Cognitive Dissonance in Prohibitionist Campaigning

I want to prove a point.

I believe that the greater bulk of prohibitionist campaigners actually know that what they are doing is wrong  and spend a lot of time desperately trying to justify their beliefs to themselves and others. Lets consider some key issues....

Groups such as Object have been engaged in what almost amounts to a ten year campaign to close every club in Britain. They know that this will lead to thousands of people losing their jobs as dancers, bar staff, cleaners and doormen. They know this but still they proceed with their campaign. But at some point, some of them started to feel uncomfortable with the idea of women making other women jobless, uncomfortable with the idea of women telling other women what to do. Let's face it,  isn't the key feminist battle with the 'patriachy' one for female freedom of choice? A freedom that Object wish to see removed.

At some point in the past prohibitionist campaigners started to consider that as they were essentially campaigning to reduce female choice and freedom then what was the difference between them as feminist campaigners and the patriarchy that they so despise.

Justifications had be sought, reasons for their actions that brought them back into the prohibitionist comfort zone. So let's introduce the concept of Cognitive Dissonance.

The phrase Cognitive Dissonance was coined by Leon Festinger in his 1957 book, 'When Prophecy Fails', which was about a UFO cult that fervently believed in an impending apocalypse a subsequent rescue of cult believers by space aliens. The apocalypse didn't happen at the predicted time and date and this was justified by the cult members not by admitting the entire premise was horse shit, but that God had decided to spare the Earth and as a result they should go forth and proselytise.

Festinger developed his cognitive dissonance theory on the basis of his observations of the cult members. The theory suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and beliefs in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance).

Festinger stated that a powerful motivation to maintain cognitive consistency can give rise to irrational and sometimes maladaptive behaviour. According to Festinger, we hold many cognitions about the world and ourselves; when they clash, a discrepancy is evoked, resulting in a state of tension known as cognitive dissonance. As the experience of dissonance is unpleasant, we are motivated to reduce or eliminate it, and achieve consonance (i.e. agreement). We do this by coming up with or accepting sometimes ludicrous justifications for what we believe and how we act.

Is this starting to ring some bells for you, especially in terms of recent prohibitionist campaigns?

As I said at the start of the article, prohibitionist campaigners know that one end result of their activities will be unemployed dancers. They know that they as women are campaigning for female freedom but at the same time, are campaigning for certain freedoms to be removed. This conflict creates a dissonance that must be reconciled. Lets look at some reconciliations that we have seen over the past year...

Dissonant Event: We are taking the right of the dancers to earn money in the manner that they see fit....

Reconciliation: We are in fact rescuing the dancers because they are so abused that they have gone crazy....

It is an increasingly common justification used by feminists that the dancers are so essentially so traumatised by their work that being made jobless is the only way to help them. If you think I am joking, take a look at the frame grab below....

If you read it again, you can almost see the cogs turning in the writers brain as they justify ignoring dancer opinions and any academic study that contradicts the standard feminist viewpoint.

Dissonant Event: We tried to rescue the dancers from their traumatic circumstances, but they protested against us in public.

Reconciliation: They protested because they were forced to. Therefore we must redouble our efforts to rescue them by closing down the club where they work.

The above frame grab taken from the Portsmouth on-line newspaper was a reaction to the protest held by dancers outside the Town Hall. The writer justifies their stance by stating that the dancers were coerced, which in this persons view is an industry norm. This therefore justifies the campaign to make the dancers redundant because the campaigners are actually doing them a favour by removing them from a life of coercion. We also see a half baked attempt to brush over the job loss issue by dismissing it on the grounds that maybe the dancers can get jobs in the other places that will open and better still, they will be paid more as well, so everything is good really.

Dissonant Event: The evidence produced to counter the prohibitionist campaigns is well thought out and contains statistics that we find hard to argue with.

Reconciliation: Its all a load of lies and they would say that anyway..

Wiggle made a detailed submission that contained statistics and analysis that demolished the campaign run by Object and the Solent Feminist Network. This was not appreciated by the campaigners, as we saw the other week...

Wiggles submission can be ignored apparently because 'it is full of lies'. Dr Brooke Magnatis demolition of the Lilith Report was based upon statistical analysis of publicly available figures on the incidences of sex attacks in boroughs in London that do and do not have clubs. It was not about opinion dressed as fact. Lilith is the cornerstone of prohibitionist campaigning and feminists were very upset to see it demolished. Some were so upset about the implications of Magnatis work that they just had to dismiss it...

We can see above how a thorough, rigorous analysis of the shortcomings of Lilith are dismissed by feminist campaigners on the basis that Magnati 'would say that sort of thing so can be ignored'.

Dissonant Event: The Licensing Committee considered the SEV applications of seven clubs and after due process, awarded the licences to all of them.

Reconciliation: We need the views to other experts that maybe agree with us and anyway it was all a conspiracy anyhow.

A previous article on this blog, discusses how Leeds councillor Rebecca Charlwood is leading an SEV Working Group that has Object lined up as an 'expert' on the industry. Read more about it here where you will see some Tweets that try an imply the existence of a councillor who is apparently highly knowledgeable about lap dancing clubs in Leeds.

I could go on, but the entire feminist campaign to close clubs is based upon cognitive reconciliations and is therefore intellectually suspect. In many respects the views and justifications for the prohibitionist campaigns is strongly reminiscent of the UFO cult that Festinger wrote about.....