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.

Sakura,

Yes, I hire someone because otherwise I would have to do my own shitwork. Do you never employ anyone to do anything? Do you want to go back to barter?

larry your link to whichever interchangeable female author you are referring to doesn't work.

fair enough, larry, the judge is out on hiring a cleaning lady, but remember, your wife is probably picking up the slack without you realising, perhaps even withou realising herself. Please refer once more to the sliding scale:

1. Married men
2. Single women
3. Married women
4. Single men

Your marriage may be one of the exceptions

I find it staggering that men (admittedly only the odd one or two usually) do this. I cannot imagine wandering around the internet looking for groups of people talking about a subject with which I am not really in sympathy (tho I might say I am, not really knowing what it is), not really interested in, and gate crashing their conversation to tell them that a. they are wrong b. they are wasting their time c. they should consider themselves lucky compared to [random group of people like those in the olden days] d. there is no need for their topic of interest in the world.

Imagine barging in on a group of engineers who are discussing how to improve widget x and shouting "WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH A BETTER WIDGET X ANYWAY GENERATIONS OF PEOPLE LIVED AND DIED WITHOUT HAVING WIDGET X AT ALL MY GRANDMOTHER WOULD HAVE GIVEN HER RIGHT ARM FOR A WIDGET X EVEN IF WAS TWICE AS BIG AND HALF AS EFFICIENT AS THE ONE YOU ARE TRYING TO MAKE"

Larry I think you might mean 'The Golden Notebook' which is in some ways about cognitive dissonance as it happens.

Lessing didn't consider herself a feminist. Great writer though she was, Dworkin would have eaten her alive in a feminist debate.

Anyway, I'll let you get back to telling us what feminism is, how we have understood it all wrong and how patriarchy doesn't exist.

Beachcomber,

You don't want to "discuss" cognitive dissonance. My first and second posts on this discussion concerned exactly that. There was then a pleasant discussion going on between a few of us until the Uber Feminists decided that just would not do. What you want to do is congratulate yourself and your coterie for finding another way to undermine men and any women who actually believe that men are OK.

And, if you want to protect the feminist area, why not do it? Just get MN to set up a password and give it to whomever you choose. Fair enough.

PMSL @ vezzie's widget analogy.

I know I think that Vezzie. It's like they think "OMG there are people out there somewhere discussing patriarchy. Must. Stop. Them."
Never mind the fact if you type "Porn" into google you'll find enough women-hating to last you a lifetime.
I love this stunning quote by Elephants:

"It must be incredible for some of these people, imagining that everything you come up with is totally original and "controversial" and daring. Don't they ever read the paper? Or have conversations? Or listen to Jeremy Vine? Don't they ever just hear themselves talking and think "i've heard this before somewhere"?"

I do want to discuss cognitive dissonance. Which is why I keep bringing up the sliding scale of happiness in society

1. Married men (score best in all areas of well-being
2. Single women
3. Married women (more likely to be depressed)
4. Single men (most likely to commit suicide)

Now when we discuss "happy marriages" and cognitive dissonance, this sliding scale must be the starting point of a feminist discussion.

Thanks Beachcomber but I'm a bit miffed nobody liked my Dworkin/Lessing: Marie Curie/Esther Lauder analogy!

Larry you are making the common mistake made by people who haven't taken the time or applied the empathy required to get off the first base of understanding what feminism is.

The terms 'Patriarchy' and 'men' do not refer to the same thing and they are not interchangeable. just because you make this mistake do not assume that the rest of us do.

If you really want to have useful discussions in this section then you should read the feminism 101 website and take responsibility for your own education in this area. It is not my fault that you don't know what I am talking about.

Another reason feminist spaces exist is so that we don't spend half our time explaining what feminism is - this means we actually get to discuss the topic in hand.

Vezzie I PMSL at that too!

Oh well, that's alright then (not attention seeking at all)

i think it's interesting that bossofme acknowledges her assumptions on here about her dh's role.

i think we need to just accept that life requires a certain amount of drudgery, and just get on with that. the problem is, that so often it is the women who fit into the role. i'm not saying it's easy for the men - the worry about supporting an entire family should not be dismissed.

however, why do we persist with such gender-defined roles? i really don't think they help men or women. i can see that in the very early years it is more the woman's role to provide for children - society needs children, & we should respect the people who provide them without penalising them.

however, once children are school age, why is it so hard to get back into work? why is sorting out childcare so difficult? wouldn't it be great if women could just step back to where they used to be? so, they get the time they need to produce children and get them through the early years, then just decide, 'right, time to go back to equal partners' and the childcare is available, and the job is available. presumably, they would then split all houshold work & time with children on a 50/50 basis.

BUT society isn't structured like that. so individual families make compromises. because it's the women who have the babies & breastfeed, it's almost always the women who end up making all the compromises regarding their careers etc.

and not everyone in society can make enough money to have cleaners, childcare etc. society actually needs people to be 'at the bottom of the heap' in order to support those 'above' them (refuse collectors, childcare providers). that is a whole marxist argument waiting to happen. however, where feminism comes in, is in observing and challenging the fact that there are far more women in the 'lower' sections, and far more men in the 'upper' sections.

so, why do we allow this to continue?

i was adamant that i would never rely on a man, OR turn into his little wifey. i returned to work a few months after dd was born. but the practicalities of 2 careers & a child meant i have ended up as a sahm. i'm now trying to get a job, then i look at issues of childcare housework etc & my heart sinks - it is just so HARD to make it all work. perhaps it is just impractical to expect to adults to work ft & raise a family, but in that case, why is it women who stay home? once the children are old enough, why can't men & women just swap roles, according to what suits them best. but we KNOW that that doesn't often happen.

why are these patterns so deeply ingrained?

Beachcomber,

Sorry that is the link that did not work earlier:

"The novelist Doris Lessing yesterday claimed that men were the new silent victims in the sex war, "continually demeaned and insulted" by women without a whimper of protest.
Lessing, who became a feminist icon with the books The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook, said a "lazy and insidious" culture had taken hold within feminism that revelled in flailing men.

Young boys were being weighed down with guilt about the crimes of their sex, she told the Edinburgh book festival, while energy which could be used to get proper child care was being dissipated in the pointless humiliation of men.

"I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed," the 81-year-old Persian-born writer said yesterday.

"Great things have been achieved through feminism. We now have pretty much equality at least on the pay and opportunities front, though almost nothing has been done on child care, the real liberation.

"We have many wonderful, clever, powerful women everywhere, but what is happening to men? Why did this have to be at the cost of men?

"I was in a class of nine- and 10-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men.

"You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives."

Lessing said the teacher tried to "catch my eye, thinking I would approve of this rubbish".

She added: "This kind of thing is happening in schools all over the place and no one says a thing.

"It has become a kind of religion that you can't criticise because then you become a traitor to the great cause, which I am not.

"It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests.

"Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did."

Lessing claimed that much of the "great energy" whipped up by feminism had "been lost in hot air and fine words when we should have been concentrating on changing laws.

"We have got the pay but only real equality comes when child care is sorted out and it hasn't been yet, well not for those who really need it anyway".

Lessing also revealed she is not going to write a third volume of her autobiography because she did not want to offend so "many great and eminent people by reminding them of their silliness. I just can't be bothered, to be honest".

Leningrad.

Agreed. But you cannot ignore the rest of what she says...

Leningrad,

Not at all. Do you seriously think all boys are confident and can get on just because they want to?!

Hmm, Leningrad,

Not for the 1st 18 years they won't. The education system is fully under the matriarchy. Girls now outperform boys in 90% of subjects and levels, and not by a small margin. The obsession with males being paedophiles means there is just one male under 25 working in a state nursery school in the whole of England. Good for male role models for all our sons in the formative years.

Of course, that is irrelevant to equality.

larry, i think some of those points are relevant, and of course, there are many different attitudes within the broad 'feminist' spectrum. BUT in spite of the academic achievements of women, they still fall behind in the workplace within just a few years. it doesn't matter how many degrees i have if i'm not using them.

i think part of this discussion highlights just how dangerous it is to generalise & refer to stereotypes as part of serious debate, or in real life. not only does it upset people, but it also makes it hard to have a logical discussion about these issues.

Larry, Lessing has said repeatedly that she does not consider herself a feminist writer.

Have you read The Golden Notebook (the book by Lessing generally treated as her most feminist book)?

It is about the different compartments in a woman's life and how they are impossible to reconcile. The main character has a nervous breakdown.

Which brings us nicely back to cognitive dissonance and how it allows us to reconcile the unreconcilable without going mad or calling for the revolution.

That also makes it a tool which allows the status quo to remain unchallenged. This is why some men think it is dangerous to analyse it and some women think it is important to do just that.