is there a new cognitive dissonance thread?

[kickassangel]

if so, please link, i can't find it.

if not, i'd like to add some things

using personal experience to prove a point is not a great argument. we have to start with the bigger picture, then see personal experiences as a case study which exemplifies, but does not prove a point.

i'm not even sure that i view myself as a feminist. i view myself as someone who believes in equality (not just on male/female issues). the generalisations about feminism being a religion i find offensive, as they both ignore the patriarchal society we live in (and this assertion can be backed up by endless statistics & experiences), and assume that one particular viewpoint is religious.

is marxism a religion? what about other schools of thought?

feminism is a broad range of thought, and there will be changes and shifts within the arguments, just as there are in other sociological concepts. and there will be women who abuse, just as there are men who do so.

however, look at the structure of society, and it is impossible to say that it isn't patriarchal. just look at the possession of wealth, the media representation of people, the male/female ration in positions of power.

if it was as simple as some women 'not bothering' to push themselves forward, there would still be enough women to fill 50% of all key positions in society, and to hold 50% of the wealth, but that isn't what happens. so, it sin't due to a lack of women exerting themselves, it is due to the inherent sexism within society.

Oh yes Stayfrosty and instead of doing what we are trained to do from the moment we can talk and interact - to hedge around tactfully, to let someone down gently, to think more of other people's feelings than our own, to put other people's needs before our's, to be tactful, diplomatic, non-threatening, submissive, to smile when we are saying something we know our audience will find disagreeable so that we don't come across as aggressive bitches, women are suddenly supposed to throw off a lifetime of conditioning and clearly, unequivocally and assertively say "NO". Just like men would (allegedly. Though in research, even young men admit that they wouldn't just say "No" if they didn't want sex, they'd make excuses like being a bit tired, early start tomorrow etc. - in other words, even the sex which has been conditioned to state their needs unequivocally and be thought of as assertive, not aggressive, when it does so, also finds it almost impossible to come out with a bald NO when faced with a request for sex, but feels the need to hedge it around with social niceties).

And when in a horrible, awkward, embarrassing situation where we are really not expecting to be raped (because rapists are nasty criminals, not normal men who we've gone halves on rounds with), when we can't just suddenly throw off our conditioning and behave in the opposite way to how we have trained ourselves to behave all our lives because if we don't behave like that we're seen as unfeminine, aggressive bitches, we are then told that we must have consented to the sex we say we didn't want, because we didn't behave like the stroppy man-hating bitches we would be thought to be if we had conditioned ourselves to be able to come out with that big, unkind, unfeminine NO.

SF/HB - those posts are just brilliant.

I feel like printing it off to have it to hand next time my friend or colleague comes to me and says that they have been through this. :(

This line of defence/thought only makes sense in an inherently biased society, where men have a right to sex, and it's up to the woman to avoid sex (by running away/having a chaperone/being armed/kung fu kicking/locking herself in etc etc etc etc) if she doesn't want it. If sex is had, she must have wanted it. It used to be "common knowledge" that an unwilling woman literally couldn't be raped. That idea hasn't gone away at all, has it?

StayFrosty and HerBeatitude, you have described the contradiction between conditioning to be tactful and the necessity to be assertive so well. Thanks for the great posts.

It is this idea of women as the gatekeeper of sex, isn't it?

On the one hand, we are always supposed to actually want it passively unless we assertively/ aggressively say No we don't want it. But otoh an active yes, is not required - we don't have to actually show clearly and unambiguously that we want it, because the default position is that of course we want it unles....

So why do these confused people think we gatekeep sex, if we actually are in a constant state of arousal and wanting it really? Out of sheer bloody mindedness? ("I really fancy a shag, but I'm just going to pretend not to in order to wind you up. However, if you stick your cock in me, I'll want it and enjoy it".)

I mean, WTF sort of loonies are women supposed to be FGS?

E&M I was raised in a very religious family/community where young girls were told it was better to be killed than "lose their virtue" which is just completely insane when looked at rationally. The really heartbreaking part is that for every other possible interaction other than those aggressive menz (who just can't help it) coming after a young girls' virginity, girls just simply were not allowed to draw personal, enforceable boundaries around themselves. They were expected to say yes to every request from anyone UNLESS it was sexual.

I had to intentionally enter my own little Cognitive Dissonance Land and convince myself that I was actually a 'bitch' just to regain the ability to say no and do what I wanted instead of what I was told. The reality is actually quite different, but accepting the bitch title was in essence giving myself permission to 'disobey'

And my parents are shocked that I won't let my own daughter anywhere near their church

(doesn't help that their church actively opposed the Equal Rights [for women] Amendment. Not my mother as she was too young, but certainly my grandmother signed off on it, and has also left the chruch because of its sexism. I guess a late deconversion is better then none atall)

Well done for getting out, marenmj, and for keeping your daughter safe too (my mum's parents were sexist loonies in a different way and I never regret her keeping me away from my grandad - in fact I sometimes thank her :)).

What you're saying about saying yes to everything except sex. It all comes down to what, in some people's opinion, women are for:

A necessary evil that we need to keep (rather than just slaughtering at birth - not always anyway) in order to reproduce more men. And while they're alive, they might as well do all the jobs that men don't want to do.

Yes, I still have a problem saying no, being very very clear that I don't WANT to go for a coffee/ get the train/ stay for another drink/ have sex - I still have to remind myself that I have the right not to do xy or z and still be considered a nice person when I do. And I still have to remind myself that I don't need to feel incredibly guilty about disappointing a bloke for not wanting to go out with him again/ have sex with him etc. Because my self image isn't that of "bitch", I wish I'd thought to cultivate that when younger Maren.

It's not really (from a systemic/church view) about the role of women (although they are HUGE about the SAHM thing), it's more about unquestioning obedience to elders. The same thing is expected of men. So if one of the people higher up on the heirarchy says "oh, Sister So-and-So {they call the men 'Brother' and the women 'Sister'}, we really need 700 flyers for tomorrow evening!" then the way the power structure is, you would be disobeying a divine request from God to refuse, IYSWIM. It's just that in this church pretty much all the leaders are men, with a few token women leaders lower on the ladder. So the net effect is that young boys growing up can agree to requests with the knowledge that one day they get to be a leader, and the young women get the net effect of being unable to say no to men. Young boys and girls are interviewed about their 'worthiness' (sexual activity) twice per year by the head 'priest.' They can request to have their parents or a female leader there, but it still has to happen if they are to be fully accepted (it is SO hard to put this into 'normal' words that convey how emotionally loaded the terms are). So there's a lot of awkward interference by older men I guess is what I'm trying to say.

It's weird, I feel as though I escaped, and so does DH (he was raised in the same church - so we do have some things in common ), but it's not as though we ran away in the night. For me it was just that, as I became a more empowered person within myself, the less I could stand to be around the church and the true believers. I find, IME, the women who need a very structured life do very well within this church and the women who don't like so much structure go insane. Someday I will get the guts to ask them to take me off the membership rolls.

It's quite sad, my DH's BIL (his sister's husband) works in the prosecutor's office there. The community has a huge problem with meth and a lot of it is actually the housewives who ended up doing it in an effort to keep up with all the commitments that the society places on them. :(

They also have amongst the highest rate of prescribed anti-depressants, teen pregnancy, and teen suicide in the US, along with a really really depressing rate for date rapes (which is, IIRC, 14% higher than the US average - in part due to date rape stuff mentioned here, and in part due to this idea that if you had sex you better well have been raped or you're going to hell for it, so I do believe that there's a certain amount of false reporting going on in the name of self-preservation) :(

How's that for cognitive dissonance :(

btw, I realized that my post might not really reflect why women would choose to stay in this church, and I know a lot of intelligent, self-described feminists who do (my MIL is one, but she lives permanently in C.D.-Land, despite being a neuropsychologist).

One reason is that they are unusually supportive of the mother/SAHM role. So women who really want that for themselves feel much more supported in this church than in wider society. I was thinking about the heirarchy of happiness and couldn't realize why it didn't sit right with me until I wrote that post - in this church the single men rate higher than the single women and there's a category added for married-but-childless-women. So it goes something like:
1 - married men (w/ or w/out children)
2 - married women w/children
3 - single men
4 - married women w/out children
5 - single women

Breastfeeding is the norm and there's a significant support structure in place, particularly for young mothers to provide childcare and things like activities outside of the home and lectures w/guest speakers and the like - and the fathers are expected as their duty to sort the kids while mom goes off to these events. To be totally honest, now that I have DC I am so tempted to go back and pay lip service just to get in on that (and I know my SIL does), but I can't bring myself to do it.

One of the tenets is that you can't get into the highest rung of heaven unless you are married. Kind of a yin and yang thing - neither the men nor the women can get full glory without the other. There isn't really any room in there for people who don't want to be a wife and mother or husband and father.

IME, so much about it is an unhealthy and opressive environment for both men and women.

Sheesh marenmj, that's quite the set of beliefs. It sounds like New England c. 1700.

Do you still live near your families etc? Or did you have to put some distance in?

.

Thank you for those posts on rape, they are really helpful to me. I still find it hard to say no but have never really thought about why. When someone I knew hurt me I had no concept that people you knew COULD do something like that so reacting in the "right" way did not occur to me. I was much more concerned about trying to get out of a situation without causing a scene or annoying him. I have often questioned why I was so passive and felt so powerless but I had never been taught to be anything else. Then I went back to him because that felt like the "right" thing to do and I had no language for what had happened or how I was feeling and had nine months of hell. I was so sure if it turned into some great romance that everything would be alright.

I always remember the moment I heard the statistic about 2/3 women being raped by someone they know. It was like being given an electric shock.

Glad those posts helped chocolate, I can't take credit for them, i remember a lightbulb moment when reading them on a blog (can't remember which one). So many women spend years blaming themselves for being raped, because they didn't throw off the years of conditioning and come straight out with a big bald NO. And then rationalise it as "it wasn't rape because I didn't say NO". And then they live with the congnitive dissonance of "but ... but... but... he must have known I didn't want it..." and they think about the fact that they were pushing him away, trying to hold on to their dress, their knickers, their tights, pulling away from him, trying to take his hand off their body, trying to extract themselves from his grasp, struggling - but then they remembered that they were giggling at the same time so as to keep it light and not offend him and make him do something they didn't want him to do (which didn't work because he did it anyway) and they feel guilty and blame themselves for being weak and flirty and stupid and all the things which normally we get approval for and in this one instance proves that we are just stupid slags who don't know our own minds.

We all need to know that SAYING NO is NOT something a woman needs to do in order not to be raped. Particularly men. We need to teach our boys that a girl not saying no, isn't the same as a girl wanting sex, because girls are taught never to say no straight out like that. In fact, thnking about it now, I think that slogan "No means No" is probably worse than useless, becuase it re-emphasises the excuse men always give, taht because women didn't act as if they'd been conditioned like men at the vital moment, she must have wanted the sex.

People always express uneasiness that their sons will be accused of rape if the onus is shifted from men to not rape women, rather than where it is currently, on women not to go and get themselves raped, the foolish things. I have no uneasiness whatsoever - I am going to make sure my DS knows absolutely, that girls are conditioned never to say no, so he'd better make sure she makes it crystal clear, verbally or otherwise, that she is saying YES. No means no won't cut it.

Great posts.

This brings us round to the idea of women being in a perpetual state of consent as the default position. Dittany analyses this well and has written some great posts on it.

We really need to change the law and cultural perceptions around rape. We need to shift things so that a women is considered to be always in a state of nonconsent and that only a clear yes on her part (uncoerced) alters her state of nonconsent.

Really when you think about it is is ridiculous that a women should have to clearly say no. The emphasis needs to be for the women to clearly say yes.

All this 'yeah but she was wearing a short skirt, made eye contact with me and didn't struggle when I shoved my penis in her' stuff is just outrageous and unacceptable in a decent society.

I also think juries (and judges ) need educated in rape myths before a case is heard. They also need to be told that false rape accusations are actually no more common than any other false accusation. We really need juries to start out with the mindset that it is much much more likely the accused is lying.

We also need a better education for the police force and a nationwide campaign on rape myths/rape culture. Oh and I think we need to shut down MTV .

The idea that you would just make eye contact, not speak and before you know it are getting your cock out...it's where "romance" and "porn" (two male-created ideals) meet. Funny how it's always men who object to the "yes means yes" idea as it would indicate that "romance is dead".

I can't stand the notion that women are the gatekeepers for sex because it immediately puts us in the "passive". As though our actions are only ever a reaction to men, in one way or another.

If we're the gatekeepers, it's of gates that are constantly unlocked, and we don't have the key even when we want to lock them.

I know, but the entire "gatekeeper" notion is fucked up. It's true, that biologically, women are more choosy than men, because we're the ones getting pregnant, so you don't want any old so and so to stick it in you. Whereas men are less choosy and probably more desperate, on the whole.
But even so any normal man would take for granted that the woman he's having sex wtih desires him as much as he does her, enjoys his company, has urges of her own.
I hate the idea that women must be "tricked" into sleeping with men, or persuaded with a meal, or bought

Every shag a wanted shag, basically.

well, quite, Elephants. WHy have they, the menz, fashioned a culture and sex industry, where the majority of shags are not wanted, but are coerced. They've designed it like that. In rainforest tribes, I reckon almost every shag is a wanted shag. I think the natural order is ESAWS
Greer slept with a tribal man, she said it was mind-blowing, that he was very sensitive towards her needs! WHy does our current culture insist that women don't really like sex, and must be coerced in some way. It's still Victorian isn't it

:o at Sakura daydreaming of rainforest loving.

I think the natural order is ESAWS too (please let this become a common acronym!), and in an egalitarian society if men broke that boundary and did commit rape, he would be ostracised or exiled. It's almost certainly true IMO that there will always be a few bastards out there who will ignore other people's rights. What makes the current situation so very upsetting/rage-inducing is that the wider culture rushes to their support.

Remember when Johnny Vegas assaulted that woman on stage in full view of everyone? And it was her, apparently, who couldn't take a joke.