Let's talk about cognitive dissonance ...

[colditz]

My relationship with my children's father broke up because he lied about money and hit me, and I finally, after many years of misery, refused to tolerate it. But why did I tolerate it for as long as I did when I was miserable?

I believed that children need their parents to stay together and that I would not cope alone. The facts were that children do not need one parent to be abusing the other, and that my life would have been easier without him merrily fucking it up.

The stress caused by the gap between my own personal beliefs and the reality of my situation was causing an uncomfortable feeling, often described as cognitive dissonance.

Is this the reason that people who consider themselves fair minded nevertheless perpetuate an unfair system? Intelligent women who do all the housework and childcare 'because he goes to work' must see the difference between theirs and their husband's exhaustion levels - why do they accept it, and decide that 'going out to work is really hard' when they surely must remeber the time when they went out to work and had no home responsibilities as being a darned sight easier than the life they live now?

I think it's bcause cognitive dissonance is a very uncomfortable state of being, and if you cannot change your situation, you must change your way of thinking to bring it in line with your situation or suffer the misery of inner conflict.

Which brings me to the rejection of feminism.

Why do so many women reject feminism when it would clearly improve their lot to be treated fairly?

Is it because they cannot easily become fairly treated individuals, not without huge conflict and arguments in their home and at work, so they decide, unconsciously, to believe that they are already treated fairly? And therefore feminism is defunct in their minds.

Intersting.

To me, some of the posts read as if Sunny, who feels happy, is being told that she damn well should be unhappy, what with her workload, DH not doing enough in the eyes of a given poster etc. You don't resolve cognitive dissonance by telling someone their feelings are wrong - that just stirs up more.

Let's take the more classic cog diss we've been talking about - W suddenly straightens up from cleaning the toilet, wondering how she ended up here. H lounging happily on the couch, reading the paper. To bring about a change, the cog diss of both parties will have to be dealt with. But it's always going to have to start with the dissatisfied party, just because that's where change comes from.

[Not trying to make this all about Sunny, but I wanted to add that I can see how people got annoyed by the victim-blaming for those in abusive marriages. It chapped my hide too, as I'm another feminist who ended up in a situation. Until you've been there, you may not realize how your strength and your determination and your goodwill can be used against you].

Dittany, could you expand a little on that please?

Yes, we have kind of been talking about our cognitive dissonance.

But maybe without being aware of your own cognitive dissonance, there's no chance of breaking out of or changing the situation? You can't diagnose a disease without first recognising and acknowledging the symptoms - so you need to recognise the cognitive dissonance and work back from that.

But I agree about the lucky thing, dittany, because society has set us up to assume that men don't have to do anything and therefore if they do even a small bit for us then we have it easier than most and should be grateful. I think I said somewhere in the thread that I try not to say of my DH that I am lucky to have him, because he does his fair share, sometimes more, because I know that he shouldn't be praised for doing only as much as I do. But then I do know in the context of many other people in the world that I am lucky to have him IYSWIM as my life could be a whole lot worse. So there are definitely bigger societal expectations at play here, but women can only begin to break free from them and question them if they learn to recognise when it is happening to them

I agree with AnyFucker. I think that Sunny was dealt with a bit harshly, told to find another thread ans stop posting about her great life. I think it has been a very interesting thread, and a lot of that is due to Sunny's input. Sunny has a different view on things. I think Sunny and Malificence give us a direct down-to-earth working class view, rather than a middle class view that many of us see things by. I think Sunny has got life sussed. Sunny has done other jobs, but now she is happy and has found a job that she loves, which is why she doesn't consider it work, she thinks it is pleasure. She doesn't care what the Man (i.e. the Big Boss) thinks about her job and what status He regards the job as having. She loves the job for herself, she is uninterested in whether the Man looks down on the job or not. She is not interested in doing jobs that teh man thinks have more status and for which the Man will pay a higher salary, because she is not buying into the Man's game.

Sakura often says that SAHMs are undervalued and she is right. Their work is undervalued by the Man, because the Man can't earn any money out of it. The Man doesn't care what we feed our kids, or how we clean our house, because he can't earn a penny out of us doing that. The Man wants us to be wage slaves and work for the Man, that's what the Man values and gives status too. The highest status jobs are the ones that the man can earn most money from. Sunny isn't playing the game. She has found happiness by telling the man where to stick it. She does a job that she loves, whatever the Man thinks. Her DH is the same, he only works for the Man in order to feed the children.

Are we falling into the trap of playing the Man's game and only valuing what He values and undervaluing what life is really all about? i.e. happiness, love, friendship and family. There are loads of high-fliers and go-getters who work for the Man, but most of them are probably unhappier than Sunny.

But cognitive dissonance (fingers tiiiired typing that) matters because it shows why just raising women's consciousness about the patriarchy isn't enough to solve the problem. It's possible to have an understand the unfairness objectively and not apply it subjectively.

thanks claig

I guess in a nutshell what I was trying to say (badly) is that seeing someone off the thread by frightening them away, using superior skills in verbal jousting, isn't going to change any hearts and minds, is it ?

Sunny (or all the equivalent sunnys who don't dare post) has gone off now, thinking she doesn't deserve a voice on this thread and she does

I am a confident poster, but these threads are scary

I don't think it is a coincidence that the number of different posters on these threads is actually quite small, for such an active topic

As I understood it, the point is that the feminism threads are supposed to be inclusive

I had resolved to lurk, honestly

I will shut up now, as I am derailing

AF - you do have a point. I too am generally a lurker here. This is the first time I have posted on a feminism thread because it has at face value seemed a little cliquey and I have felt a bit threatened about jumping in because I'm much newer to thinking through the issues and feel quite naive compared to other posters and worry about being hounded off by cleverer or 'more feminist' people than me. I think part of the reason why it can seem like a small group of people navel-gazing is that these threads get you thinking and can very quickly get to quite a deep level of debate where you have to have been following and pondering from early on before diving in (unlike, say, AIBU threads) so the number of posters can end up quite small and seem cliquey.

Sunny has every right to post on here of course, and I don't want to see people being forced out, but personally I stepped out of the debate for a good while because it felt like the thread was becoming something that wasn't worth me partaking in, largely because it kept being focussed down on the minutiae of people's lives rather than the broader questions - not just driven by Sunny, but definitely influenced by her responses. It seems to have moved away from that a little again which I'm grateful for.

But I probably shall still be largely a lurker on the feminism threads - naturally not overly-confident poster, not feeling able to articulate as well as others, fastmoving nature of threads, fairly deep thoughtful nature of the threads too. So nobody will know that I am learning from these threads, more so than many other parts of MN where I do post, and it will seem cliquey or unimportant. I bet there are way more lurkers in this area than in most others and many of them are learning from these threads without us ever knowing. So the number of posters does not necessarily represent the value of the threads to the MN community.

The OP said

"The stress caused by the gap between my own personal beliefs and the reality of my situation was causing an uncomfortable feeling, often described as cognitive dissonance."

Her cognitive dissonance was created by an arsehole of a partner. But I think that Sunny has illustrated something else. Is cognitive dissonance created in part by the gap between our beliefs (which will have been formed and influenced by the capitalist, patriarchal system) and reality? Has the capitalist Man tricked us and got us to subconsciously buy into His system and share His values about what is important? Has the trick made us unhappy, since it does not deal with reality? Is there a better way? is there another way which would suit us more? Has Sunny highlighted this, has she found it and has she banished that type of cognitive dissonance?

AnyFucker wrote - "the point is that the feminism threads are supposed to be inclusive."

I think that depends on what it is posters are trying to include. I think the point of the feminism threads is feminism.

(I'm making a general point about the entire Mumsnet feminism section. I'm not referring to the treatment or departure of Sunny2010 from this thread)

Men have a sense of entitlement, but that is declining due to feminism, and many young men do now participate in housework. As time goes on, more and more will participate. Society is changing. I think that men have been benefitted from marriage, more than women, but I don't think this is why marriage came about. I think marriage came about for society's sake. I think there is a deliberate move to undermine marriage and to impact society negatively. I think we may soon see a time when men do increasingly abandon marriage, where they father multiple children by different women and then abandon the mothers. That will be ultimate freedom for men, free to father children without bearing any of the responsibilities of bringing them up. This will eventually lead to the breakdown of society, since men will feel no partnership and have no stake in society. It won't have good consequences for women. Marriage is a compromise and a partnership that suits both parties. A total breakdown in marriage will harm society in the long run.

ok, so patriarchy v feminism is a cause of cognitive dissonance amongst certain/many women. (i think that's what dittany is saying).

but i also think that there are men who feel it as well, and for the same reasons. there are, obviously some men who just love little wifey staying home & cooking dinner, but there are also men who genuinely believe in equality, who respect and love their wives, and, perhaps, are not happy with seeing women do all the boring work. BUT the way that our society is structured makes it hard for families to organise themselves any other way.

(btw, further up thread, people seemed to think dh controlled the finances, not true - he doesn't check. it's my own sense of independence that makes me reluctant to spend. and, i try to organise my time so that i do approximately the same hours of work as he does, but i am flexible about when i do them. i include his contributions to the household in that)

kickassangel wrote - "the way that our society is structured makes it hard for families to organise themselves any other way."

What do you think are the biggest obstacles that prevent individual families organizing themselves differently?

Sunny wasn?t told to go and find another thread. She chose to withdraw because she didn?t like Sakura?s arguments. IMO she wasn?t contributing to this thread anyway. Endless lists of what chores you are doing, isn?t helping to analyse the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance.

And Sunny's view isn't working class, any more than mine is. I?m not middle class. My mother is a semi literate immigrant (my father was a literate one) and my income is below the poverty line. It is not middle class to be interested in cognitive dissonance.

I think Sakura's point about comparing your marriage to that of your husband, rather than that of other women, is absolutely crucial. Women nearly always compare the men they are with, to other men and thus talk themselves into the idea that it's OK really that their men are getting more out of marriage than they are. But if they habitually compared their lives to that of their men, without the expectation that men should naturally have better lives than them, women would very soon become extremely dissatisfied.

The way that I read Sunny's posts is that she thinks she has a better life than her DH and her DH agrees.

"but unless you have any actual advice to offer (other than My life is great because I'm so clever and special I made all the right choices) maybe you'd like to find another discussion now?"

that's what Sunny was told, but it's all water under the bridge now.

ok, dittany, so if feminism is the cure - HOW does it cure it? it's a theory, but how do we restructure lives to avoid these situations? i know that there won't be a 'one size fits all' solution but so far we've come up with

a) marry a man who truly believes in equality & who truly loves you. well, we all know how hard that can be, even if the relationship starts like that (or with the illusion of that)

b) marry a man to have children with, then divorce once the kids are older. which to me, doesn't seem like much of a solution, more another part of the problem.

I am middle class, but I like to hear all views. I think Malificence And Sunny had interesting views that come from a different perspective to mine, which is why they are so interesting to hear.

I think Malificence is right when she said
"Mumsnet is very guilty of thinking that everyone on here is middle/upper class - I'm very much working class, even though DH is now a senior manager, he values all his staff, from the cleaners up and treats everyone exactly the same, in the way he likes to be treated himself."