How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality • Hacker News Board

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#211

Post by metaphorm » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:39 PM UTC

this is the demogaphics page from the Harper's Bazaar media kit

http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harp...

they push heavily that their target audience is affluent, college-educated women. they therefore want to run content that appeals to this demographic. the editors of this magazine believe that that demographic finds articles like this one appealing.

these are the primary advertisers purchasing spots in Harper's Bazaar

http://www.harpersbazaarmediakit.com/hotdata/publishers/harp...

the products that Harper's Bazaar advertisers want to sell to their audience of affluent, college educated women is primarily very expensive luxury/prestige brand names in the high fashion industry.

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these are a few other recent articles written by the author, Gemma Hartley

http://www.ravishly.com/depression-dirty-secret

http://www.ravishly.com/im-not-mother-when-i-travel-alone?pl...

http://www.ravishly.com/why-i-wont-make-my-daughter-play-nic...

http://amendo.com/8-essential-podcasts-will-help-master-life...

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finally, here are several other recent articles on this topic. they are similar in tone and content.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/08/women-gender-r...

http://jezebel.com/is-it-even-worthwhile-to-teach-men-to-val...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/psyched-in-san-francisco/why-w...

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#212

Post by troupe » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:40 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #29

This is a topic where the more I learned about it the more I opened my eyes to it and saw it happening on my own life. I'm very easy going and there isn't much I get too worked up about. My wife, on the other hand, is a meticulous planner. I could see her getting stressed out making decisions for a vacation. I realized that by not caring, I wasn't helping and offloading the burden to her. Now I truly didn't care if w…

I've tried that and it usually goes like this... :)

Her: Where are we going to eat? Me: Restuarant A. Her: But restaurant B has X. Me: Sounds good. Let's go to B. Her: But you wanted to go to A.

I think the trick may be deciding before it becomes a decision on her radar in the first place.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#213

Post by fatbird » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #38

nkrisc wrote: post #29

This is a topic where the more I learned about it the more I opened my eyes to it and saw it happening on my own life. I'm very easy going and there isn't much I get too worked up about. My wife, on the other hand, is a meticulous planner. I could see her getting stressed out making decisions for a vacation. I realized that by not caring, I wasn't helping and offloading the burden to her. Now I truly didn't care if w…

That resonates with me. But I struggle a lot. I feel like my wife's irrationality on some subjects forces us to both spend some of our very limited time here feeling anxious and negative. It's frustrating and feels very one sided. Why can't she meet me half way and stop being so anxious on half the events? Well.. because irrationality doesn't work that way; I get that. I think that true zen for me is finding a way to…

Your wife can meet you half way by getting some therapy for her anxiety disorder. I went to a CBT psychologist for four months to address General Anxiety Disorder, and it did a lot to make me aware of anxiety driven behaviours and teach me coping skills that were actually pretty easy to apply, in my case.

"Emotional efficiency" is probably not the best way to address this, but at root, if your wife's anxiety is causing problems for her and for your relationship, that's a treatable issue. It's as if your wife has a sprained ankle that's preventing you two from going on walks, and neither of you are addressing the sprain.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#214

Post by mercer » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

juancn wrote: post #210

This is housekeeper neurosis. She cares a lot about the house, he doesn't hence conflict, plus the fact that she essentially want's her husband to be able to read her mind. They should consider doing some psychotherapy. The article has a few interesting points about gender, but she stretches them almost to the breaking point. The call for budgets I get that as emotional labor goes, but the "he should know better and…

What appealed to me about this article was precisely the fact that it stuck close to experience and whenever it went 'broader' provided caveats. Your comment somehow strikes me as the opposite of all those qualities.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#215

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

tejohnso wrote: post #35

"If I were to point out random emotional labor duties I carry out—reminding him of his family’s birthdays, carrying in my head the entire school handbook and dietary guidelines for lunches, updating the calendar to include everyone’s schedules, asking his mother to babysit the kids when we go out, keeping track of what food and household items we are running low on, tidying everyone’s strewn about belongings, the une…

[deleted]

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#216

Post by zie » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #29

This is a topic where the more I learned about it the more I opened my eyes to it and saw it happening on my own life. I'm very easy going and there isn't much I get too worked up about. My wife, on the other hand, is a meticulous planner. I could see her getting stressed out making decisions for a vacation. I realized that by not caring, I wasn't helping and offloading the burden to her. Now I truly didn't care if w…

You say she is a meticulous planner, and maybe that's the case, but maybe you are missing the point(as is most of the other commenters here). the point isn't whether it's Restaurant A or B, the point is you have to make a decision about A OR B, or even going out to a restaurant at all.

Someone has to think about: lets go out for dinner tonight @ restaurant A. Women generally do that thinking, because like you said, you just don't care. The point is, she is still doing the emotional labor, because she has to think about dinner tonight for both of you, and if it should be a restaurant, or making it at home or whatever.

or TL;DR: She is still holding the responsibility of making sure you both eat dinner.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#217

Post by gkya » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

Mz wrote: post #144

didgeoridoo wrote: post #7

I'm not sure I buy this. In my experience at least, it all comes down to standards — it sounds like this woman has higher standards for what constitutes a "running household", and gets frustrated when her husband doesn't share those standards. It sounds like he would be content with boxes on the floor, dirty bathrooms, etc. When she asks him to raise the house to her standard, she is asking him to adopt her perspecti…

I was a homemaker for a couple of decades. So, I spent a great deal more time physically at home than my husband and the house was where most of my work occurred. When my husband left his dirty clothes on the floor, I could either live with the clutter and step over it or pick up after him. Either choice was still an imposition on me that lowered my quality of life. Furthermore, since doing laundry was one of my resp…

This whole topic mostly boils down to partner choice. If a person is messy, that person is messy. If you are tidy, and not willing to compromise, a messy person is not a good partner for you. It's going to be a pain point, he won't change, you won't change, people don't change. A relationship is a game of compromises. I don't know where are you from, but where I'm from there's a prevalent culture where people think that when they find a possible partner that fits some of their criteria, they can change him/her in the future, when they're married, to make a perfect significant-other; and I feel many commenters here have similar mindsets. This is insidious and toxic, and produces perennially unhappy relationships. If you won't love and accept a person as they are, better don't mess your life up, nor theirs.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#218

Post by hasbroslasher » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

BarkingChicken wrote: post #207

hasbroslasher wrote: post #191

Describing cleaning as emotional labour is weird to me. I'm fully on board with the "many women do lots of emotional labour that goes unnoticed" logic but to me cleaning is labour and that's that. It's a job, and it should be talked about as hard labour, not some mysterious emotional nebula that men avoid because of gendered conditioning. I think the danger here is that by conflating emotional labour and cleaning, we…

I think you might be missing the point. The gift that she wanted was the house cleaning service. She had already been planning/considering hiring someone anyway. The gift was that she would not have to do the work to find, vet, make the calls, research, arrange payment, schedule, etc. for this task. The gift was supposed to be him taking over that work. > The gift, for me, was not so much in the cleaning itself but t…

My response, then, is "Oh poor you! You have to call the proletarian house cleaners, rub shoulders with the 'help'! How difficult it must be."

Leftist cynicism aside: I'm talking more about the "socks on the floor, chair in the way, keeping the house in order mentally" side of things

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#219

Post by sctb » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

arkona wrote: post #142

> It was obvious that the box was in the way, that it needed to be put back. It would have been easy for him to just reach up and put it away, but instead he had stepped around it, willfully ignoring it for two days. It was up to me to tell him that he should put away something he got out in the first place. > “That’s the point,” I said, now in tears, “I don’t want to have to ask.” This kind of irrational thinking en…

Please try to be more civil and thoughtful when you comment here and leave out parts that clearly violate the guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#220

Post by nkrisc » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

zie wrote: post #216

nkrisc wrote: post #29

This is a topic where the more I learned about it the more I opened my eyes to it and saw it happening on my own life. I'm very easy going and there isn't much I get too worked up about. My wife, on the other hand, is a meticulous planner. I could see her getting stressed out making decisions for a vacation. I realized that by not caring, I wasn't helping and offloading the burden to her. Now I truly didn't care if w…

You say she is a meticulous planner, and maybe that's the case, but maybe you are missing the point(as is most of the other commenters here). the point isn't whether it's Restaurant A or B, the point is you have to make a decision about A OR B, or even going out to a restaurant at all. Someone has to think about: lets go out for dinner tonight @ restaurant A. Women generally do that thinking, because like you said, y…

You're exactly right, this was the point I was trying to make. I never realized this before. I used to only see it rationally, that she should choose since she cares and I don't. But then it turned into her always choosing and having to decide and plan it. Once I realized this is what was happening I made a conscious effort to ease that burden and take my share of the emotional labor. Of course choosing a restaurant is only a single, low-impact example.