk of disappearing.

Partially this is because it reminds you that you should have thought differently in the past and not self limited to the degree you have, and its this feeling of not being sure that you can trust yourself to advise you on the best action that makes dissolving 'comfort' dissonance so stressful..

Initially it seems odd, but cognitive dissonance certainly leads people into some very tangled logical webs as they desperately try to keep up the two contrary ideas. They can end up being barely rational on the subjects they're avoiding, certainly very confused. And then on an emotive subject (as it usually is - else why bother) that can lead to emotions being bottled up and lashing out fairly randomly. So I can see that the blame scenario might happen.

One thing about being female though is that we're socialised to avoid lashing out if possible - I suppose that could make an eventual problem larger.