In the 1950s, society inflicted these expectations on women about how they should maintain their families. Homes should be immaculate, children should be participating in all sorts of activities, etc. Now, we’re embracing the idea that men should carry their share of the domestic labor, but haven’t quite rejected old ideals about what a home should be run like. So we’re in a weird transition state where we’re trying to get men to do work that nobody really needs or wants to do.
How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality
261–270 of 449 posts
Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article never specified you, or your relationship. It used their relationship to discuss a topic that can often happen. You are feeling attacked, and I'm sure you have good reasons in your personal life to be upset, but your reaction is unreasonable here.
> Emotional labor is the unpaid job men still don't understand. That's the subtitle of the article. It doesn't say "some men." If I wrote an article that was titled, "software: the paid job women still don't understand," please do tell me how you would interpret that.
It's also outright wrong. Every single man has to handle all of his emotional labor himself. While not every single man is in a great place, I know many who live happy fulfilling lives, so that means they know fully well how to manage their emotional labor.
Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality
#263Based on its content, I'm surprised this made the #6 spot on the front page of HN, but now it seems to have disappeared altogether. I had to search to find it.
I would actually say this is on-topic, as per HN FAQ: “If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.” I’ve learned quite a bit through this article. I now even see a possibility that ingrained dynamics like these could have lead to our industry’s well known lack of gender diversity. It’s food for thought for sure, wouldn’t you agree?
Well I know at least 8 Google-Sexism posts got flagged to hell (every single one that didn't have flags disabled IIRC), so I'm curious why this one isn't.
Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
My relationship has this dynamic too for eating meals and other chores. The alternative IME is that I'll make a decision and then she complains about it. At which point we are both stuck with the hassle.
Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find that comic sexist; many men are house managers. Not all, but to assume that men are passive parents is insulting.
The comic's author addresses this: https://emmacliten.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/you-shouldve-... https://emmacliten.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/you-shouldve-... https://emmacliten.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/you-shouldve-...
I wonder if a similar comic showing that more women in western countries murder their infant children than men (mostly due to postpartum depression but factually accurate) would be regarded as valid if similar explanations were provided as above.
Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality
#266[deleted]
Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nomenclature question, why are we calling the work involved securing a vendor emotional labor? In any office this would just be called labor.
Basically, the term emotional labor gets used a lot to mean "women's work" and especially to refer to the largely invisible parts of what women are expected to do. I don't like that usage, but I usually don't bother to nitpick it. I do understand why this is kind of a hot topic and why the term emotional labor gets applied to it. I don't have a better solution. It seems like there simply isn't a good way to talk abou…
I think the economic term would by "economic externalities". That's used as well when, for example, a coal plant dumps sewage into a town's water source, and the town is then forced to clean it up. Someone has to pay for that, but the coal plant avoids the responsibility. We're starting to get past that as a society now, with coal plants being required to pay for the environmental damage they do, and it might be time to start noticing that "women's work" - childraising and housekeeping - is an unaccounted externality as well, that someone has to pay for.
Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nomenclature question, why are we calling the work involved securing a vendor emotional labor? In any office this would just be called labor.
I don't know, this is the first time I've really ever heard this term. If I had heard the term outside of this context, I would imagine it to mean "interactive/inter-communicative/social" work, instead of physical work, but it feels like there's some kind of historical/feminist context here that I'm not aware of.
It depends where you're reading, I guess. I've been hearing it a lot lately.
Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality
#269[deleted]
Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality
#270Describing 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…
We were looking for a new washer and dryer. Our friends moved and offered us their old units. I was amazed at how much stress this removed--not because of the monetary savings, but because it removed our need to make a decision about what to buy. I think that was the point of the article. The decision-making process is emotionally expensive and that is what she wanted as a gift.
Maybe I'm weird, but I don't find figuring out which product to buy a painful or emotionally draining experience. I rather enjoy researching different models and features, comparing and contrasting. How hard is that?