Hello and welcome to this, the Nice-ish Ramblings Podcast, with me the Nice-ish Psychologist. Today I am going to be talking about the psychological principle of cognitive dissonance and how this applies to the men of the world who say “Not all Men”.
Before I get stuck into that, if you’ve found this podcast through Instagram, then you probably know who I am. But – if by some chance this podcast of mine has become an overnight sensation (which let’s face it, it probably hasn’t) then it makes sense to introduce myself. (If you already know who I am and don’t give a shit, you can skip ahead to the good stuff further along! I won’t be offended!)
The Nice-ish Psychologist is obviously not my name, and whether you want to believe it or not, I am actually a Clinical and Forensic Psychologist registered with the HCPC. In my day job I work in prison and in secure mental health care; and because of that it’s recommended that I practice what’s called “online safety”. For that reason I keep who I am online pretty enigmatic and mysterious. On Instagram I try and look at the world through the lenses afforded to me by my clinical and forensic training, and as part of that I have decided to do a podcast along similar lines.
I host this podcast on a website called Substack. The reason for this is because I can upload both audio and written content, which caters to those who prefer to either listen or to read things they want to learn about.
So, what we have here is a bit of a test of how this platform works. If you have followed me on Instagram before, you will know I briefly did a feature called “Voice Rambles”, where I basically did this, but in under 15 minutes, and have re-recorded one of the original “Voice Rambles” for this podcast (the one about cognitive dissonance, obviously).
Alongside the re-recording I have also transcribed this podcast for those who might want to want to read it on my Substack website instead. Some of you may have heard these musings about cognitive dissonance and men who say “not all men” before, and if you have I thank you for taking the time back then to listen to my bullshit, and I hope you don’t mind hearing it again. (Alternatively, you could just stop listening and go do something that’s not a waste of your time). But, if this is the first time you are hearing this I hope you find it interesting and I fucking hope I don’t bore you to tears.
Will this be funny? Probably not. Will it be entertaining? I guess that depends on what your definition of entertainment include. Will it be informative? I hope so, otherwise this has just been a fucking waste of your time and mine.
Before we get stuck in, though, I just need to make two caveats: everything I’m discussing here is merely hypothesis and a bit of a psychological formulation about something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time; based on the psychological principle of cognitive dissonance. I'm not diagnosing anyone. I’m not saying any of this is fact. It’s merely a stream of hypothetical consciousness about a subject that I’ve been wondering about for a while.
The second thing is that this podcast episode contains discussion of sexual violence against women. I don’t go into any great detail about any specific acts of sexual violence, but it is a topic of conversation that has the potential to be upsetting. So, if you aren’t in the best place to listen right now, look after yourself first and come back to this later. Equally, if this is not something you want to listen to at all, that makes perfect sense.
Cognitive dissonance and “not all men”. As I’ve said, the reason I’ve chosen to talk about this is because I’ve been curious about what makes some men say “not all men”. But I say some men because I recognise, as I’m sure many of you do, that it is in fact not all men who commit sexual offences or acts of sexual aggression towards women, and that there are actually men out there who are willing to do the work and to listen to women and to try and make society safer and reducing gendered violence against women. So, when I talk about men today, I’m specifically focusing on the men who basically respond to women’s experiences and fears of violence by saying “You can’t say that, it’s not all men”.
Now to my mind, I reckon there’s three kinds of “not all men” men.
The first kind are those whose interactions towards women on a day-to-day basis are probably so steeped in sexism and misogyny that they don’t actually know that anything that they’re doing is wrong; and it would never even register to them that they’re doing anything that would make women feel uncomfortable or threatened. It’s also quite likely that they are potentially the biggest perpetrators of everyday occurrences of sexual harassment and sexual assault.
The second kind of “not all men” men are probably those who have been respectful of women for all their life and have actually been quite aware of their behaviour and have strived to not make any women feel uncomfortable; and have wanted to treat women with dignity and respect. They may understandably be quite insulted by being - as what they see - as lumped with men who do commit acts of sexual aggression towards women. To which I say your sense of feeling insulted and the anger that may go with this is quite valid; but if you are angry about this then you should direct your anger towards the people who are dragging your sense of identity through the mud.
The third kind of “not all men” men that I want to talk about are the ones who may potentially be experiencing cognitive dissonance since the start of the #metoo movement; and pretty much anytime the headlines have news about a woman who has been murder or raped at the hands of a man. And then women have to then beg for their right to live in a world free from the threat of men and wanted to kill them or rape them. And so it’s these men that I'm going to be talking about specifically.
But before we get into that I thought I'd briefly talk about cognitive dissonance, which is a theory put forward by someone called Leon Festinger in 1957, and it relates to the idea that we can experience mental discomfort when we’re exposed to two conflicting pieces of information, beliefs, attitudes, and values. It usually happens when something we believe in is challenged by a new piece of information that contradicts how we’ve previously seen the world, or the way that we’ve previously acted. And this mental discomfort can usually make itself known through feelings of disgust, or shame, or guilt, anxiety and even anger. A quick example of this is smoking: so, when somebody who enjoys smoking has to then give up smoking for the health reasons - if they're diagnosed with cancer - or social reasons - like when the smoking ban came into pubs and clubs - this can cause dissonance. There’s a few different ways of resolving dissonance, but we'll get to that in a little bit.
“What the fuck does cognitive dissonance have to do with men who say, “Not all Men?” I hear you ask, and that is a valid question. I guess my theory - and again this is just my own theory, nothing more - my theory is that before the #metoo movement there were a lot of men who may have behaved towards women in a way that they were socialised to behave. So, typified as “laddish behaviour”, and I think you know what I mean when I say, “laddish behaviour”. And I think they acted this way because they didn’t think there was anything wrong with it because, why would they? Everyone else around them was behaving in this way and in fact they were probably encouraged by their friends, family, other male role models; and popularised and normalised in the media through, TV, film and music.
However, I guess over the last few years there has been a far greater understanding of what constitutes sexual assault and sexual harassment and harassment in general. I would argue that probably rape has been somewhat more understood and defined, but even the act of rape has been muddied by the pervasiveness of rape myths and the continued uncertainty around what constitutes clear and unambiguous consent. But I think before the #metoo movement sexual assault and sexual harassment were perhaps thought to be something that only sexual perverts or predators would do, and these acts were probably being committed by people who would also rape women.
But it’s fast, becoming more common knowledge that behaviours, even everyday behaviours such as wolf-whistling and catcalling, can fall under the categories of sexual assault and harassment. And I think it’s with this greater understanding of what now constitutes sexual harassment and assault that a lot of men who would never have considered themselves to be that type of person, to commit those type of acts, are now potentially having a mirror held up to their past behaviours and discovering that actually, maybe, once or twice or maybe quite frequently in the past, they may have acted in ways that made women feel uncomfortable or intimidated or even threatened. And it’s possible that they've actually sexually assaulted or have been quite consistent in sexually harassing women.
And this is where the dissonance comes in. Men who have previously seen themselves as normal men, doing normal things, have in fact potentially been committing lesser acts of sexual violence. I say lesser acts because I'm referring to the fact that sexual violence occurs on a continuum of severity. At the extreme end you have acts like rape, while maybe at the lower, less severe end you would have something like cat calling or wolf whistling. I'm not trying to diminish the impact of any of these lesser acts and how they make women feel; what I am saying is that the large majority of men are probably responsible for perpetrating acts on the lower of the sexual aggression spectrum.
But this kind of revelation can probably mess with how somebody sees themselves and potentially how they think others see them. And I wonder if it’s maybe how these men think other people see them which is the main issue here. And therefore, understandably, this brings with it a lot of guilt, shame, disgust and anger. And anger is where it gets interesting and where this potentially fits in with the “not all men” men who experience cognitive dissonance.
It’s my personal view that I think a lot of “not all men” men who experience cognitive dissonance feel angry. And I think they’re probably angry at women; that’s where they’re directing their anger at. This is likely because they almost see women as having pulled back this veil on their previous behaviours and are saying, “The way that you’ve acted in the past isn’t actually cool and we’re not happy with what you’ve been doing”. And that’s a nice way of saying it; I’m sure there’s a lot of women who have said it and would sat it a lot more directly and bluntly than that.
But whilst no woman is definitively saying that all these men are perverts and sexual predators, that’s possibly how they see themselves now: lumped in with the Weinsteins of the world. What they need to then do is to find a way in which to resolve the dissonance this new view of themselves has caused and achieve cognitive consistency; which is where how you see yourself and what you believe in is actually in line with how you actually act.
So, there’s three ways in which to alleviate the mental discomfort caused by cognitive dissonance. The first is by acquiring newer information that disputes the information that has caused the dissonance. So, one of the ways that I've noticed this happening is when “not all men” men will go to great lengths – great lengths – to dispute verified statistics that exist about violence and sexual violence against women. I had one guy who in the comments section of a post I made, where I put that one in five women in America reported either a complete or attempted rape, he told me that he knew approximately 20 women and not one of them had been raped. This just goes to show that he didn’t necessarily understand how to apply statistical data to the real world. But anyway, that's one of the ways that “not all men” men do it. Another way in which they would do this is by derailing the conversation, for example by saying “actually men are sexually assaulted too, so why are you just talking about sexual violence towards women?” And I guess that this is possibly one of the ways in which “not all men” men will reduce their cognitive dissonance by going “no, your facts aren’t right because this is how I see the world and it make me feel better about anything that I may have done in the past to possibly contribute towards this huge rate of sexual violence against women”.
The second way to balance out cognitive dissonance is by reducing the importance of the new dissonant information; and this is quite literally the embodiment of the statement of “not all men”. The phrase is designed to invalidate the fear that women have when they talk about being wary or fearful of men. “Not all men” is potentially a statement to make men feel better about their own transgressions; and if they can say that not all men are rapists and not all men are sexual assaulters and harassers then it’s possible that they can then count themselves in those numbers and thereby not have to face up to what they did, or just to pretend to the outside world that they didn’t do any of that, and they’ve never done anything to make a woman feel uncomfortable or intimidated or threatened.
Now, the third way of dealing with cognitive dissonance – and I would argue that this is potentially, around this particular issue – the one to go for is to change one’s behaviour or attitudes to align with the new information that’s created the dissonance. In simple terms, this is to just listen to when women are telling us makes them feel scared or uncomfortable and just simply stop doing that. Now it’s entirely possible that “not all men” men would have already stopped doing their behaviour and recognised that what they have been doing would be classed as harassment and assault, but are still out there saying “not all men” to try and displace the previously mentioned feelings of anger and guilt.
But taking the behavioural and attitudinal change one step further would entail that these cognitively dissonant men acknowledge that what they’ve done in the past was not ideal; to accept that actually, yes, they’ve made mistakes in the past and to understand that how they were acting was based on the information that they had at the time. But then acknowledging it, accepting it, and then moving forward to make changes and reparations. And reparations can come in so many forms: the Internet and social media is full of resources about how men can be better allies towards women and promote gender equality, so I'm not going bang on about that too much.
And I know I’ve made that sound really easy – to just acknowledge and to accept that one may have done some bad things in the past; I know that those things pose their own difficulties – but I guess coming to terms with what you have and then choosing to move forward in a different direction and act in a different way is surely much better than just continuing to shout “not all men”. And by doing so invalidating the lived experience of women who have experienced constant sexual violence and sexual aggression in numerous forms and varying degrees.
So, there you have it. That's my two pence worth on cognitive dissonance and why some men who, in discussions about women’s experiences of sexual violence and violence at the hands of men, will declare that it’s “not all men”. In summary, I think there are possibly three kinds of these men. Firstly, there’s the kinds of men whose views on women are so deeply entrenched in sexism they would be oblivious to anything that was even remotely inappropriate in their interactions with women. Secondly, there’s the kind of men who genuinely respect women and who have never done anything to make a women uncomfortable, but take umbrage at being lumped together with men who do commit acts of violence, sexual or otherwise. And finally, there are the men who, now that the understanding of what constitutes sexual violence and assault and harassment has broadened, try to ease any guilt they might have over past behaviour using strategies to balance their cognitive dissonance.
Well done for getting to the end. Unfortunately, there’s no prize other than my gratitude and to say thanks for listening. Hopefully you found it interesting and hopefully you’d want to share this with your friends, your family, and potentially other men who you think might benefit from listening to this podcast. And if you are a man, this wasn’t intended as a telling off; they were just some thoughts I had that might be helpful to think about and to share.
I would also say that as a man acting on previous information is understandable and I guess permissible in some way; and some of the things that you’ve done in the past might not be ideal, and that’s not great, either. But holding on to the guilt or defending against is, and not doing anything about it doesn’t actually do anything for anyone. If you are presented with new information and you are told that the way in which you acted was harmful, but you choose to do nothing about that, or you choose to carry on acting in the same way you previously have, then that actually makes you part of the problem.
Equally, if in your view you have never acted towards a women in a way that could have left her feeling uncomfortable but you choose to do nothing at all about any of this, if you choose to sit back and declare this has nothing to do with you, that also kind of makes you part of the problem. Because silence and doing nothing about a shitty situation is as bad as creating the shitty situation in the first instance.
So anyway, hopefully this has given you and others something to think about. As I said earlier, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this, and on the podcast in general. It was my first go at doing this, and it’s highly possible the production value is slightly lacking compared to other podcasts you have listened to; but as someone said earlier this week “you gotta start messy”. So, it’s possible this can only get better (maybe!). If you want to get in touch you can mainly find me on Instagram @the_nice_ish_psychologist, on Twitter @TheNiceishPsych, or you can even email me if you’re really fucking keen at theniceishpsych@gmail.com. I think that’s all from me for now. First podcast episode, completed it, mate.
Podcast music: “Background Uplifting & Upbeat Corporate (Long)”, “Ambient Corporate Music” and “Piano Moment” by ZakharValaha (https://pixabay.com/music/search/dance/)
1: Cognitive Dissonance and "Not all Men"