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How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

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Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#351

Post by Mz »

gkya wrote: post #350
Mz wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans do that a lot too. I have done it and had it go sideways in public discussions. That really was the only explanation needed to straighten things out with me. The problem is that isn't what you said to me. Instead, you informed me of your discomfort and asked me to delete my remarks out of deference to your comfort.

You called your ex husband a pig, in responding to me. That was what I said I wanted you to remove, because I feel strong discomfort having caused someone I don't know at all getting insulted at in public. I'm still very uncomfortable with it and still, I'd be happy if you edited your comment to remove that particular word. Wrt the other issue, well, I've said I'm sorry enough times and all I've gotten was bias and a…

So, you are uncomfortable that my ex husband was insulted in public, though he was not named. But me being insulted in public is not a problem.

Every single remark here by you errs on the side of some man's feelings mattering a helluva lot more than mine. I am not implying you are a sexist, but your actions continue to err in a particular direction. If you don't like the impression that makes, you can just stop doing it and genuinely apologize to me instead of adding yet more faux apologies wherein you repeatedly act like I am somehow in the wrong.

If you speak English as a second language, it is totally fine to say "Whoops, I didn't mean to offend. English is my second language." It is not totally fine to tell someone else they are being offensive, they need to change their behavior and then excuse the misunderstanding based on your poor English. That isn't cool at all.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#352

Post by emodendroket »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #341
emodendroket wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that she felt like his attempt to do the task was pretty half-hearted.

Expectations are an opportunity for disappointment.

I mean think about it. If you were tasked at your job with evaluating venders, would you talk to just one, and then tell your boss it couldn't be done within the budget? Probably not.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#353

Post by ZenoArrow »

Mz wrote: post #345
ZenoArrow wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you intend to suggest with "given that this is an overwhelmingly male forum"?

I am the top ranked openly female member here. That observation is informed by long experience. In gendered discussions that get heated, the majority of people on HN will tend to side with the man or the male point of view. Once a man says or does something moderately problematic that is a stereotypically gendered issue, the odds are long against a woman getting a fair shake. Your choice to reply to me and accuse me…

> "I am the top ranked openly female member here. That observation is informed by long experience. In gendered discussions that get heated, the majority of people on HN will tend to side with the man or the male point of view."

With all due respect, on HN I don't care whether I'm replying to a man or a woman, someone young or old, someone who lives close or lives far away. I barely even look at usernames, and will often only do so if I'm replying to someone, or someone makes an interesting comment (good or bad). If you say you're the top ranked openly female member here, good for you, but it honestly makes no difference to me. If you've found yourself getting flak for being a woman, I'm sorry about that, there's no justification for that, but I suspect that many people are of a similar mindset to me and judge based on written content rather than background.

> "Your choice to reply to me and accuse me of making this a gendered issue instead of siding with me and letting them know that their remark is a sort that does not work well is completely consistent with that pattern."

I commented on your gender remark AND sided with you in the general discussion in the exact same comment. I did not take one side over another. How you could come to any other conclusion is beyond me. Here it is again:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15360339

EDIT: To the people downvoting Mz in this comment thread, can you not please, it's not warranted.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#354

Post by saint_fiasco »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #347
saint_fiasco wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but I think we are using different semantics. He technically did the cleaning. He screwed up because he didn't consider what the point of cleaning was (like you say, giving her wife a day off) and he just did something that he thought was approximately equivalent to what she literally asked. I call that "not really caring". If he cared, he would have realized he should have cleaned the day before an…

> "I call that "not really caring"." I call it "not really understanding". The cleaning was most likely more work than a few more phone calls to cleaners for quotes would've been. If it was about not caring then why wouldn't the husband put in the minimum effort and get in someone else to do the cleaning?

Because it was expensive and it goes against his pride to pay so much money for something he can do himself. Maybe he cared a lot about his self-image as a self-sufficient most-definitely-not-a-spoiled-rich person.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#355

Post by Footkerchief »

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…

I may be missing something fundamental, but what is the point of a cleaning service, if not a clean house? Is there some other benefit to be gained from a cleaning service? Why did it matter how the house got cleaned?

It's a normal and healthy part of relationships to come to an agreement about what tasks should be done, how thoroughly, and who should be responsible for them. It's something else entirely to stipulate the _means_ by which someone else should accomplish tasks. That's micromanagement, and it verges on an assault on human autonomy.

Maybe part of the concept of the gift was establishing an ongoing relationship with a cleaning service, but the article really makes it sound like a one-time concern.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#356

Post by ZenoArrow »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #354
ZenoArrow wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I call that "not really caring"." I call it "not really understanding". The cleaning was most likely more work than a few more phone calls to cleaners for quotes would've been. If it was about not caring then why wouldn't the husband put in the minimum effort and get in someone else to do the cleaning?

Because it was expensive and it goes against his pride to pay so much money for something he can do himself. Maybe he cared a lot about his self-image as a self-sufficient most-definitely-not-a-spoiled-rich person.

I'd suggest that's a massive stretch considering the lack of details about the husband's attitude towards money in the article. The only relevant information was him finding one particular quote too high. I don't think you can extrapolate a pattern of behaviour from that single data point.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#357

Post by gkya »

Mz wrote: post #351
gkya wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You called your ex husband a pig, in responding to me. That was what I said I wanted you to remove, because I feel strong discomfort having caused someone I don't know at all getting insulted at in public. I'm still very uncomfortable with it and still, I'd be happy if you edited your comment to remove that particular word. Wrt the other issue, well, I've said I'm sorry enough times and all I've gotten was bias and a…

So, you are uncomfortable that my ex husband was insulted in public, though he was not named. But me being insulted in public is not a problem. Every single remark here by you errs on the side of some man's feelings mattering a helluva lot more than mine. I am not implying you are a sexist, but your actions continue to err in a particular direction. If you don't like the impression that makes, you can just stop doing…

I've taken enough of this childish stuff. I did apologise because I was wrong, and I did say that you were offensive, because you were. You attack me and expect me to care about your feelings, and you attack the entire HN community and expect them to back you. I really repent having started this thread.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#358

Post by Mz »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #353
Mz wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the top ranked openly female member here. That observation is informed by long experience. In gendered discussions that get heated, the majority of people on HN will tend to side with the man or the male point of view. Once a man says or does something moderately problematic that is a stereotypically gendered issue, the odds are long against a woman getting a fair shake. Your choice to reply to me and accuse me…

> "I am the top ranked openly female member here. That observation is informed by long experience. In gendered discussions that get heated, the majority of people on HN will tend to side with the man or the male point of view." With all due respect, on HN I don't care whether I'm replying to a man or a woman, someone young or old, someone who lives close or lives far away. I barely even look at usernames, and will of…

Well, you are basically fighting with me (but not them) and your criticism of their remark was vastly more sympathetic than your criticisms of me. That is part and parcel of the pattern and it is incredibly insidious.

I didn't expect you to know who I am. Nonetheless, it remains true that men will notice remarks they feel are disrespectful of men and pounce on them, oblivious to the fact that it is a woman being ganged up on and only trying to defend herself from unfair criticism. And the ganging up on her is very much a gendered, problematic thing.

It puts a woman in a position of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I only mentioned my position as the top ranked woman here to advise you of my long standing firsthand experience. That's it. And yet it has become yet another reason for you to act like I am somehow doing something wrong.

This whole thing is off topic and a ridiculous, unfair derail. The odds are very high that others will join this debacle and it really won't matter how I handle it, I will still be framed as being in the wrong and also framed as making it a gendered issue rather than as having a right to rebut the original remark that started this nonsense.

Anyway, I am running a fever, so replying at all is probably rooted at least in part in poor judgment. So, for the record, I plan to bow out. Hacker News can have a brouhaha if it so desires. But there is probably zero good to be gained by me participating further in this utter and complete nonsense.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#359

Post by forgottenpass »

BarkingChicken wrote: post #240
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…

I think that one of the things I'm continuously disappointed in is that comments like this tend to get more exposure and agreement than the concept that the author is trying to bring to light. I get so excited to see discussion about these concepts, but then the idea gets ignored because the author isn't using exactly the right words. It really makes me feel even more isolated and unheard. Yes, communication is a ver…

But that's the term that's commonly applied to it

The terminology shapes the way people think about the topic. And people need to understand the issue to fix it. Otherwise you're just shotgun debugging.

and correcting what its called isn't fixing the issue

No, it doesn't. But presenting the issue poorly isn't helping fix it any faster, either. This entire conversation was largely avoidable had the article communicated better.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#360

Post by saint_fiasco »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #356
saint_fiasco wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it was expensive and it goes against his pride to pay so much money for something he can do himself. Maybe he cared a lot about his self-image as a self-sufficient most-definitely-not-a-spoiled-rich person.

I'd suggest that's a massive stretch considering the lack of details about the husband's attitude towards money in the article. The only relevant information was him finding one particular quote too high. I don't think you can extrapolate a pattern of behaviour from that single data point.

Throughout the whole article, the author gives the impression that her husband is a stereotypical man. According to stereotypes, typical men don't want to call "the guy" to repair things when they break, especially when it costs a lot of money.

To be honest, the author's culture is alien to me and I only have stereotypes (TV and movies, mostly) to go on.

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