Please Stop Calling Everything That Frustrates You Emotional Labor
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Re: Please Stop Calling Everything That Frustrates You Emotional Labor
#2Putting aside the misuse of the term, "emotional labor" as a problem strikes me as possibly the least significant of all problems faced by any people group in all of history. I wonder why we spend so much time and energy tackling these kinds of issues when there are so many more pressing problems (for example, the workplace fatality gap). If "emotional labor" is the next frontier for feminism, then feminism is a distraction and thus counterproductive.
Re: Please Stop Calling Everything That Frustrates You Emotional Labor
#3Previous related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15356760
Re: Please Stop Calling Everything That Frustrates You Emotional Labor
#4"Emotional labor" is a latest trend and it's going to be around for a moment. For the next few months, it'll be overused more and more frequently to describe an ever-growing set of things. Given some time, I'll probably start mentally filtering any comment containing the term.
See also: 'virtue signaling'.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=emotional%20labor...
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=virtue%20signalin...
Re: Please Stop Calling Everything That Frustrates You Emotional Labor
#5Putting aside the misuse of the term, "emotional labor" as a problem strikes me as possibly the least significant of all problems faced by any people group in all of history. I wonder why we spend so much time and energy tackling these kinds of issues when there are so many more pressing problems (for example, the workplace fatality gap). If "emotional labor" is the next frontier for feminism, then feminism is a dist…
This seems a bit dismissive from an intellectual point of view. The article even mentions some of the questions that were considered when the concept originated:
> Hochschild was also worried about the potential social and health side effects of asking people to manipulate their emotions for others for pay, day after day. How did this affect their well-being when they went home? Did it alienate them from their ability to gauge their authentic emotions when they clocked out and regained their autonomy? Are women judged differently for their emotional work than men are? How are the emotions of people of color judged more harshly at work than white workers’, and how is this leading to workplace inequality? Hochschild’s work anticipated the rich field of research on the booming low-wage, high-stress service sector many workers find themselves navigating today.
These are not trivialities, and it seems clear that early evidence of these phenomena would warrant further investigation.
Re: Please Stop Calling Everything That Frustrates You Emotional Labor
#6Putting aside the misuse of the term, "emotional labor" as a problem strikes me as possibly the least significant of all problems faced by any people group in all of history. I wonder why we spend so much time and energy tackling these kinds of issues when there are so many more pressing problems (for example, the workplace fatality gap). If "emotional labor" is the next frontier for feminism, then feminism is a dist…
The trick with Maslow's Hierarchy is that it's not a serial process. Problems can happen in parallel, and different combinations of problems can happen to different kinds of people. All of society is not carried up and down the pyramid in lockstep, as we can clearly see. This means it's really hard to define any objective "significance" to a problem. "Fundamental", sure; you can't worry about the cost of emotional labor if you're dead from hunger, or a workplace fatality as you suggest. But it's much harder to assert that that provides a complete ordering over "kinds of problems people have".
So, in short, I guess instead of defining the whole picture as a (probably) false dilemma, why not do both? All of these issues need addressing, and all of these issues need voices. To paraphrase the Horowitz story, there's no silver bullet here, so we need lots of lead ones.
Re: Please Stop Calling Everything That Frustrates You Emotional Labor
#7Putting aside the misuse of the term, "emotional labor" as a problem strikes me as possibly the least significant of all problems faced by any people group in all of history. I wonder why we spend so much time and energy tackling these kinds of issues when there are so many more pressing problems (for example, the workplace fatality gap). If "emotional labor" is the next frontier for feminism, then feminism is a dist…
Each person has their own concerns, and their actions and interests derive from these -- not yours.
If this kind of reaction is the next frontier of your commenting, well then commenting is a distraction and thus counterproductive.
Re: Please Stop Calling Everything That Frustrates You Emotional Labor
#8Putting aside the misuse of the term, "emotional labor" as a problem strikes me as possibly the least significant of all problems faced by any people group in all of history. I wonder why we spend so much time and energy tackling these kinds of issues when there are so many more pressing problems (for example, the workplace fatality gap). If "emotional labor" is the next frontier for feminism, then feminism is a dist…
Each person has their own concerns, and their actions and interests derive from these -- not yours. If this kind of reaction is the next frontier of your commenting, well then commenting is a distraction and thus counterproductive.
That's an awfully backhanded and snide way of insulting someone. Counterproductive? Why, because you don't like the point they're trying to make?
Re: Please Stop Calling Everything That Frustrates You Emotional Labor
#9Putting aside the misuse of the term, "emotional labor" as a problem strikes me as possibly the least significant of all problems faced by any people group in all of history. I wonder why we spend so much time and energy tackling these kinds of issues when there are so many more pressing problems (for example, the workplace fatality gap). If "emotional labor" is the next frontier for feminism, then feminism is a dist…
If "emotional labor" is the next frontier for feminism, feminists clearly have not paid attention to how the needs of labor are subordinated to the needs of capital
Re: Please Stop Calling Everything That Frustrates You Emotional Labor
#10This article makes a solid point, but I wonder if it's another case of fighting against popular connotation just like the word "hacker". Once an idiom gains popularity it doesn't matter if it's completely opposite its intended meaning, the populace wins (eg. "literally" or "I could care less").