The Concept Creep of Emotional Labor
November 26, 2018 5:50 PM Subscribe
"The umbrella of emotional labor has grown so large that it’s starting to cover things that make no sense at all, such as regular household chores which are not emotional so much as they are labor, full stop. "
Julie Beck interviews Sociologist Arlie Hochschild who coined the term "emotional labor:" "Emotional labor, as [Hochschild] conceived it, referred to the work of managing one’s own emotions that was required by certain professions. Flight attendants, who are expected to smile and be friendly even in stressful situations, are the canonical example. "
"One of the biggest shifts is that much of the conversation about emotional labor has left its original sphere of the workplace and moved to the home. It’s been used to refer to everything from keeping mental to-do lists to writing Christmas cards to remembering to call your in-laws on their birthdays, and to express indignation that most of these things, most of the time, are done by women, without men realizing it. There’s no doubt that the unpaid, expected, and unacknowledged work of keeping households and relationships running smoothly falls disproportionately on women. But that doesn’t make it emotional labor. Organizing to-do lists and planning family Christmases are just labor."
Previously, an influential thread on "emotional labor", or maybe just labor.
"One of the biggest shifts is that much of the conversation about emotional labor has left its original sphere of the workplace and moved to the home. It’s been used to refer to everything from keeping mental to-do lists to writing Christmas cards to remembering to call your in-laws on their birthdays, and to express indignation that most of these things, most of the time, are done by women, without men realizing it. There’s no doubt that the unpaid, expected, and unacknowledged work of keeping households and relationships running smoothly falls disproportionately on women. But that doesn’t make it emotional labor. Organizing to-do lists and planning family Christmases are just labor."
Previously, an influential thread on "emotional labor", or maybe just labor.
I have been grinding this axe periodically; I call this "semantic dilution" (for now, I feel like there must be a better term): a specific, very useful term is appropriated to more and more diffuse usages, mostly because it's fun to say and makes you feel smart. "Gaslighting" is another example; it's more and more being used simply as a fancy synonym for "lying", whereas it originally meant a systematic campaign to make the victim doubt their sanity. That is of course not unrelated to lying, but it is a more limited and much more specific idea.
posted by thelonius at 6:00 PM on November 26, 2018 [114 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 6:00 PM on November 26, 2018 [114 favorites]
If I get Hochshchild's distinctions right, there's labor, managerial or otherwise; and emotional labor, the worker manipulating their emotions to fulfill the job; and alienation, which can apply to either.
Is emotional labor always alienated? Because, e.g., lots of child-rearing requires the parents displaying, or modeling, or at least plausibly faking an emotion.
posted by clew at 6:02 PM on November 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
Is emotional labor always alienated? Because, e.g., lots of child-rearing requires the parents displaying, or modeling, or at least plausibly faking an emotion.
posted by clew at 6:02 PM on November 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
There have been a lot of words recently that have had a very specific (and useful) meaning that have been expanded and used without full understanding of the original meaning. The ones I notice are all part of the discourse of the left: "mansplaining", "gaslighting", "cultural appropriation", "trigger", and now "emotional labor". I don't know if that's because the left is better at popularizing new terms or some other reason.
posted by demiurge at 6:05 PM on November 26, 2018 [16 favorites]
posted by demiurge at 6:05 PM on November 26, 2018 [16 favorites]
As a counter to Hochschild, I think a lot of domestic chores really are emotional labor in her sense because the homemaker-peacekeeper is expected to convince everyone that she enjoys it all so much that it's not labor (and no-one needs to help, or feel grateful in any practical way). I also know families with a seeming belief that there must be a Way to Do Things that makes everyone happy -- they don't have an image of compromise, or trading sucking it up, or duty. When this doesn't occur, someone has to fake being happy; which is a better outcome than it being Someone's Fault.
posted by clew at 6:06 PM on November 26, 2018 [53 favorites]
posted by clew at 6:06 PM on November 26, 2018 [53 favorites]
(on reflection, he's complaining that the Mefi usage of "emotional labor" is such a dilution, which I'm not sure I agree with - it denotes something that I have not seen any other useful name for)
posted by thelonius at 6:07 PM on November 26, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 6:07 PM on November 26, 2018 [6 favorites]
Agreed with others that while this term did have a history in academia, that it has been popularly co-opted. Maybe everyone should just be okay with that.
posted by k8t at 6:09 PM on November 26, 2018 [23 favorites]
posted by k8t at 6:09 PM on November 26, 2018 [23 favorites]
(on reflection, he's complaining that the Mefi usage of "emotional labor" is such a dilution, which I'm not sure I agree with - it denotes something that I have not seen any other useful name for)
I don't think the lack of a useful alternative has any bearing on whether the term has been expanded. There's no doubt at all that it's been expanded. If you've read The Managed Heart and you've read any of the Mefi usage you can see that there is very little overlap in the meanings. I mean maybe that's ok, but there's no doubting it's happened.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:11 PM on November 26, 2018 [9 favorites]
I don't think the lack of a useful alternative has any bearing on whether the term has been expanded. There's no doubt at all that it's been expanded. If you've read The Managed Heart and you've read any of the Mefi usage you can see that there is very little overlap in the meanings. I mean maybe that's ok, but there's no doubting it's happened.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:11 PM on November 26, 2018 [9 favorites]
Diluting terms is a problem when they get diluted from something that is, avoidably, done by a predictable group to a predictable group, and diluting it into part of the existential condition that everyone suffers. (This is obvious when one is the toad and less obvious when one is the butterfly.)
posted by clew at 6:13 PM on November 26, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by clew at 6:13 PM on November 26, 2018 [3 favorites]
"...Organizing to-do lists and planning family Christmases are just labor."
I thought the concept was that this is specifically labor related to managing relationships, and that men are often fine with just letting it slide, so that if women don't do it it doesn't get done, and, even though no one is explicitly demanding that they do it, they feel obligated to make sure it is done and anxious that they will be blamed for it not being done right. That's a bit more involved than "just labor".
posted by thelonius at 6:14 PM on November 26, 2018 [103 favorites]
I thought the concept was that this is specifically labor related to managing relationships, and that men are often fine with just letting it slide, so that if women don't do it it doesn't get done, and, even though no one is explicitly demanding that they do it, they feel obligated to make sure it is done and anxious that they will be blamed for it not being done right. That's a bit more involved than "just labor".
posted by thelonius at 6:14 PM on November 26, 2018 [103 favorites]
"Gaslighting" is another example; it's more and more being used simply as a fancy synonym for "lying",
I had this one used against me, on this site, because I said they had misinterpreted my comment - which was about sexism, by the way. I was so angry at the misappropriation of the term that I had to close the thread and have a hot cocoa. People are using it the way Trump uses "fake news."
I think it's become even more diluted than even that, though: Gaslighting is when a person says something that doesn't agree with how you perceive events. I don't even think lying has to be part of it. Sometimes it's an accusation of lying, but sometimes it's just "I disagree with you."
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:18 PM on November 26, 2018 [14 favorites]
I had this one used against me, on this site, because I said they had misinterpreted my comment - which was about sexism, by the way. I was so angry at the misappropriation of the term that I had to close the thread and have a hot cocoa. People are using it the way Trump uses "fake news."
I think it's become even more diluted than even that, though: Gaslighting is when a person says something that doesn't agree with how you perceive events. I don't even think lying has to be part of it. Sometimes it's an accusation of lying, but sometimes it's just "I disagree with you."
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:18 PM on November 26, 2018 [14 favorites]
Organizing to-do lists and planning family Christmases are just labor.
It would be the giving a shit on everyone else's account that would be the emotional labor. It that hard to see? Bothering to plan a nice family Christmas so everyone else can have a nice time and have nice childhood memories, when doing all the work makes things less nice for you, instead of, say, playing video games for another 8 hours after sleeping in late.
I do see elements being responsible of this type of household labor referred to as "mental load" on reddit.
posted by Squeak Attack at 6:19 PM on November 26, 2018 [57 favorites]
It would be the giving a shit on everyone else's account that would be the emotional labor. It that hard to see? Bothering to plan a nice family Christmas so everyone else can have a nice time and have nice childhood memories, when doing all the work makes things less nice for you, instead of, say, playing video games for another 8 hours after sleeping in late.
I do see elements being responsible of this type of household labor referred to as "mental load" on reddit.
posted by Squeak Attack at 6:19 PM on November 26, 2018 [57 favorites]
Let's not talk about the term gaslighting - it's a big derail.
posted by Squeak Attack at 6:19 PM on November 26, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Squeak Attack at 6:19 PM on November 26, 2018 [3 favorites]
Let's not talk about the term gaslighting - it's a big derail.
yes, you are right - sorry I brought it up
posted by thelonius at 6:21 PM on November 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
yes, you are right - sorry I brought it up
posted by thelonius at 6:21 PM on November 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
Honestly, this inconsistency in usage made it really difficult for me to understand the term "emotional labor" when I first started seeing conversations about it.
I encountered Hochschild's meaning first (though divorced from any kind of academic context). And her meaning made sense to me, more or less.
But then I started seeing stuff about, like, sending holiday cards – and I thought "well, I guess I see how that could fall under 'emotional labor', but I didn't think that was quite what the term meant".
And then I started seeing housework described as "emotional labor", and I really started to second-guess my understanding of the term. Like, what is the common thread between these three senses of the phrase?
I get that semantic drift happens, especially when terms get adopted outside of their original context – but it can sure muddy the waters sometimes.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:23 PM on November 26, 2018 [20 favorites]
I encountered Hochschild's meaning first (though divorced from any kind of academic context). And her meaning made sense to me, more or less.
But then I started seeing stuff about, like, sending holiday cards – and I thought "well, I guess I see how that could fall under 'emotional labor', but I didn't think that was quite what the term meant".
And then I started seeing housework described as "emotional labor", and I really started to second-guess my understanding of the term. Like, what is the common thread between these three senses of the phrase?
I get that semantic drift happens, especially when terms get adopted outside of their original context – but it can sure muddy the waters sometimes.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:23 PM on November 26, 2018 [20 favorites]
I think that the precise boundary between "labor" and "emotional labor" is far too granular in everyday life for general definitions of the distinction to be of much use. I was talking with a friend a few days ago about whether, even if we here in the USA are able to delineate this boundary rigorously, this sort of distinction might not operate very differently in, say, Japan or France or Syria - different forms of labor may require a greater or lesser emotional component depending on cultural context. I guess what I'm trying to say is that what looks like "creep" to one person is just the natural consequence of more people thinking about the idea and applying it to their own lives. You have to ask yourself if the everyday "use value" of the term is more or less important than having a general (but rigid and perhaps for many people therefore irrelevant) general definition.
posted by AdamCSnider at 6:24 PM on November 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
posted by AdamCSnider at 6:24 PM on November 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
I kind of feel like there's some editorializing on the part of the writer here, which is really frustrating in an article that is ostensibly about defining terms. I very much wish she had taken a different approach to this, and inserted herself into the article less.
For example:
Many people who write about emotional labor do tip their hats to Hochschild, and acknowledge that they are expanding her original definition, but the umbrella of emotional labor has grown so large that it’s starting to cover things that make no sense at all, such as regular household chores, which are not emotional so much as they are labor, full stop.
Well then, I guess that brooks no argument, because she said it. She could have ended this sentence at "they are expanding her original definition," or perhaps "has grown so large that it's starting to cover things that call for more discussion" might have been a more polite way to end the sentence if she felt like that point really needed to be made.
And this takes a really frustrating turn:
Beck: It seems like this is mostly becoming a popular term in feminist conversations. But if we talk about all the unpaid labor women do in the home as “emotional labor,” we’re insinuating that any kind of labor that falls most often to a woman is “emotional.” It almost seems like we’re saying that women do the work and women are emotional, so that must be emotional work. Like chores are just labor. Writing Christmas cards is just labor. If we’re talking about the division of labor in the household, and we start calling chores “emotional labor”—
Hochschild: It’s inherently, then, a female thing. It’s feminizing, in a way, these things that should be described in a more gender-neutral way.
See, no, it's both, and the writer is really framing this in a certain way that begs that response. There is emotional labor involved in putting on the right tone as you're writing Christmas cards, in painting the right picture of your family life; in remembering that the person you're writing a card to just went through something painful, so be careful about how you mention it; in remembering to be sure to thank someone for thoughtful gifts they might have sent one's children; in remembering that someone's spouse just got laid off, so they might be in need of a happy thought or a connection you might be able to make...etc.
I feel like, as wide-ranging as our discussions on this topic here have been, we didn't really approach it as bluntly as this, and that was to our credit.
Beck: Is it emotional labor to be the one in a couple who always RSVPs to party invites, and makes sure you call your family members often enough, and remembering birthdays?
Hochschild: Not inherently. It can be, if you’re feeling that burdened and resentful and you’re managing your resentment.
And then there's this:
Hochschild: There’s a distinction to be made about the purpose of a task. Suppose the purpose of the task was to make your mother-in-law happy, and you’re paying a visit. You get in the cab, you ring the doorbell—that’s not emotional labor. But if your mother-in-law is extremely disapproving of you, and in the first five minutes you become aware of that again, and you’re having to defend your self-esteem against the perceived insult, that’s emotional labor.
Hochschild makes a couple of narrow, negative characterizations in here like this, and I have an issue with it. Does something inherently have to be unpleasant to be work? I feel like there's plenty of work that people do that is absolutely work but that perhaps they enjoy doing. One doesn't have to dislike one's emotional work for it to be work, and for it to take energy and labor. I read The Managed Heart, early on in my career, and it's a great book. But is it the end-all and be-all on this subject, as these discussions span the home and the workplace (and with the rise of remote work, the boundaries thereof become increasingly blurred)? I would say not.
Beck: Is it emotional labor to ask your husband to do the chores in a nice way so it doesn’t hurt his feelings?
Hochschild: Depends on how she feels to begin with. It could be effortless: “Hey, sweetheart, can you handle Thursday?” “Sure, it’s on my list.” That’s not emotional labor.
I take issue with the way Hochschild answered this one, too. In the framing of the question, the husband apparently needs to be asked to do the chores in a certain way, to avoid hurting his feelings. Of course it does depend on how the wife feels as to how much and what exact kind of work it is to do this asking in a certain way, but it is nonetheless work, with an emotional component, as she has to throw certain emotion into it, and take his emotions into account. If she feels certain emotions already, sure, it'll be easier, but that doesn't mean emotion isn't called for or isn't part of the task.
As blurry as Hochschild says some of the thinking and discourse around this are, I am a bit disappointed with how blurry and diffuse her own thinking on this seems to be. But then, I also think the verbatim interview format does her no favors there. No one comes out looking particularly great in this piece, which is a shame.
posted by limeonaire at 6:31 PM on November 26, 2018 [77 favorites]
For example:
Many people who write about emotional labor do tip their hats to Hochschild, and acknowledge that they are expanding her original definition, but the umbrella of emotional labor has grown so large that it’s starting to cover things that make no sense at all, such as regular household chores, which are not emotional so much as they are labor, full stop.
Well then, I guess that brooks no argument, because she said it. She could have ended this sentence at "they are expanding her original definition," or perhaps "has grown so large that it's starting to cover things that call for more discussion" might have been a more polite way to end the sentence if she felt like that point really needed to be made.
And this takes a really frustrating turn:
Beck: It seems like this is mostly becoming a popular term in feminist conversations. But if we talk about all the unpaid labor women do in the home as “emotional labor,” we’re insinuating that any kind of labor that falls most often to a woman is “emotional.” It almost seems like we’re saying that women do the work and women are emotional, so that must be emotional work. Like chores are just labor. Writing Christmas cards is just labor. If we’re talking about the division of labor in the household, and we start calling chores “emotional labor”—
Hochschild: It’s inherently, then, a female thing. It’s feminizing, in a way, these things that should be described in a more gender-neutral way.
See, no, it's both, and the writer is really framing this in a certain way that begs that response. There is emotional labor involved in putting on the right tone as you're writing Christmas cards, in painting the right picture of your family life; in remembering that the person you're writing a card to just went through something painful, so be careful about how you mention it; in remembering to be sure to thank someone for thoughtful gifts they might have sent one's children; in remembering that someone's spouse just got laid off, so they might be in need of a happy thought or a connection you might be able to make...etc.
I feel like, as wide-ranging as our discussions on this topic here have been, we didn't really approach it as bluntly as this, and that was to our credit.
Beck: Is it emotional labor to be the one in a couple who always RSVPs to party invites, and makes sure you call your family members often enough, and remembering birthdays?
Hochschild: Not inherently. It can be, if you’re feeling that burdened and resentful and you’re managing your resentment.
And then there's this:
Hochschild: There’s a distinction to be made about the purpose of a task. Suppose the purpose of the task was to make your mother-in-law happy, and you’re paying a visit. You get in the cab, you ring the doorbell—that’s not emotional labor. But if your mother-in-law is extremely disapproving of you, and in the first five minutes you become aware of that again, and you’re having to defend your self-esteem against the perceived insult, that’s emotional labor.
Hochschild makes a couple of narrow, negative characterizations in here like this, and I have an issue with it. Does something inherently have to be unpleasant to be work? I feel like there's plenty of work that people do that is absolutely work but that perhaps they enjoy doing. One doesn't have to dislike one's emotional work for it to be work, and for it to take energy and labor. I read The Managed Heart, early on in my career, and it's a great book. But is it the end-all and be-all on this subject, as these discussions span the home and the workplace (and with the rise of remote work, the boundaries thereof become increasingly blurred)? I would say not.
Beck: Is it emotional labor to ask your husband to do the chores in a nice way so it doesn’t hurt his feelings?
Hochschild: Depends on how she feels to begin with. It could be effortless: “Hey, sweetheart, can you handle Thursday?” “Sure, it’s on my list.” That’s not emotional labor.
I take issue with the way Hochschild answered this one, too. In the framing of the question, the husband apparently needs to be asked to do the chores in a certain way, to avoid hurting his feelings. Of course it does depend on how the wife feels as to how much and what exact kind of work it is to do this asking in a certain way, but it is nonetheless work, with an emotional component, as she has to throw certain emotion into it, and take his emotions into account. If she feels certain emotions already, sure, it'll be easier, but that doesn't mean emotion isn't called for or isn't part of the task.
As blurry as Hochschild says some of the thinking and discourse around this are, I am a bit disappointed with how blurry and diffuse her own thinking on this seems to be. But then, I also think the verbatim interview format does her no favors there. No one comes out looking particularly great in this piece, which is a shame.
posted by limeonaire at 6:31 PM on November 26, 2018 [77 favorites]
Fair enough, I thought it was on-topic because it's undergone a similar change in meaning as "emotional labor."
I think that we needed a term to describe the labor of taking care of relationships and people. I appreciate that Hochschild says that this is just labor, but having a more specific term for it is very useful. "Mental load" also isn't specific enough, as it can refer to everything from running a household to having stress at work or school. Of course, it's also useful to have a specific term for "emotional labor" in the original sense, too but ... i think I agree, that distinction seems to be more academic.
"Emotional labor" was used to name a phenomenon that needed to be name, and it stuck.
The genie's out of the bottle, now. Language change has happened. Hochschild can join all the other academics who have seen terms expand their meanings once they hit popular usage. I could name a few that bug me, and I did, but I deleted them from this comment.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:44 PM on November 26, 2018 [12 favorites]
I think that we needed a term to describe the labor of taking care of relationships and people. I appreciate that Hochschild says that this is just labor, but having a more specific term for it is very useful. "Mental load" also isn't specific enough, as it can refer to everything from running a household to having stress at work or school. Of course, it's also useful to have a specific term for "emotional labor" in the original sense, too but ... i think I agree, that distinction seems to be more academic.
"Emotional labor" was used to name a phenomenon that needed to be name, and it stuck.
The genie's out of the bottle, now. Language change has happened. Hochschild can join all the other academics who have seen terms expand their meanings once they hit popular usage. I could name a few that bug me, and I did, but I deleted them from this comment.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:44 PM on November 26, 2018 [12 favorites]
Hochschild coined "emotional labor" in 1983 to mean emotional work expected to be done in a paying job and now 35 years in the future it is used differently in colloquial English to mean work expected of women to maintain emotional connection socially (job, friends, or home).
All kinds of ideas about home and work have changed. If we want emotional labor to go back to its old meaning (this is not typical of language but why not) we need to acknowledge that this other definition has its own merit and people want to talk about it.
When Hochschild calls it labor, that distracts from the many people / women saying hey, what ever you call it, this concept is worthy.
posted by mutt.cyberspace at 6:47 PM on November 26, 2018 [23 favorites]
All kinds of ideas about home and work have changed. If we want emotional labor to go back to its old meaning (this is not typical of language but why not) we need to acknowledge that this other definition has its own merit and people want to talk about it.
When Hochschild calls it labor, that distracts from the many people / women saying hey, what ever you call it, this concept is worthy.
posted by mutt.cyberspace at 6:47 PM on November 26, 2018 [23 favorites]
Regarding whether housework is emotional labor, I feel like there's some shorthand that has been diffusing the meaning here a bit. The part of housework that involves emotional labor is the part where perhaps one person is holding in mind all these small things to do with the tasks at hand, and has to not only manage the doing of the tasks, but also the details that get overlooked by someone who isn't invested in the process, as well as perhaps the apportioning of tasks to other people involved. It's not just doing the thing, but also managing the doing of the thing. Doing housework properly, or any work properly, does involve emotional investment and a sense that one at very least owns one's work, and at best also considers their part in a team or system. If that's lacking, and one isn't invested in a mental and emotional sense, there will be issues.
Hochschild suggests that part is perhaps more mental labor than emotional labor, but emotional intelligence absolutely comes into that process, e.g., when you're cleaning up the playroom, you have to remember to put back Mr. Bunny where he always sits, or your toddler's routine will be disrupted, they will have a lot of feelings and cry, and then this will cause a whole chain reaction that will disrupt dinner and bedtime and everyone's sleep. Miss the details on this enough times and yeah, the person who understands the details and has committed them to memory and practice is going to be frustrated that they were omitted, and will almost certainly have some feelings about all of it.
Or perhaps there's knack involved in doing a particular chore, and one person never commits to memory or bothers to add to their routine a step for, say, carefully handling the yogurt containers on the way home from the store so they don't get the foil busted open (and also doesn't check that they made it OK when they're being put away, and doesn't check that the dishes are clean before they're put away, and...and...). And all of this probably involves more than just the task at hand, or it wouldn't be an issue—perhaps the person who's not checking the details on things is getting older and has an issue with pride or vanity that's keeping them from going to the doctor to get glasses, for instance. It's inconsiderate of them to not do that thing in the background that isn't related to the chores at all, technically, but that when it's not done ultimately interferes with their being done properly. And yet it's their feelings about it in the first place that keep it, in many cases, from being done.
So I hope that background helps a little to anyone wondering how housework in and of itself could be considered associated with emotional labor. I feel like there's so much more nuance here that could have been explored in this article, but the author went for cheap shots and editorializing.
posted by limeonaire at 6:55 PM on November 26, 2018 [32 favorites]
Hochschild suggests that part is perhaps more mental labor than emotional labor, but emotional intelligence absolutely comes into that process, e.g., when you're cleaning up the playroom, you have to remember to put back Mr. Bunny where he always sits, or your toddler's routine will be disrupted, they will have a lot of feelings and cry, and then this will cause a whole chain reaction that will disrupt dinner and bedtime and everyone's sleep. Miss the details on this enough times and yeah, the person who understands the details and has committed them to memory and practice is going to be frustrated that they were omitted, and will almost certainly have some feelings about all of it.
Or perhaps there's knack involved in doing a particular chore, and one person never commits to memory or bothers to add to their routine a step for, say, carefully handling the yogurt containers on the way home from the store so they don't get the foil busted open (and also doesn't check that they made it OK when they're being put away, and doesn't check that the dishes are clean before they're put away, and...and...). And all of this probably involves more than just the task at hand, or it wouldn't be an issue—perhaps the person who's not checking the details on things is getting older and has an issue with pride or vanity that's keeping them from going to the doctor to get glasses, for instance. It's inconsiderate of them to not do that thing in the background that isn't related to the chores at all, technically, but that when it's not done ultimately interferes with their being done properly. And yet it's their feelings about it in the first place that keep it, in many cases, from being done.
So I hope that background helps a little to anyone wondering how housework in and of itself could be considered associated with emotional labor. I feel like there's so much more nuance here that could have been explored in this article, but the author went for cheap shots and editorializing.
posted by limeonaire at 6:55 PM on November 26, 2018 [32 favorites]
I don't know if that's because the left is better at popularizing new terms or some other reason.
it's because the usual coopters of these kinds of phrases are from the right who have persecution complexes that are (ironically) triggered into full on self righteous panic mode by seeing other people who they consider their inferiors treated as though they matter.
posted by poffin boffin at 6:56 PM on November 26, 2018 [23 favorites]
it's because the usual coopters of these kinds of phrases are from the right who have persecution complexes that are (ironically) triggered into full on self righteous panic mode by seeing other people who they consider their inferiors treated as though they matter.
posted by poffin boffin at 6:56 PM on November 26, 2018 [23 favorites]
I still think that having to hold all the (domestic, family, workplace, health and safety, etc) work in your head, dole it out (if possible) according to the capability or likelihood of the assignee fucking it up (deliberately or otherwise), do it to your own standard if everyone around you has decided to pretend they like living in a dumpster, and generally handle all the caring if this shit gets done is a form of emotional labor. When one partner/teammate will only do labor if assigned explicitly, or have another person tell them something is messy and requires remediation, and takes no initiative to handle anything on their own, that is requiring literally one person to do all the feeling of emotions/obligations. Having to send cards to the other person's family because the fallout of not doing so is problematic is being stuck with holding all the emotions associated with the problem. It is emotional labor, it is important, and it is only to the not-doer's benefit to strike it off the ledger because it just doesn't count.
posted by Lyn Never at 7:03 PM on November 26, 2018 [30 favorites]
posted by Lyn Never at 7:03 PM on November 26, 2018 [30 favorites]
agreed and it's, idk, weird and kind of icky feeling? i guess? that people think using it in wholly analogous situations outside the paid employment workplace is a diminishment of the term's original intent, especially when that's presented as a pro feminist argument.
posted by poffin boffin at 7:07 PM on November 26, 2018 [34 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 7:07 PM on November 26, 2018 [34 favorites]
like it's (inexplicably) saying that it's antifeminist to focus on the work all women do constantly throughout their lives just to survive in modern society as if it is of equal value to work women do in their professional lives. why. this presupposes that the reader will also sneer in disgust at the thought of acknowledging that the things society at large considers "women's work" is still, who ever could have predicted, unfortunately down to women to undertake, whether we want to or not, and the consequences of failing to do so are visible, largely unavoidable, and retaliatory. it somehow mistakes that acknowledgment for acceptance, even approval? idk?
anwyay im mad
posted by poffin boffin at 7:14 PM on November 26, 2018 [31 favorites]
anwyay im mad
posted by poffin boffin at 7:14 PM on November 26, 2018 [31 favorites]
I don't think it's being struck off the ledger is it? Just a reassessment of how we're using the term and whether it's communicating the same thing to everyone, what we do in fact mean by it. I'm certainly not confident enough to have a position on the complexities of whether many of these things are labour or emotional labour, but it doesn't erase them or justify associated gender imbalances etc either way, right? Just improve our analyses, and therefore our responses.
I'm interested in if anyone has any comments on the last section.
Added to a feminist concern for equity—not taking that away, adding to it—we need to add clarity about our social-class position and explore the idea of alienation. When things stop being meaningful and fun. Let’s not just sweep that aside, because I don’t think it’s a solution if both husband and wife are now 50-50 with alienated labor. There’s a fantasy that equity will be a solution. I’m adding a concern about why things don’t feel fun for both of them.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 7:15 PM on November 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm interested in if anyone has any comments on the last section.
Added to a feminist concern for equity—not taking that away, adding to it—we need to add clarity about our social-class position and explore the idea of alienation. When things stop being meaningful and fun. Let’s not just sweep that aside, because I don’t think it’s a solution if both husband and wife are now 50-50 with alienated labor. There’s a fantasy that equity will be a solution. I’m adding a concern about why things don’t feel fun for both of them.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 7:15 PM on November 26, 2018 [2 favorites]
The way Hochschild uses emotional labor seems too narrow to me, but I also find the term to be overused generally. I think of this stuff in 3 groups:
1. mental load: keeping track of all the stuff that has to be done - are we almost out of toilet paper, will someone feed the cat while we're on vacation, etc
2. relationship management: keeping in touch with people, sending a condolence card, offering to help out a friend in need
3. emotional labor: addressing relationship issues in a way that doesn't make your partner upset, not letting your work frustrations sour your home life
To define EL as simply performing a feeling from which you feel alienated, that is weird to me. I haven't read the book - isn't that just customer service? Customer service performed by women is certainly judged more harshly than that by men, but I'm not sure "emotional labor" captures that anyway.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:26 PM on November 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
1. mental load: keeping track of all the stuff that has to be done - are we almost out of toilet paper, will someone feed the cat while we're on vacation, etc
2. relationship management: keeping in touch with people, sending a condolence card, offering to help out a friend in need
3. emotional labor: addressing relationship issues in a way that doesn't make your partner upset, not letting your work frustrations sour your home life
To define EL as simply performing a feeling from which you feel alienated, that is weird to me. I haven't read the book - isn't that just customer service? Customer service performed by women is certainly judged more harshly than that by men, but I'm not sure "emotional labor" captures that anyway.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:26 PM on November 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
Beck: It seems like this is mostly becoming a popular term in feminist conversations. But if we talk about all the unpaid labor women do in the home as “emotional labor,” we’re insinuating that any kind of labor that falls most often to a woman is “emotional.” It almost seems like we’re saying that women do the work and women are emotional, so that must be emotional work. Like chores are just labor. Writing Christmas cards is just labor. If we’re talking about the division of labor in the household, and we start calling chores “emotional labor”—
Also, one more point to make on this part: This is a straw-man argument. I don't think anyone is actually making this point that the writer makes and then shoots down, that people are assuming any kind of labor that falls to a woman is "emotional," ergo any work a woman does is emotional, hence that's why we're calling this set of things "emotional work." In every discussion of this topic I've seen here, "emotional labor" as a phrase has been used to bring to light work where there is an emotional or otherwise performative component, regardless of whether a man or woman is doing it.
In fact, the discussion of this, at least here, has been exceedingly nuanced on this point: A lot of things that have been in some traditions considered "women's work" are indeed work that can be done by everyone, if we recognize it as work. If we don't do so, then yes, it may well continue to disproportionately fall upon certain people, or to one member of any partnership, because we're not even recognizing that it exists. That's a huge part of why the discourse around this must change to make work visible. If we continue to say that these sorts of things aren't really work, then we're right back where we started.
When Hochschild started writing about this, and for much of the time between then and now, it seems perhaps few recognized that. But our perceptions are changing for the better, and clinging to the original definition of terms isn't helping us move beyond the status quo.
posted by limeonaire at 7:27 PM on November 26, 2018 [17 favorites]
Also, one more point to make on this part: This is a straw-man argument. I don't think anyone is actually making this point that the writer makes and then shoots down, that people are assuming any kind of labor that falls to a woman is "emotional," ergo any work a woman does is emotional, hence that's why we're calling this set of things "emotional work." In every discussion of this topic I've seen here, "emotional labor" as a phrase has been used to bring to light work where there is an emotional or otherwise performative component, regardless of whether a man or woman is doing it.
In fact, the discussion of this, at least here, has been exceedingly nuanced on this point: A lot of things that have been in some traditions considered "women's work" are indeed work that can be done by everyone, if we recognize it as work. If we don't do so, then yes, it may well continue to disproportionately fall upon certain people, or to one member of any partnership, because we're not even recognizing that it exists. That's a huge part of why the discourse around this must change to make work visible. If we continue to say that these sorts of things aren't really work, then we're right back where we started.
When Hochschild started writing about this, and for much of the time between then and now, it seems perhaps few recognized that. But our perceptions are changing for the better, and clinging to the original definition of terms isn't helping us move beyond the status quo.
posted by limeonaire at 7:27 PM on November 26, 2018 [17 favorites]
I'm interested in if anyone has any comments on the last section.
Yes, that part was the best and I was glad to read it. The resentment that created The Thread isn't because emotional, domestic, affective, and reproductive labor are inherently bad, it's because they are so often alienated. Sometimes I see people react to discovering the emotional labor discourse by going on strike, effectively, and I have a lot of trouble believing that that really solves the problem they want it to solve. I suppose I don't get to make that call for an individual but I believe for the rest of us it is counterproductive.
And the different demands that emotional, domestic, affective, and reproductive labor make of you depending on your class position are a rich vein, definitely worth talking about -- possibly mefi has, and may or may not have called it that.
posted by clavicle at 7:30 PM on November 26, 2018 [5 favorites]
Yes, that part was the best and I was glad to read it. The resentment that created The Thread isn't because emotional, domestic, affective, and reproductive labor are inherently bad, it's because they are so often alienated. Sometimes I see people react to discovering the emotional labor discourse by going on strike, effectively, and I have a lot of trouble believing that that really solves the problem they want it to solve. I suppose I don't get to make that call for an individual but I believe for the rest of us it is counterproductive.
And the different demands that emotional, domestic, affective, and reproductive labor make of you depending on your class position are a rich vein, definitely worth talking about -- possibly mefi has, and may or may not have called it that.
posted by clavicle at 7:30 PM on November 26, 2018 [5 favorites]
agreed and it's, idk, weird and kind of icky feeling? i guess? that people think using it in wholly analogous situations outside the paid employment workplace is a diminishment of the term's original intent, especially when that's presented as a pro feminist argument.
But it's not wholly analagous. The original concept is about controlling one's OWN emotions and pretending to feel something one doesn't. It's not about worrying about other people's feelings or about cognitive load. And she DOES say that analgous things outside of paid work (i.e. having to pretend to be happy about the christmas cards or visitnig your mother in law) are emotional labour. Just not the christmas cards themselves or scheduling the mother-in-law visit. Pretending to be ok with doing all the housework is emotional labour. Doing all the hosuework (including keeping track of what housework needs doing) is just labour. And the analagous is true in the workplace: serving drinks is just labour. Pretending to be friendly and acting happy while you serve drinks is emotional labour. Planning an event for work, including keeping track of all the things that need to happen for that event, is just labour.
1. mental load: keeping track of all the stuff that has to be done - are we almost out of toilet paper, will someone feed the cat while we're on vacation, etc
2. relationship management: keeping in touch with people, sending a condolence card, offering to help out a friend in need
3. emotional labor: addressing relationship issues in a way that doesn't make your partner upset, not letting your work frustrations sour your home life
None of these things are emotional labour in the original sense of the word.
To define EL as simply performing a feeling from which you feel alienated, that is weird to me. I haven't read the book - isn't that just customer service? Customer service performed by women is certainly judged more harshly than that by men, but I'm not sure "emotional labor" captures that anyway.
Customer service is given as a prime example of jobs that require emotional labour. The idea of the book is that this is a requirement in some kinds of jobs and not others (and I don't recall specifically, but I'm sure she does go into the gendered nature of the requirement because gender is an important research area for her) and that it takes a particular kind of toll on people and creates a particular kind of tiredness to have to pretend to feel things.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:37 PM on November 26, 2018 [29 favorites]
But it's not wholly analagous. The original concept is about controlling one's OWN emotions and pretending to feel something one doesn't. It's not about worrying about other people's feelings or about cognitive load. And she DOES say that analgous things outside of paid work (i.e. having to pretend to be happy about the christmas cards or visitnig your mother in law) are emotional labour. Just not the christmas cards themselves or scheduling the mother-in-law visit. Pretending to be ok with doing all the housework is emotional labour. Doing all the hosuework (including keeping track of what housework needs doing) is just labour. And the analagous is true in the workplace: serving drinks is just labour. Pretending to be friendly and acting happy while you serve drinks is emotional labour. Planning an event for work, including keeping track of all the things that need to happen for that event, is just labour.
1. mental load: keeping track of all the stuff that has to be done - are we almost out of toilet paper, will someone feed the cat while we're on vacation, etc
2. relationship management: keeping in touch with people, sending a condolence card, offering to help out a friend in need
3. emotional labor: addressing relationship issues in a way that doesn't make your partner upset, not letting your work frustrations sour your home life
None of these things are emotional labour in the original sense of the word.
To define EL as simply performing a feeling from which you feel alienated, that is weird to me. I haven't read the book - isn't that just customer service? Customer service performed by women is certainly judged more harshly than that by men, but I'm not sure "emotional labor" captures that anyway.
Customer service is given as a prime example of jobs that require emotional labour. The idea of the book is that this is a requirement in some kinds of jobs and not others (and I don't recall specifically, but I'm sure she does go into the gendered nature of the requirement because gender is an important research area for her) and that it takes a particular kind of toll on people and creates a particular kind of tiredness to have to pretend to feel things.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:37 PM on November 26, 2018 [29 favorites]
I don't think it's a given that customer service *must* involve performing feelings from which one feels alienated - I think this is a case of the class position that clavicle mentions. You can work providing a service and not be alienated, or you can be required to be servile in the current style, which will be alienating. (Not least because it tends to combine the pretense that the customer will get what they want with a euphemized refusal to promise anything, since the corp won't actually make good. I'd love to hear NotAlwaysRight, etc., work through what they think E.L. is.)
posted by clew at 7:42 PM on November 26, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by clew at 7:42 PM on November 26, 2018 [3 favorites]
Hochschild makes a couple of narrow, negative characterizations in here like this, and I have an issue with it. Does something inherently have to be unpleasant to be work? I feel like there's plenty of work that people do that is absolutely work but that perhaps they enjoy doing. One doesn't have to dislike one's emotional work for it to be work, and for it to take energy and labor.
The issue of unpleasantness is related to the original definition of the term and the many many subsequent studies that followed. This research on emotional labor, in jobs like customer service, flight attendants, etc., has demonstrated that it is this disconnect between the actual emotions being felt by the workers, and the false, positive emotions they are being paid to perform that is related to the negative outcomes, like burnout, stress, and depersonalization. If you are doing something you enjoy, and displaying the same emotions you are feeling, you are not experiencing this disconnect.
That is why this term was useful and relevant for workplace studies—there are real, negative consequences to asking people to do jobs where they have to perform emotions that are not genuine.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 7:43 PM on November 26, 2018 [22 favorites]
The issue of unpleasantness is related to the original definition of the term and the many many subsequent studies that followed. This research on emotional labor, in jobs like customer service, flight attendants, etc., has demonstrated that it is this disconnect between the actual emotions being felt by the workers, and the false, positive emotions they are being paid to perform that is related to the negative outcomes, like burnout, stress, and depersonalization. If you are doing something you enjoy, and displaying the same emotions you are feeling, you are not experiencing this disconnect.
That is why this term was useful and relevant for workplace studies—there are real, negative consequences to asking people to do jobs where they have to perform emotions that are not genuine.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 7:43 PM on November 26, 2018 [22 favorites]
DiscourseMarker: "The issue of unpleasantness is related to the original definition of the term and the many many subsequent studies that followed."
I mean, not according to Hochschild (from TFA):
I’ve written an essay, “Can Emotional Labor Be Fun?” And the answer is yes, if it’s not a broken care system. If you’re the one that people are turning to for advice, chances are you’re good at giving advice. Chances are you’re gratified at being able to help people, and there’s nothing inherently alienating about being such a person. Do I want people to lean on me less? No, I don’t.
posted by crazy with stars at 7:45 PM on November 26, 2018
I mean, not according to Hochschild (from TFA):
I’ve written an essay, “Can Emotional Labor Be Fun?” And the answer is yes, if it’s not a broken care system. If you’re the one that people are turning to for advice, chances are you’re good at giving advice. Chances are you’re gratified at being able to help people, and there’s nothing inherently alienating about being such a person. Do I want people to lean on me less? No, I don’t.
posted by crazy with stars at 7:45 PM on November 26, 2018
That isn't Hochschild changing her argument, that's an example of unalienated social labor.
posted by clew at 7:47 PM on November 26, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by clew at 7:47 PM on November 26, 2018 [4 favorites]
" But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future’s sakes."
posted by clew at 7:49 PM on November 26, 2018 [3 favorites]
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future’s sakes."
posted by clew at 7:49 PM on November 26, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'm of disposition more of a descriptivist than a prescriptivist when it comes to language, and there are legitimate points that the term "emotional labor" has evolved.
I also think it's honestly a little weird and unsettling that there are people in this thread who are saying the very woman who coined the term is wrong about it, or is unclear on her intent for its usage. Like, really?
posted by tclark at 7:58 PM on November 26, 2018 [19 favorites]
I also think it's honestly a little weird and unsettling that there are people in this thread who are saying the very woman who coined the term is wrong about it, or is unclear on her intent for its usage. Like, really?
posted by tclark at 7:58 PM on November 26, 2018 [19 favorites]
I think it's worth making a distinction between "the work of managing/masking your own emotions" and "the work of managing the emotions of others" and "the work of caring about the tasks that will lead to disharmony if they are not done but that others do not regard as real work." We don't have good names for 2/3 of those, though.
posted by nonasuch at 8:06 PM on November 26, 2018 [30 favorites]
posted by nonasuch at 8:06 PM on November 26, 2018 [30 favorites]
Sending cards and organizing holiday traditions is kin keeping or kin work.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:09 PM on November 26, 2018 [12 favorites]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:09 PM on November 26, 2018 [12 favorites]
It sounds like Hochschild originally intended "emotional labor" to be about class, not women's equality. She uses minimizing language to describe disproportionate demands on women: “'Oh, what a burden it is to pick out gifts for the holiday for my children.' Or 'Oh, it’s so hard to call a photographer to do family Christmas photos, and then to send it to my parents.'” "Emotional labor" is a great term to describe this stuff, but maybe we could just agree to call it something else so as not to have to perform this (totally non-emotional) labor every time we want to talk about why my in-laws send me articles about what superfoods my husband should be eating.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 8:12 PM on November 26, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Ralston McTodd at 8:12 PM on November 26, 2018 [3 favorites]
kind of a sidebar but something I've noticed on Progressive Internet: it's also weird that it's been stretched to refer to any situation of, I guess, caring for another person, people caring about each other in a relationship where someone might be having a difficult time or just giving support. a lot of the times this is in situations where someone is mentally ill or expressing any kind of non-perfect-happiness (this is constantly on AskMe). sometimes people just take care of each other in a non perfectly reciprocal fashion because that is how human relationships actually are - technically that's emotional labor but to refer to it that way all the time feels odd and clinical and sometimes not entirely empathetic to me.
posted by colorblock sock at 8:14 PM on November 26, 2018 [20 favorites]
posted by colorblock sock at 8:14 PM on November 26, 2018 [20 favorites]
I always figured that the "emotional labour" part of household management was less the actual chore themselves, but the whole mental/emotional effort that surrounded domestic chores. That is, some had to remember to do the chores, someone had to plan and buy dishsoap and towels so that chores could be done, heck someone had to know where the mop and bucket was, and yes, how to use it properly. And someone had to check-up on the chores to ensure they were done properly and on time. And do the work of cajoling everyone else to do their work, did it well, and sometimes teach them how to do it.
Previously, all that plus the chores fell to women. Now, women can sometimes get partners and children to pitch in for the chores, but they still have to do all the managerial work.
Christmas Cards, etc... are exactly the same. It is not "doing the chore" if you're just sitting down to a stack of cards someone else bought, checking off a list someone else wrote, stuffing envelopes someone else will mail on their way to work the next morning. You're helping with part of it, but you're not doing even the major part.
posted by bonehead at 8:22 PM on November 26, 2018 [16 favorites]
Previously, all that plus the chores fell to women. Now, women can sometimes get partners and children to pitch in for the chores, but they still have to do all the managerial work.
Christmas Cards, etc... are exactly the same. It is not "doing the chore" if you're just sitting down to a stack of cards someone else bought, checking off a list someone else wrote, stuffing envelopes someone else will mail on their way to work the next morning. You're helping with part of it, but you're not doing even the major part.
posted by bonehead at 8:22 PM on November 26, 2018 [16 favorites]
I had never seen the term "emotional labor" placed side by side with "physical labor" and "mental labor." In that context its meaning becomes much clearer. It also makes sense that labor is what one does to carry out a task, rather than being the task itself. The demands of accomplishing said task can bring you away from mental, physical, and/or emotional steady state. Labor allows you to absorb those demands.
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 8:23 PM on November 26, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 8:23 PM on November 26, 2018 [6 favorites]
I wasn't happy with the way the meaning changed because some days I have to slap my face until it smiles before walking into the classroom and now there's no way to describe that. But the definition of emotional labor has changed, can't unstir that milk out of the coffee.
posted by betweenthebars at 8:24 PM on November 26, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by betweenthebars at 8:24 PM on November 26, 2018 [5 favorites]
One meaning can claim "emotional labor" and the other gets "emotional labour".
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 8:26 PM on November 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 8:26 PM on November 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
Slicing even further, the planning and "mental load" to do household work and even kin-keeping doesn't piss me off nearly as much if I have authority over it. But I am not sweet. If I had to be sweet, I'd be bitter. I surely have aunts who have wound up that way.
posted by clew at 8:46 PM on November 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by clew at 8:46 PM on November 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
It sounds like Hochschild originally intended "emotional labor" to be about class, not women's equality
Which at first glance I thought was ironic and ultimately classist, because unrecognized and unpaid labor is nevertheless labor or labor-like, especially in a Marxist sense. There's no class-theory reason that "emotional labor" outside of blue/white/pink collar forms of social production, shouldn't generalize to women, or people of color, or LGBTQ, or the elderly, or other marginalized groups. In fact, Hochschild's own work has specific studied the care work done by immigrant nannies from third world countries.
Now I can kind of see Hochschild's concern. If you make emotional labor about having to send Hallmark cards or laundry or whatever, then that discourse (potentially) obscures the globalized and classist/corporate dimension of exploitative v.s. egalitarian emotional labor that Hochschild's work was about. On the other extreme you get the stupid argument that "everything reduces to class". To resolve this you need both and the standard answer to that is intersectionality.
posted by polymodus at 8:49 PM on November 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
Which at first glance I thought was ironic and ultimately classist, because unrecognized and unpaid labor is nevertheless labor or labor-like, especially in a Marxist sense. There's no class-theory reason that "emotional labor" outside of blue/white/pink collar forms of social production, shouldn't generalize to women, or people of color, or LGBTQ, or the elderly, or other marginalized groups. In fact, Hochschild's own work has specific studied the care work done by immigrant nannies from third world countries.
Now I can kind of see Hochschild's concern. If you make emotional labor about having to send Hallmark cards or laundry or whatever, then that discourse (potentially) obscures the globalized and classist/corporate dimension of exploitative v.s. egalitarian emotional labor that Hochschild's work was about. On the other extreme you get the stupid argument that "everything reduces to class". To resolve this you need both and the standard answer to that is intersectionality.
posted by polymodus at 8:49 PM on November 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
I also think it's honestly a little weird and unsettling that there are people in this thread who are saying the very woman who coined the term is wrong about it, or is unclear on her intent for its usage. Like, really?
To clarify my position, in case I'm one of the people you're responding to, tclark: I'm not saying Hochschild is unclear on her intent for the term or its usage. I get that the term came from somewhere, and as DiscourseMarker astutely points out, has clinical meaning. As noted, I read and appreciated the original book on the subject. I do see how it might seem untoward to question the original researcher. But I am suggesting that Hochschild and the interviewer are a bit unnecessarily dismissive and negative about the ways the phrase is currently being used, and kind of missing the point and/or making up points to miss about the way people have used the term for the past 3 years. I get why Hochschild might be frustrated at this extension of the concept, but I wish she could see how for many of us, using the term in these ways makes visible and foments discussion of things that perhaps we didn't have a way to recognize before. To me, the benefits of having a way to talk about these things far outweigh the potential harms or confusion.
it's also weird that it's been stretched to refer to any situation of, I guess, caring for another person, people caring about each other in a relationship where someone might be having a difficult time or just giving support. ... technically that's emotional labor but to refer to it that way all the time feels odd and clinical and sometimes not entirely empathetic to me.
To your point, colorblock sock, well, there's empathy, then there's ruinous empathy, as laid out in Radical Candor. Empathy without honesty—and without reciprocation—can be hugely problematic. See also: codependent patterns of behavior. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, after reading Codependent No More. I think the emotional labor thread and the discussions thereafter resonated so strongly with me, at least, because it all finally gave me words to explain why I felt taken advantage of; why I felt incongruous performing behavior that by my socialization and gender presentation people assumed I should just do naturally; and why, after years of empathy without reciprocation, I finally started to get to the point where I couldn't take it anymore. Reading about codependency gave me a complementary framework for thinking about the same issues, just from a different angle. The specific framework or phrasing one uses to get there is less important, to me, than simply finding a way to make this all visible, then take steps to make it more equitable (or if things are permanently and damagingly unequal, move forward in a different way).
posted by limeonaire at 8:54 PM on November 26, 2018 [12 favorites]
To clarify my position, in case I'm one of the people you're responding to, tclark: I'm not saying Hochschild is unclear on her intent for the term or its usage. I get that the term came from somewhere, and as DiscourseMarker astutely points out, has clinical meaning. As noted, I read and appreciated the original book on the subject. I do see how it might seem untoward to question the original researcher. But I am suggesting that Hochschild and the interviewer are a bit unnecessarily dismissive and negative about the ways the phrase is currently being used, and kind of missing the point and/or making up points to miss about the way people have used the term for the past 3 years. I get why Hochschild might be frustrated at this extension of the concept, but I wish she could see how for many of us, using the term in these ways makes visible and foments discussion of things that perhaps we didn't have a way to recognize before. To me, the benefits of having a way to talk about these things far outweigh the potential harms or confusion.
it's also weird that it's been stretched to refer to any situation of, I guess, caring for another person, people caring about each other in a relationship where someone might be having a difficult time or just giving support. ... technically that's emotional labor but to refer to it that way all the time feels odd and clinical and sometimes not entirely empathetic to me.
To your point, colorblock sock, well, there's empathy, then there's ruinous empathy, as laid out in Radical Candor. Empathy without honesty—and without reciprocation—can be hugely problematic. See also: codependent patterns of behavior. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, after reading Codependent No More. I think the emotional labor thread and the discussions thereafter resonated so strongly with me, at least, because it all finally gave me words to explain why I felt taken advantage of; why I felt incongruous performing behavior that by my socialization and gender presentation people assumed I should just do naturally; and why, after years of empathy without reciprocation, I finally started to get to the point where I couldn't take it anymore. Reading about codependency gave me a complementary framework for thinking about the same issues, just from a different angle. The specific framework or phrasing one uses to get there is less important, to me, than simply finding a way to make this all visible, then take steps to make it more equitable (or if things are permanently and damagingly unequal, move forward in a different way).
posted by limeonaire at 8:54 PM on November 26, 2018 [12 favorites]
I also think it's honestly a little weird and unsettling that there are people in this thread who are saying the very woman who coined the term is wrong about it, or is unclear on her intent for its usage. Like, really?
That's fair, although I partly blame the article for that. Their very first definition of the term doesn't give much: Emotional labor... referred to the work of managing one’s own emotions that was required by certain professions. Flight attendants, who are expected to smile and be friendly even in stressful situations, are the canonical example.
I didn't really get it until I read If only I had a penguin... and Discourse Marker's comments talking about the cost part of that labor. Which really proves her main point, of the spread of the meaning, since I have read a number of articles that supposedly were about "emotional labor" and I apparently never even fully knew what it meant!
Anyway, this has given me a much more specific understanding of my "attitude problem" which has plagued my career. The scenario, repeated across workplaces:
- some male coworker ignores me or interrupts me, makes it clear he has no interest in communicating with me as a person
- I get tired of being the social buffer between us and stop using the basic pleasantries that mean "hey we're both people at this same coffeepot, I acknowledge you" as this man has never done the same for me [to be clear, I am still working respectfully with him - just not saying hi in the hall or trying to make conversation with him at lunch]
- suddenly it turns out I have an attitude problem as shown by how "short" I am with this fella when I am friendlier to other people
- I am angry that this is treated as a problem which just proves my attitude problem; now I'm on the problem list forever because I can't make myself do the fake nice thing that would fix "my" problem
posted by Emmy Rae at 9:09 PM on November 26, 2018 [20 favorites]
That's fair, although I partly blame the article for that. Their very first definition of the term doesn't give much: Emotional labor... referred to the work of managing one’s own emotions that was required by certain professions. Flight attendants, who are expected to smile and be friendly even in stressful situations, are the canonical example.
I didn't really get it until I read If only I had a penguin... and Discourse Marker's comments talking about the cost part of that labor. Which really proves her main point, of the spread of the meaning, since I have read a number of articles that supposedly were about "emotional labor" and I apparently never even fully knew what it meant!
Anyway, this has given me a much more specific understanding of my "attitude problem" which has plagued my career. The scenario, repeated across workplaces:
- some male coworker ignores me or interrupts me, makes it clear he has no interest in communicating with me as a person
- I get tired of being the social buffer between us and stop using the basic pleasantries that mean "hey we're both people at this same coffeepot, I acknowledge you" as this man has never done the same for me [to be clear, I am still working respectfully with him - just not saying hi in the hall or trying to make conversation with him at lunch]
- suddenly it turns out I have an attitude problem as shown by how "short" I am with this fella when I am friendlier to other people
- I am angry that this is treated as a problem which just proves my attitude problem; now I'm on the problem list forever because I can't make myself do the fake nice thing that would fix "my" problem
posted by Emmy Rae at 9:09 PM on November 26, 2018 [20 favorites]
for what the Mefi thread calls "emotional labour", I use the term "household management labour". Planning, keeping up communication, observing what needs to be done: these are all cognitive taska, not an emotional ones.
I wish we would divide the terms. Both are really important issues, but not the same issue.
posted by jb at 9:30 PM on November 26, 2018 [9 favorites]
I wish we would divide the terms. Both are really important issues, but not the same issue.
posted by jb at 9:30 PM on November 26, 2018 [9 favorites]
Hochschild coined "emotional labor" in 1983
I know she's widely credited with having created the term, but the truth is she didn't. The oldest usage of it that I've come across was in Sinclair Lewis's 1920 novel Main Street, in which it's used in the context of the main character deciding whether or not to undertake a difficult conversation with another character. I'm curious to know how old the term actually is.
posted by orange swan at 9:45 PM on November 26, 2018 [15 favorites]
I know she's widely credited with having created the term, but the truth is she didn't. The oldest usage of it that I've come across was in Sinclair Lewis's 1920 novel Main Street, in which it's used in the context of the main character deciding whether or not to undertake a difficult conversation with another character. I'm curious to know how old the term actually is.
posted by orange swan at 9:45 PM on November 26, 2018 [15 favorites]
> I take issue with the way Hochschild answered this one, too. In the framing of the question, the husband apparently needs to be asked to do the chores in a certain way, to avoid hurting his feelings. Of course it does depend on how the wife feels as to how much and what exact kind of work it is to do this asking in a certain way, but it is nonetheless work, with an emotional component, as she has to throw certain emotion into it, and take his emotions into account.
Yeah, this is straight-up within the definition of emotional labor as far as I'm concerned. First of all, having to ask your spouse to do the chores--rather than them just seeing a thing that needs to be done and doing it--but more to the point, having to ask them in a certain way to do certain chores is a LOT more effort than should be required to keep the damn floors swept or whatever.
posted by desuetude at 9:45 PM on November 26, 2018 [4 favorites]
Yeah, this is straight-up within the definition of emotional labor as far as I'm concerned. First of all, having to ask your spouse to do the chores--rather than them just seeing a thing that needs to be done and doing it--but more to the point, having to ask them in a certain way to do certain chores is a LOT more effort than should be required to keep the damn floors swept or whatever.
posted by desuetude at 9:45 PM on November 26, 2018 [4 favorites]
I think of household management as different from emotional labor - but there's definitely emotional labor involved, because it's almost always the woman's job not just to make sure that dishes get done and clean laundry is available (for which you could hire a maid), but to pretend that this is not work, and to pretend it doesn't bother her to do it, no matter how tired or ill she is.
When she's too sick to do household chores, she's often expected to do the management-labor of finding a replacement, and apologize profusely for not being able to do the tasks that everyone avoids calling a "job" because that might imply she's supposed to get paid for them.
Dishes, laundry: Physical labor
Managing chores: Executive labor - assigned without choice of opting out
Pretending this is "natural" and needs no discussion, and that she enjoys her assigned role: Emotional labor
I have seen the language creep of "emotional labor" used to describe "anything foisted off on women that they're not usually permitted to avoid." I can accept that, because almost all of those tasks are accompanied by the message, "pretend you enjoy this role, or be punished for being 'obstinate' or 'unfeeling' or various other terms meaning you are a bad person and a failure at being female."
Emotional labor is so embedded into the tasks that women forget to mention it when they talk about chores.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:11 PM on November 26, 2018 [18 favorites]
When she's too sick to do household chores, she's often expected to do the management-labor of finding a replacement, and apologize profusely for not being able to do the tasks that everyone avoids calling a "job" because that might imply she's supposed to get paid for them.
Dishes, laundry: Physical labor
Managing chores: Executive labor - assigned without choice of opting out
Pretending this is "natural" and needs no discussion, and that she enjoys her assigned role: Emotional labor
I have seen the language creep of "emotional labor" used to describe "anything foisted off on women that they're not usually permitted to avoid." I can accept that, because almost all of those tasks are accompanied by the message, "pretend you enjoy this role, or be punished for being 'obstinate' or 'unfeeling' or various other terms meaning you are a bad person and a failure at being female."
Emotional labor is so embedded into the tasks that women forget to mention it when they talk about chores.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:11 PM on November 26, 2018 [18 favorites]
I have such a problem with how this question:
Just like with the flight attendant example, it's a lot more work when your emotional expression during the whole thing is only allowed to go one particular way, and you're responsible for making everybody else feel great no matter what it does to you personally. Christmas is practically the a canonical example of Hochschild's definition of emotional labor being performed by women for their families, and the response is "isn't it sad that people can't just enjoy this". Yes, in the Instagram-ideal version of life, women create magic just because they love their families and their husbands would help. Great. In the real world, cookie-baking itself, writing out the actual cards, sure, those are just plain labor. But the moment Beck said that the actual task was "manag[ing] household Christmas merriment", she defined it as a primarily emotional task! And then neither of them actually engages with that.
posted by Sequence at 10:11 PM on November 26, 2018 [33 favorites]
Is it emotional labor to manage household Christmas merriment, such as sending Christmas cards, baking cookies, and planning family get-togethers?Immediately diverts into being this answer:
There seems an alienation or a disenchantment of acts that normally we associate with the expression of connection, love, commitment. Like “Oh, what a burden it is to pick out gifts for the holiday for my children.” Or “Oh, it’s so hard to call a photographer to do family Christmas photos, and then to send it to my parents.”There isn't actually an answer there. I can't tell if it's a problem with Beck's approach or Hochschild's or both, but this is super not good faith engagement with the actual issue. The term might be a bit over-broadly applied, but there's all this limiting and incredibly unclear language about whether or not these things are emotional labor that seems to come from trying at all costs to admit that there's, yes, a huge problem with women being expected to perform actual emotional labor to keep families happy.
Just like with the flight attendant example, it's a lot more work when your emotional expression during the whole thing is only allowed to go one particular way, and you're responsible for making everybody else feel great no matter what it does to you personally. Christmas is practically the a canonical example of Hochschild's definition of emotional labor being performed by women for their families, and the response is "isn't it sad that people can't just enjoy this". Yes, in the Instagram-ideal version of life, women create magic just because they love their families and their husbands would help. Great. In the real world, cookie-baking itself, writing out the actual cards, sure, those are just plain labor. But the moment Beck said that the actual task was "manag[ing] household Christmas merriment", she defined it as a primarily emotional task! And then neither of them actually engages with that.
posted by Sequence at 10:11 PM on November 26, 2018 [33 favorites]
for what the Mefi thread calls "emotional labour", I use the term "household management labour". Planning, keeping up communication, observing what needs to be done: these are all cognitive taska, not an emotional ones.
I wish we would divide the terms. Both are really important issues, but not the same issue.
In British feminist circles I’ve seen ‘wifework’ used a lot to describe the first, after this book.
posted by Catseye at 10:13 PM on November 26, 2018 [5 favorites]
I wish we would divide the terms. Both are really important issues, but not the same issue.
In British feminist circles I’ve seen ‘wifework’ used a lot to describe the first, after this book.
posted by Catseye at 10:13 PM on November 26, 2018 [5 favorites]
It is possible to have domestic and even kin-keeping management be women's work, and feminized, but not be alienating from the woman's true emotions. Matriarchs who can be displeased and demanding really do exist.
I am thinking first a family one generation off the farm, where indoors was the domain of Mother, and divorce or abandonment would have been an unimaginable social shame. So Mother had authority over her work and the household budget, and was not alienated, although she also would have had little recourse against domestic violence if their church didn't object to it. And also I have known lesbian couples who divided the work in vaguely traditional roles but, warmingly, respect each other so that neither is alienated from her own affections.
The unfinished sexual revolution is sure destabilizing. I feel as though Ehrenreich covers this in one of her early books. Always having to be sweet to the family you're managing is yet another Brand You, LinkedIn-esque response to precarity.
posted by clew at 10:30 PM on November 26, 2018 [4 favorites]
I am thinking first a family one generation off the farm, where indoors was the domain of Mother, and divorce or abandonment would have been an unimaginable social shame. So Mother had authority over her work and the household budget, and was not alienated, although she also would have had little recourse against domestic violence if their church didn't object to it. And also I have known lesbian couples who divided the work in vaguely traditional roles but, warmingly, respect each other so that neither is alienated from her own affections.
The unfinished sexual revolution is sure destabilizing. I feel as though Ehrenreich covers this in one of her early books. Always having to be sweet to the family you're managing is yet another Brand You, LinkedIn-esque response to precarity.
posted by clew at 10:30 PM on November 26, 2018 [4 favorites]
Anyone who thinks that men who consistently fail to hold up their part of the physical labor don't cause tremendous emotional labor, and that those are therefore two different and unrelated subjects, needs to reread that EL thread again.
posted by Revvy at 10:36 PM on November 26, 2018 [23 favorites]
posted by Revvy at 10:36 PM on November 26, 2018 [23 favorites]
some proposed alternative terms for greater distinction-making:
"managerial labor"-- the very real labor of keeping track of what needs to get done, how, and when, of delegating, of keeping track of whether a task is done, of making sure the necessary resources are in place, of scheduling, of time management (there was some very popular comic about this that popularized the mislabeling of this as emotional labor, i can't remember if it was the comic itself or people who spread it who referred to the work depicted as emotional labor)
some people use "emotional labor" for "domestic labor" which is ridiculous. it's not emotional labor to do dishes. if you want a word for "unseen, repetitive work against entropy that no one appreciates and that keeps needing to be done over and over without any progress or tangible results you get to keep after", I propose "drudgery". Much of it is "domestic drudgery".
(and it's, again, managerial labor to be In Charge Of Noticing that dishes need to be done. )
as for writing cards to people-- I totally get why this would be called "emotional labor", but what about if we called it "social labor"? all the labor that goes into caretaking a relationship. she dismissed this as "there seems an alienation or a disenchantment of acts that normally we associate with the expression of connection, love, commitment", but part of what was so helpful about the emotional labor thread was pointing out that these "acts" are work and the responsibility for them disproportionately falls on women and those same women are penalized if they don't put in this work, uncomplainingly. People gave examples of in-laws being mad at their daugher-in-law for their son not calling, because managing a husband's relationships is somehow his wife's job? I do think the overlap between social and emotional labor is really large and fuzzy but maybe it's a helpful distinction to make. (and there's the managerial aspect of remembering when the birthdays are)
but she limits emotional labor to just the work of managing/faking your own emotions, I feel that's really unnecessarily narrow. it's emotional labor to be expected to be the relationship therapist, the person in charge of noticing your partner is upset and managing his upset all without making him feel threatened, and it's emotional labor to always have to express your feelings just so, so that no one feels bad if/when you assert boundaries.
posted by Cozybee at 11:09 PM on November 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
"managerial labor"-- the very real labor of keeping track of what needs to get done, how, and when, of delegating, of keeping track of whether a task is done, of making sure the necessary resources are in place, of scheduling, of time management (there was some very popular comic about this that popularized the mislabeling of this as emotional labor, i can't remember if it was the comic itself or people who spread it who referred to the work depicted as emotional labor)
some people use "emotional labor" for "domestic labor" which is ridiculous. it's not emotional labor to do dishes. if you want a word for "unseen, repetitive work against entropy that no one appreciates and that keeps needing to be done over and over without any progress or tangible results you get to keep after", I propose "drudgery". Much of it is "domestic drudgery".
(and it's, again, managerial labor to be In Charge Of Noticing that dishes need to be done. )
as for writing cards to people-- I totally get why this would be called "emotional labor", but what about if we called it "social labor"? all the labor that goes into caretaking a relationship. she dismissed this as "there seems an alienation or a disenchantment of acts that normally we associate with the expression of connection, love, commitment", but part of what was so helpful about the emotional labor thread was pointing out that these "acts" are work and the responsibility for them disproportionately falls on women and those same women are penalized if they don't put in this work, uncomplainingly. People gave examples of in-laws being mad at their daugher-in-law for their son not calling, because managing a husband's relationships is somehow his wife's job? I do think the overlap between social and emotional labor is really large and fuzzy but maybe it's a helpful distinction to make. (and there's the managerial aspect of remembering when the birthdays are)
but she limits emotional labor to just the work of managing/faking your own emotions, I feel that's really unnecessarily narrow. it's emotional labor to be expected to be the relationship therapist, the person in charge of noticing your partner is upset and managing his upset all without making him feel threatened, and it's emotional labor to always have to express your feelings just so, so that no one feels bad if/when you assert boundaries.
posted by Cozybee at 11:09 PM on November 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
Honestly, I have found the extended sense somewhat problematic because it has sometimes seemed to be less about feminism and more about upholding traditional housewifery. It feels as if people are using it not to say that they want to stop doing these things (you can, in fact, stop sending the stupid greetings cards if you want), but to say that they want others to value and support them more for doing them. YMMV.
posted by Segundus at 11:17 PM on November 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Segundus at 11:17 PM on November 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
It feels as if people are using it not to say that they want to stop doing these things (you can, in fact, stop sending the stupid greetings cards if you want), but to say that they want others to value and support them more for doing them.
Or maybe they simply want the labour of doing this kind of kin work to be equitably shared! It's not a foregone conclusion that this kind of work (eg sending "stupid" greeting cards, or equivalent) should be discarded. We have had threads before discussing what happens to men who have never developed the habit of maintaining social ties when they get divorced or widowed and become isolated and lonely. It's not good, folks!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:41 PM on November 26, 2018 [16 favorites]
Or maybe they simply want the labour of doing this kind of kin work to be equitably shared! It's not a foregone conclusion that this kind of work (eg sending "stupid" greeting cards, or equivalent) should be discarded. We have had threads before discussing what happens to men who have never developed the habit of maintaining social ties when they get divorced or widowed and become isolated and lonely. It's not good, folks!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:41 PM on November 26, 2018 [16 favorites]
I agree that the longterm results of dropping social labor aren't good, but there's several big cultural forces encouraging people to keep making the experiment. Some of which are Metafilter-good! Being able to DTMFA and leave town and still live as something better than a charcoal burner is great. But finite games and permanent games have different best strategies.
it's emotional labor to be expected to be the relationship therapist
Oh, that's interesting, is being a therapist or psychoanalyst our most high-status emotional labor? Is it emotional labor in Hochschild's sense? Therapists act or enact mindsets they don't necessarily have, yesno?
Anyway, since therapists also get *paid*, and I am holding buckle and thong to the possibility that you can have a lifelong relationship between equals in which neither party is alienated, I'm filing "one person being the other person's therapists" as unpaid labor as well as emotional labor. (And seconding whoever gently said, more or less, that there is a spoon deficit in the world and a lot of healthy relationships include one person taking care of another, maybe without equal return, maybe for their whole lives.)
posted by clew at 12:15 AM on November 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
it's emotional labor to be expected to be the relationship therapist
Oh, that's interesting, is being a therapist or psychoanalyst our most high-status emotional labor? Is it emotional labor in Hochschild's sense? Therapists act or enact mindsets they don't necessarily have, yesno?
Anyway, since therapists also get *paid*, and I am holding buckle and thong to the possibility that you can have a lifelong relationship between equals in which neither party is alienated, I'm filing "one person being the other person's therapists" as unpaid labor as well as emotional labor. (And seconding whoever gently said, more or less, that there is a spoon deficit in the world and a lot of healthy relationships include one person taking care of another, maybe without equal return, maybe for their whole lives.)
posted by clew at 12:15 AM on November 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
Oh, and another thought from the pre-modern world; kin-keeping was recognizable work. All the letter-writing and visit-making and tiny but deeply significant gifts to mark occasions are a scheduled part of the day's work for a Victorian woman, or a noblewoman in the sagas (fewer letters, more visits and largesse). Also traditional peasant societies, from such records as I know (fewer letters, more helpful visits and food).
posted by clew at 12:18 AM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by clew at 12:18 AM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
Linking to the specific comment by Eyebrows McGee that hurdy gurdy girl refers to, because I love it:
WE GET IT, YOU DON'T GIVE A SHIT, BUT WE STILL CARE BECAUSE IT MAKES YOU MEN DIE SOONER AND THAT'S JUST THE KIND OF EMOTIONAL LABOR SERVICE WE WOMEN PROVIDE FOR YOU.posted by E. Whitehall at 1:17 AM on November 27, 2018 [12 favorites]
And go send your college roommate a goddamned "thinking of you!" card so he doesn't croak.
I think the thing that’s being danced around in this article is that “women’s work” /is/ alienated work, that there is not a lot of return in AD 2018 for all of the relationship work that used to essentially be a paying job. Being a wife was in fact work, the expectations around it continues to be work except that now women also have jobs on top of that. Like she says it’s such a shame that women can’t unambiguously love their husbands, and like - when in history has that ever taken place without a lot of work in return? At what time period was marriage just about love and not about work?
posted by corb at 1:51 AM on November 27, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by corb at 1:51 AM on November 27, 2018 [7 favorites]
The reason I would consider household chores to be emotional labor in many cases is because when only one person is doing the bulk of them and is feeling unsupported and unacknowledged in their intimate relationship regarding those chores, it becomes impossible to take chores out of the context of the intimate relationship and thus remove any emotional component. The amount of usually futile emotional labor needed to either 1. get the other person to recognize that it's not just about the fucking dishes or 2. to sublimate all that rage and frustration and pretend everything is fine even though you're going to be doing every damn dish for the rest of your life (yes, I was once in a relationship where dishes were a flashpoint for a whole host of issues, why do you ask?) is enormous.
posted by tiger tiger at 4:56 AM on November 27, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by tiger tiger at 4:56 AM on November 27, 2018 [10 favorites]
I will suggest that while social labour may or may not be a good replacement term in other regards, it is very much already a concept with its own meaning
posted by AnhydrousLove at 5:22 AM on November 27, 2018
posted by AnhydrousLove at 5:22 AM on November 27, 2018
I'm astounded more women aren't gay out of spite, honestly.
I've tried, trust me. I've managed to compromise with single out of spite.
posted by bunderful at 5:33 AM on November 27, 2018 [8 favorites]
I've tried, trust me. I've managed to compromise with single out of spite.
posted by bunderful at 5:33 AM on November 27, 2018 [8 favorites]
Managed Heart was a text I used in grad school. The book is about swallowing who you are in order to do your job (or, for our purposes, your relationship!). That's the core of it. If you have to pretend - HAVE to, not choose to - it's taking a toll.
posted by wellred at 5:37 AM on November 27, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by wellred at 5:37 AM on November 27, 2018 [4 favorites]
I'm astounded more women aren't gay out of spite, honestly.
If sexual orientation worked that way, sure. But uh, it's not a choice.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:37 AM on November 27, 2018 [5 favorites]
If sexual orientation worked that way, sure. But uh, it's not a choice.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:37 AM on November 27, 2018 [5 favorites]
I don't think that the argument is logical. "X is so widespread that it has lost importance" seems counter-intuitive to me.
Like, it doesn't follow that because an issue is everywhere in varying degrees of intensity its validity should suffer. Quite the opposite.
Chores are definitely emotional labor. The whole idea of transforming a house into a home where people feel secure and welcome is encompassed under the duty to be nurturing and caring and anticipating everybody's needs, which is imposed on women almost everywhere.
posted by Tarumba at 6:43 AM on November 27, 2018 [10 favorites]
Like, it doesn't follow that because an issue is everywhere in varying degrees of intensity its validity should suffer. Quite the opposite.
Chores are definitely emotional labor. The whole idea of transforming a house into a home where people feel secure and welcome is encompassed under the duty to be nurturing and caring and anticipating everybody's needs, which is imposed on women almost everywhere.
posted by Tarumba at 6:43 AM on November 27, 2018 [10 favorites]
I think there's a spectrum from care to emotional labour for something like housework as Hochschild intended the term. I can lovingly do my person's dishes when I'm at their place if they're rushing to finish a work task, and that's care. I can end up doing doing the dishes every time I'm there because I did it that time and it turns into labour. Same goes for calling an elderly parent, or any task or responsibility. And it's not "I don't wanna", it's "this should not be a burden on me" or "I don't understand why this is happening" or "I want to care for my person but this is too much".
posted by wellred at 6:50 AM on November 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by wellred at 6:50 AM on November 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
Her point seems to be that she meant the term to refer to the labor of managing one's own emotions, not other people's. But those are flipsides of the same coin -- why would an employer care if a flight attendant is grumpy except that a grumpy flight attendant is not living up to the expectations of the passengers? Basically, being cheerful is how she's managing her passengers' (and employers') emotions. It's not a work requirement to fake being cheerful because her boss cares at all about the flight attendant's emotional state; it's about how her emotional state affects her customers.
So trying to split apart "managing one's own emotions" from "managing other people's emotions" doesn't make much sense to me.
I do think it's helpful to have categories for physical labor vs. intellectual/mental labor vs. emotional labor, but as everyone's pointing out, those often do get intertwined.
posted by lazuli at 7:03 AM on November 27, 2018 [18 favorites]
So trying to split apart "managing one's own emotions" from "managing other people's emotions" doesn't make much sense to me.
I do think it's helpful to have categories for physical labor vs. intellectual/mental labor vs. emotional labor, but as everyone's pointing out, those often do get intertwined.
posted by lazuli at 7:03 AM on November 27, 2018 [18 favorites]
Sorry, saying household labor is just labor as if that negates the emotional component is another way of drawing a line between domestic work and "real" work. Both domestic and wage labor accrue material benefits to non-participants (your boss/spouse/family), and free said non-participants to indulge other pursuits. If it's emotional labor when I have to perform solicitous helpfulness no matter how actually exhausted I feel in order to earn a wage from my employer, then it's also emotional labor when I have to mask my actual frustration and disappointment by finding the right soft, nonthreatening position from which to request a spouse's cooperation with some household task.
The line between managing your own emotions as an employee and managing the emotions of customers/clients is very thin. The same is true for social relations. Just because a wage isn't involved doesn't mean we aren't practicing the same thing, with the attendant alienation. I can accept that kinwork may be different because of reciprocal obligations involved, but domestic labor has been terribly one-sided, with only recent changes in awareness making a small dent in the gendering of this kind of labor.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 8:28 AM on November 27, 2018 [10 favorites]
The line between managing your own emotions as an employee and managing the emotions of customers/clients is very thin. The same is true for social relations. Just because a wage isn't involved doesn't mean we aren't practicing the same thing, with the attendant alienation. I can accept that kinwork may be different because of reciprocal obligations involved, but domestic labor has been terribly one-sided, with only recent changes in awareness making a small dent in the gendering of this kind of labor.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 8:28 AM on November 27, 2018 [10 favorites]
If sexual orientation worked that way, sure. But uh, it's not a choice.
I mean, if we are being super, brutally honest about this, there's a ton of women across America who are not sexually attracted to their spouses, either, especially as they do more and more of household and emotional labor for them while getting little in return, and there's been a lot more women over the last year finding that their orientation has been shifting somewhat, as more and more women simply don't want to put up with men's bullshit.
Political lesbianism kind of doesn't fit neatly into a lot of boxes, but there's quite a few women who stopped partnering/having sex with men and started partnering/having sex with women in the 60s and 70s and seem to have led relatively happy lives.
posted by corb at 9:44 AM on November 27, 2018 [7 favorites]
I mean, if we are being super, brutally honest about this, there's a ton of women across America who are not sexually attracted to their spouses, either, especially as they do more and more of household and emotional labor for them while getting little in return, and there's been a lot more women over the last year finding that their orientation has been shifting somewhat, as more and more women simply don't want to put up with men's bullshit.
Political lesbianism kind of doesn't fit neatly into a lot of boxes, but there's quite a few women who stopped partnering/having sex with men and started partnering/having sex with women in the 60s and 70s and seem to have led relatively happy lives.
posted by corb at 9:44 AM on November 27, 2018 [7 favorites]
*waving a hand* Uh, I--look, political lesbianism is a really different thing from "I am opting out of men," largely because it by definition involves redefining sexual orientation from "this is a descriptive rundown of my wants and desires" to "this is a political definition of the things that I think I ought to want." It muddies the game both for women who are actually sexually/romantically interested in other women and for women who want to set up families and households with other women irrespective of their actual sexual desires, and it has one hell of a problematic history when you look into the nitty gritty details.
(Political asexuality also very briefly popped up in at least one place in 1977, and I'm kind of glad now that it caught on: my descriptive lists of the things I actually want enable me to find other people who actually want me and what I represent in a way that lists of what people think they ought to want don't.)
I'm all for people choosing to organize their families and households around the most emotionally fulfilling relationships for them, and I mean, I don't at a gut level understand the difference between friendship and romance once the limerence wears off, but. Political lesbianism is not a good way to achieve that.
posted by sciatrix at 9:50 AM on November 27, 2018 [9 favorites]
(Political asexuality also very briefly popped up in at least one place in 1977, and I'm kind of glad now that it caught on: my descriptive lists of the things I actually want enable me to find other people who actually want me and what I represent in a way that lists of what people think they ought to want don't.)
I'm all for people choosing to organize their families and households around the most emotionally fulfilling relationships for them, and I mean, I don't at a gut level understand the difference between friendship and romance once the limerence wears off, but. Political lesbianism is not a good way to achieve that.
posted by sciatrix at 9:50 AM on November 27, 2018 [9 favorites]
Thinking about how to put this more succinctly and clearly...
Orientation is a way of describing what we want when we reach out for connection with another person, either sexually or in terms of the initial butterflies wanting of feelings like crushes. It's a way of describing what we want when we say we're hungry for a type of contact.
But humans hunger for a lot of things, and sometimes not everything we want is available to us or not available from any one person. So sometimes we reach out to get our needs met in different ways--our emotional needs and connections met by romantic partners, or friends, or sexual partners, or family and kin, or or or or. And what other people are willing to invest in us, that matters--if we find that what we want is never available when we reach out, if it's being barred to us not by an external boundary but because it doesn't seem to be present, we as humans can and do think about different ways to structure our lives to get our emotional and physical and sexual needs for intimacy and contact met. We have an amazing variety of ways that different cultures and different individual people have devised to fill that hunger for connection. (Sometimes we tie sex to those things, and sometimes we don't, and that goes for pretty much every combination of genders you can imagine across cultures.)
When we talk about setting up relationships to feed one another with that desire for human connection, though, it's also important to note that individual dyadic relationships can be fragile and that stress can fray them. Those dyadic relationships need tending and work to flourish. So human cultures tend to grow up around providing structure to those privileged relationships in order to allow them to be structured and maintained. The problem is that most cultures have historically provided that kind of support along kin lines, and that Western society has shifted away from that along the (quite correct) notion that if your kin is kind of shitty, you're totally fucked by that system if you can't find another source of support. Except that a lot of the societal prioritization of supportive relationships has then shifted instead to romantic (assumed sexual, assumed monogamous) relationships instead. Which tends to center the need for support around a single dyadic romantic relationship instead of spreading it around more diffuse connections, and if it breaks... or your romantic relationship isn't equally distributing affection and support and connective maintenance....
well, you're shit out of luck.
I think the way to go about changing this isn't to change what we mean by orientation, because I don't think that losing the clarity of describing exactly what you want is a way forward. (At least, unless you pick up a mixed-attraction model, but that's something that doesn't seem to be very popular outside of ace and bi/pan communities, where desire-for-connection and desire-for-sex are less likely to align.) I think that what you want instead is to support people who reorganize how they prioritize and invest sexual and emotional connection.
And I think that is happening to some extent, but I think the conversation usually ends at "step back and disinvest from what is not working" and doesn't always include "step forward in this direction and find people who want something similar to you so you can find at least one compatible person," especially for straight people. I think that needs to be a bigger part of our conversations about emotional labor in the MeFite-style definition, and I think the need for a term to describe "the effort we put into maintaining our connections to one another" has yanked the term "emotional labor" to attach itself to because of that cultural shift towards choosing our connections to one another and looking for connection and yield in response to emotional investment.
posted by sciatrix at 10:14 AM on November 27, 2018 [14 favorites]
Orientation is a way of describing what we want when we reach out for connection with another person, either sexually or in terms of the initial butterflies wanting of feelings like crushes. It's a way of describing what we want when we say we're hungry for a type of contact.
But humans hunger for a lot of things, and sometimes not everything we want is available to us or not available from any one person. So sometimes we reach out to get our needs met in different ways--our emotional needs and connections met by romantic partners, or friends, or sexual partners, or family and kin, or or or or. And what other people are willing to invest in us, that matters--if we find that what we want is never available when we reach out, if it's being barred to us not by an external boundary but because it doesn't seem to be present, we as humans can and do think about different ways to structure our lives to get our emotional and physical and sexual needs for intimacy and contact met. We have an amazing variety of ways that different cultures and different individual people have devised to fill that hunger for connection. (Sometimes we tie sex to those things, and sometimes we don't, and that goes for pretty much every combination of genders you can imagine across cultures.)
When we talk about setting up relationships to feed one another with that desire for human connection, though, it's also important to note that individual dyadic relationships can be fragile and that stress can fray them. Those dyadic relationships need tending and work to flourish. So human cultures tend to grow up around providing structure to those privileged relationships in order to allow them to be structured and maintained. The problem is that most cultures have historically provided that kind of support along kin lines, and that Western society has shifted away from that along the (quite correct) notion that if your kin is kind of shitty, you're totally fucked by that system if you can't find another source of support. Except that a lot of the societal prioritization of supportive relationships has then shifted instead to romantic (assumed sexual, assumed monogamous) relationships instead. Which tends to center the need for support around a single dyadic romantic relationship instead of spreading it around more diffuse connections, and if it breaks... or your romantic relationship isn't equally distributing affection and support and connective maintenance....
well, you're shit out of luck.
I think the way to go about changing this isn't to change what we mean by orientation, because I don't think that losing the clarity of describing exactly what you want is a way forward. (At least, unless you pick up a mixed-attraction model, but that's something that doesn't seem to be very popular outside of ace and bi/pan communities, where desire-for-connection and desire-for-sex are less likely to align.) I think that what you want instead is to support people who reorganize how they prioritize and invest sexual and emotional connection.
And I think that is happening to some extent, but I think the conversation usually ends at "step back and disinvest from what is not working" and doesn't always include "step forward in this direction and find people who want something similar to you so you can find at least one compatible person," especially for straight people. I think that needs to be a bigger part of our conversations about emotional labor in the MeFite-style definition, and I think the need for a term to describe "the effort we put into maintaining our connections to one another" has yanked the term "emotional labor" to attach itself to because of that cultural shift towards choosing our connections to one another and looking for connection and yield in response to emotional investment.
posted by sciatrix at 10:14 AM on November 27, 2018 [14 favorites]
I have no idea how to popularize those concepts for older straight women, though, so.... uh, mazel tov if you can?
posted by sciatrix at 10:16 AM on November 27, 2018
posted by sciatrix at 10:16 AM on November 27, 2018
hi I have been thinking very intensely about how to restructure intimacy and relationships since 2008
got no answers, but I got a whole lot of questions and opinions :D
posted by sciatrix at 10:25 AM on November 27, 2018 [9 favorites]
got no answers, but I got a whole lot of questions and opinions :D
posted by sciatrix at 10:25 AM on November 27, 2018 [9 favorites]
I have no idea how to popularize those concepts for older straight women, though
CroneIsland Village? (O Penso, near the end. Water. Orchard. Begin the beguines.)
posted by clew at 10:50 AM on November 27, 2018 [2 favorites]
Crone
posted by clew at 10:50 AM on November 27, 2018 [2 favorites]
On the other hand, both of those require a high degree of investment and potentially a lot of life-altering commitment. How do you provide paths forward that are attractive to people in all life stages and who may already have some existing obligations that make commune building difficult?
posted by sciatrix at 11:03 AM on November 27, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by sciatrix at 11:03 AM on November 27, 2018 [2 favorites]
I actually do find it genuinely interesting because this is such a thing that I have seen memes on a regular basis on Tumblr that boil down to "bisexual woman professes being much more interested in fictional men than most real (badly-behaved) men and much more interested in real women than in most (badly-written) fictional women", and I think it basically reflects on how many social consequences there still are that this does not actually seem to be reflected in these same women only opting to date women. When the women who do actually have a choice talk abstractly about who they'd rather date, at least among people I've known, those preferences do actually reflect this being a valued thing. It's just that there are other complications that don't make it a slam-dunk.
posted by Sequence at 11:05 AM on November 27, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by Sequence at 11:05 AM on November 27, 2018 [8 favorites]
How do you provide paths forward that are attractive to people in all life stages and who may already have some existing obligations that make commune building difficult?
I feel like the barriers to a lot of people in choosing communes are not just their existing obligations but rather the perceived lack of permanency. I think a lot of us have known or read about communes that have started well and gone bust after at best the second generation. So it's kind of hard to uproot your life for something that you're not sure will work out, or you're not sure will be there for you in old age just as it will for you when you are young. I feel like I know a lot of women of all life stages that would run, not walk, for some kind of commune more permanent than a group house, with like, clearly defined roles and expectations.
posted by corb at 11:16 AM on November 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
I feel like the barriers to a lot of people in choosing communes are not just their existing obligations but rather the perceived lack of permanency. I think a lot of us have known or read about communes that have started well and gone bust after at best the second generation. So it's kind of hard to uproot your life for something that you're not sure will work out, or you're not sure will be there for you in old age just as it will for you when you are young. I feel like I know a lot of women of all life stages that would run, not walk, for some kind of commune more permanent than a group house, with like, clearly defined roles and expectations.
posted by corb at 11:16 AM on November 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
Honestly, I have found the extended sense somewhat problematic because it has sometimes seemed to be less about feminism and more about upholding traditional housewifery
To me, part of the point of feminism is that one can choose which things one wants to do and which traditions one wants to continue—also that the work of connecting people and upholding that thing we call "society" can and should be divided up among all the people, not just the women people. Patriarchy hurts everyone when it leads us to shunt certain types of tasks or thought processes (many of which fall under the extended definition of emotional labor) to women and leaves men lonely, without these social skills or deep connections. See previously on men and previously on women.
But the reality is that whether one chooses these obligations for oneself or is opted into them by others, some needs do exist that are inescapable and can't just be opted out of by everyone, or that have to be negotiated in some way, and that's where a lot of inequality crops up. See also: end-of-life care, caregiving, child care. Then there are the things people think they can opt out of but that leave everyone poorer for it if no one does them: kin-keeping, social graces, other small courtesies and remembrances. Playing the role of superwoman or superman with no social responsibilities is, in fact, just that: a fiction. These things get done, but if you're not noticing them in your life, it's probably the case that someone else is doing them.
And that, of course, can be where class comes into play, because people of significant means are often able to pretend that they're self-actualized to the point that they're beyond these needs. But actually they're just able to pay for a higher level of care, to the point that they can outsource some things that they still want but that traditionally someone in a family has to both do and devote thought to managing, e.g., cleaning, decorating, purchasing, even taking dictation for holiday cards. With enough money, you can separate the care and managing part from the doing part and hire it done. So they become real paid work for someone else, but the thought process and emotional labor component don't necessarily go away for you just because you've done that.
One thing that I read said even the work of calling the maid to clean the bathtub is too much. It’s burdensome. I felt there is really, in this work, no social-class perspective. There are many more maids than there are people who find it burdensome to pick up the telephone to ask them to clean your tub.
That's why this kind of feels like an abstraction, not an argument in good faith about class. It's easy to dismiss doing this in this way: "Oh, you have it so hard." It's more difficult to engage with the subject and dissect what is actually happening in that transaction, and where the pieces of the labor, emotional and otherwise, actually go. Class differences here are absolutely important, and thinking about it that way actually helps highlight why emotional labor, as we're extending the definition in a domestic sense, is real and a real issue—because these are things that are separated out by many people who can afford to do so. Those who can't, which is most of us, are doing two whole layers of things at once, and that's important to see and make visible.
posted by limeonaire at 11:19 AM on November 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
To me, part of the point of feminism is that one can choose which things one wants to do and which traditions one wants to continue—also that the work of connecting people and upholding that thing we call "society" can and should be divided up among all the people, not just the women people. Patriarchy hurts everyone when it leads us to shunt certain types of tasks or thought processes (many of which fall under the extended definition of emotional labor) to women and leaves men lonely, without these social skills or deep connections. See previously on men and previously on women.
But the reality is that whether one chooses these obligations for oneself or is opted into them by others, some needs do exist that are inescapable and can't just be opted out of by everyone, or that have to be negotiated in some way, and that's where a lot of inequality crops up. See also: end-of-life care, caregiving, child care. Then there are the things people think they can opt out of but that leave everyone poorer for it if no one does them: kin-keeping, social graces, other small courtesies and remembrances. Playing the role of superwoman or superman with no social responsibilities is, in fact, just that: a fiction. These things get done, but if you're not noticing them in your life, it's probably the case that someone else is doing them.
And that, of course, can be where class comes into play, because people of significant means are often able to pretend that they're self-actualized to the point that they're beyond these needs. But actually they're just able to pay for a higher level of care, to the point that they can outsource some things that they still want but that traditionally someone in a family has to both do and devote thought to managing, e.g., cleaning, decorating, purchasing, even taking dictation for holiday cards. With enough money, you can separate the care and managing part from the doing part and hire it done. So they become real paid work for someone else, but the thought process and emotional labor component don't necessarily go away for you just because you've done that.
One thing that I read said even the work of calling the maid to clean the bathtub is too much. It’s burdensome. I felt there is really, in this work, no social-class perspective. There are many more maids than there are people who find it burdensome to pick up the telephone to ask them to clean your tub.
That's why this kind of feels like an abstraction, not an argument in good faith about class. It's easy to dismiss doing this in this way: "Oh, you have it so hard." It's more difficult to engage with the subject and dissect what is actually happening in that transaction, and where the pieces of the labor, emotional and otherwise, actually go. Class differences here are absolutely important, and thinking about it that way actually helps highlight why emotional labor, as we're extending the definition in a domestic sense, is real and a real issue—because these are things that are separated out by many people who can afford to do so. Those who can't, which is most of us, are doing two whole layers of things at once, and that's important to see and make visible.
posted by limeonaire at 11:19 AM on November 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
Arlie Hochschild: Emotional labor, as I introduced the term in The Managed Heart, is the work, for which you’re paid, which centrally involves trying to feel the right feeling for the job. This involves evoking and suppressing feelings. Some jobs require a lot of it, some a little of it.
I guess I never connected very much with this definition of emotional labor because I just figured that successfully faking the correct emotion to please your employers was part of working for everyone, at least in the US. I guess that's just a very cynical view point, but I really can't imagine that there are any jobs that allow people to be 100% genuine, 100% of the time, and also still involve day-in, day-out, month-out, month-out, labor.
I connected more to the Metafilter definition of emotional labor because it seemed like an evocative term for something that was a poison in my home growing up, for the way my mother felt about it and vocally martyred herself, and then for me as a cis-het woman in a long-term relationship with a man, trying not to repeat the terrible patterns I was raised in. The Metafilter thread and the term helped out my thinking quite a bit.
posted by Squeak Attack at 11:53 AM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
I guess I never connected very much with this definition of emotional labor because I just figured that successfully faking the correct emotion to please your employers was part of working for everyone, at least in the US. I guess that's just a very cynical view point, but I really can't imagine that there are any jobs that allow people to be 100% genuine, 100% of the time, and also still involve day-in, day-out, month-out, month-out, labor.
I connected more to the Metafilter definition of emotional labor because it seemed like an evocative term for something that was a poison in my home growing up, for the way my mother felt about it and vocally martyred herself, and then for me as a cis-het woman in a long-term relationship with a man, trying not to repeat the terrible patterns I was raised in. The Metafilter thread and the term helped out my thinking quite a bit.
posted by Squeak Attack at 11:53 AM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
I know she's widely credited with having created the term, but the truth is she didn't. The oldest usage of it that I've come across was in Sinclair Lewis's 1920 novel Main Street, in which it's used in the context of the main character deciding whether or not to undertake a difficult conversation with another character. I'm curious to know how old the term actually is.
That may be using the term, but it doesn't sound like he invented the concept in the same way. It sounds like a passing use of a phrase without the hard work of conceptualization, operationalization, and validity testing, not to mention peer review.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:54 AM on November 27, 2018 [4 favorites]
That may be using the term, but it doesn't sound like he invented the concept in the same way. It sounds like a passing use of a phrase without the hard work of conceptualization, operationalization, and validity testing, not to mention peer review.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:54 AM on November 27, 2018 [4 favorites]
I guess I never connected very much with this definition of emotional labor because I just figured that successfully faking the correct emotion to please your employers was part of working for everyone, at least in the US. I guess that's just a very cynical view point, but I really can't imagine that there are any jobs that allow people to be 100% genuine, 100% of the time, and also still involve day-in, day-out, month-out, month-out, labor.
I think faking emotion vs %100 genuine is a false dichotomy at work or in public, and the missing middle is being allowed to keep your emotions private most of the time because you're doing something that can be measurably successful even if the customer doesn't have any information about your emotions. And the something can include quite a lot of personal service -- seamstress fitting, etc. The cheery chatty let it all hang out ideal is, AFAIK, a US postwar style.
posted by clew at 12:05 PM on November 27, 2018 [2 favorites]
I think faking emotion vs %100 genuine is a false dichotomy at work or in public, and the missing middle is being allowed to keep your emotions private most of the time because you're doing something that can be measurably successful even if the customer doesn't have any information about your emotions. And the something can include quite a lot of personal service -- seamstress fitting, etc. The cheery chatty let it all hang out ideal is, AFAIK, a US postwar style.
posted by clew at 12:05 PM on November 27, 2018 [2 favorites]
Yes, I realized after I posted that I shouldn't have used hyperbole, but I still don't quite get it. The seamstress is expected to be calm, professional (approachable and friendly?), and reliable, even is she isn't feeling that way that particular day. The seamstress can't be robotic.
The flight attendant is expected to serve cheerfully (which is not information about his/her emotions but rather is a demeanor) but also the pilot is probably expected to be polite and professional to their co-pilot, even if they can't stand being cooped up with that other person for yet another five hour flight. The pilot is expected to be professional even if their personal life is a wreck and they feel like sobbing into their hat.
In my conception, work is a place for having an appropriate professional demeanor, not a place for ever conveying information about your personal emotions. Unless you're an actor, I guess.
posted by Squeak Attack at 12:16 PM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
The flight attendant is expected to serve cheerfully (which is not information about his/her emotions but rather is a demeanor) but also the pilot is probably expected to be polite and professional to their co-pilot, even if they can't stand being cooped up with that other person for yet another five hour flight. The pilot is expected to be professional even if their personal life is a wreck and they feel like sobbing into their hat.
In my conception, work is a place for having an appropriate professional demeanor, not a place for ever conveying information about your personal emotions. Unless you're an actor, I guess.
posted by Squeak Attack at 12:16 PM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
I think the "Some jobs require a lot of it, some a little of it" would address that. Like, I've worked where you could clock in and process your row of zinc tanks and clock out while barely talking to anyone all day. "Professional demeanor" means don't get into a fist fight with someone. I can see it being of value to distinguish that from what's expected of a flight attendant who is constantly interacting directly with customers.
posted by RobotHero at 12:34 PM on November 27, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by RobotHero at 12:34 PM on November 27, 2018 [6 favorites]
there's been a lot more women over the last year finding that their orientation has been shifting somewhat, as more and more women simply don't want to put up with men's bullshit.
Sometimes I feel like Chris Evans is all that stands these days between me and cancelling my subscription to heterosexuality.
posted by praemunire at 2:08 PM on November 27, 2018 [8 favorites]
Sometimes I feel like Chris Evans is all that stands these days between me and cancelling my subscription to heterosexuality.
posted by praemunire at 2:08 PM on November 27, 2018 [8 favorites]
I think the issue is whether these expectations are "appropriate". It's one case to expect a surgeon to maintain emotional distance from whom they're operating on, it's another case to expect your restaurant waiter/waitress to be "cheerful" if their labor is being exploited without appropriate compensation. For example the issue of tipping culture which is less common outside of North America, more cordial restaurant service is the norm. So where do you draw such lines?
Which is to say on the meta level, what expectations on emotional labor are appropriate? Just as on one extreme society could have you make your work your life and identity, the other extreme is to train people to completely separate their personal and professional spheres. In white-collar creative work, many would find this also anathema--they would argue that such a dichotomy would be detrimental to their productivity.
posted by polymodus at 3:13 PM on November 27, 2018
Which is to say on the meta level, what expectations on emotional labor are appropriate? Just as on one extreme society could have you make your work your life and identity, the other extreme is to train people to completely separate their personal and professional spheres. In white-collar creative work, many would find this also anathema--they would argue that such a dichotomy would be detrimental to their productivity.
posted by polymodus at 3:13 PM on November 27, 2018
I gather Hochschild was trying to acknowledge something that often wasn't acknowledged as labour. Say you compare being a firefighter and a waitress, maybe firefighting is more demanding physically, but you want some way to describe this avenue along which waiting is more demanding.
I think there is also a hunger for a name for the management and anticipation of other people's emotions, which is demonstrated by people being so quick to use "emotional labour" for that purpose. Hochschild might classify that as "mental labour" but it is mental labour that relies on emotional intelligence.
posted by RobotHero at 4:23 PM on November 27, 2018 [5 favorites]
I think there is also a hunger for a name for the management and anticipation of other people's emotions, which is demonstrated by people being so quick to use "emotional labour" for that purpose. Hochschild might classify that as "mental labour" but it is mental labour that relies on emotional intelligence.
posted by RobotHero at 4:23 PM on November 27, 2018 [5 favorites]
And I had to look up emotional intelligence just in case I was misusing that, and there's a mention there of it encompassing both "interpersonal intelligence" and "intrapersonal intelligence."
If it's too late to return to Hochschild's meaning for emotional labour, then we might subdivide it into interpersonal and intrapersonal emotional labour.
posted by RobotHero at 5:17 PM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
If it's too late to return to Hochschild's meaning for emotional labour, then we might subdivide it into interpersonal and intrapersonal emotional labour.
posted by RobotHero at 5:17 PM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
Sometimes I feel like Chris Evans is all that stands these days between me and cancelling my subscription to heterosexuality.
"gay except for fictional characters" is a valid sexuality and needs more visibility imho.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:58 AM on November 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
"gay except for fictional characters" is a valid sexuality and needs more visibility imho.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:58 AM on November 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Chris Evans isn't fictional.
posted by RobotHero at 10:34 AM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by RobotHero at 10:34 AM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
I know that may be hard to believe.
posted by RobotHero at 10:54 AM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by RobotHero at 10:54 AM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
"gay except for fictional characters" is a valid sexuality and needs more visibility imho.
I am reminded of a teenager who is very into fanfic I spoke with relatively recently, who said they were in theory bisexual, but all the heterosexual boys at their high school seemed kind of mean and engaged in behavior that they would not want to put up with, so they were effectively gay in practice despite writing long porny accounts of male-oriented fanfic. It seemed this was not super uncommon right now.
posted by corb at 11:09 AM on November 28, 2018 [8 favorites]
I am reminded of a teenager who is very into fanfic I spoke with relatively recently, who said they were in theory bisexual, but all the heterosexual boys at their high school seemed kind of mean and engaged in behavior that they would not want to put up with, so they were effectively gay in practice despite writing long porny accounts of male-oriented fanfic. It seemed this was not super uncommon right now.
posted by corb at 11:09 AM on November 28, 2018 [8 favorites]
If Chris Evans didn’t exist lesbians would have to create him.LMAO! speaking of concept creep!
posted by reseeded at 11:56 AM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
It makes a lot of sense that Hochschild is focused on class. Using her original definition of emotional labor, the need to perform emotional labor is very class dependent. A sought after surgeon has to deal with patients and their families, but if she is rude, oh well, that's not the thing people care most about. A receptionist or a server won't last long if they are gruff. One of the least powerful or respected occupations, sex work, is all about emotional labor.
But I'm not sure what she's on about with her thing of "oh is it so hard to call the maid?". The point is the inequality. Should a female VP at some big company just shut up if she makes only $250k instead of $300k like her male counterpart? She's already so rich!
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:17 PM on November 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
But I'm not sure what she's on about with her thing of "oh is it so hard to call the maid?". The point is the inequality. Should a female VP at some big company just shut up if she makes only $250k instead of $300k like her male counterpart? She's already so rich!
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:17 PM on November 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
Just shut up isn't exactly how I would put it, no. But I believe that $250k annually is a level of wealth that's immoral to have under our current conditions, and the inequality between hypothetical maid and hypothetical VP is orders of magnitude more morally wrong, and urgently so, than the inequality between VP and CEO.
posted by clavicle at 11:10 AM on November 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by clavicle at 11:10 AM on November 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
For the specific topic of emotional labour, it isn't even about an imbalance of money, but what demands are placed upon how you compose yourself? Like, if you can cuss out the maid because you're having a bad day and face no consequences, versus what would happen to the maid if she acted the same way. And if an executive is making 50k less than her male counterpart, that's a different question, except to what extent is it because she's an "emotional bitch" while he's a "temperamental genius" or whatever.
posted by RobotHero at 11:35 AM on November 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by RobotHero at 11:35 AM on November 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
And if an executive is making 50k less than her male counterpart, that's a different question
Right, I am not trying to put that under the emotional labor umbrella. Just pointing out that an issue is still worth addressing even if you're not the person who is objectively the worst off.
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:53 AM on November 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
Right, I am not trying to put that under the emotional labor umbrella. Just pointing out that an issue is still worth addressing even if you're not the person who is objectively the worst off.
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:53 AM on November 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
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