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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

#191

Post by hasbroslasher »

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 obfuscate the true depth of what emotional labour is. Emotional labour what goes into having a mentally ill spouse, a child dying of cancer, a colleague or friend fighting through divorce or depression, the strain of a job that expects a positive mood when you're all wore out inside.

Cleaning is fixed by labour. Having a husband who doesn't clean, gets defensive, can't communicate, can't remember his fucking kids birthdays, etc. is fixed by emotional labour (or divorce). To me that sounds like the author married a person who's not accountable, doesn't share her standards about how labour should be divided, harbors gendered conceptions of how a household should be run, doesn't share her standards of cleanliness, doesn't share her standards for communication skills, etc.

So my response, in a nutshell, is that while this woman is right to push back against gendered standards of who does household work, it has nothing to do with emotional labor, per se. It has everything to do with the fact that she apparently picked a husband who is really hard to live with, or at least hard enough to live with that she's forced to write a tangential thinkpiece about it

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#192

Post by Mz »

ashark wrote: post #183
Mz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the author of the article states that communication is not happening effectively in her marriage in part due to gender norms influencing mental models and expectations. And I am telling you that effective communication in my marriage on that one detail took 16 years to finally achieve. Most of the comments here are pretty dismissive and attacking of the article and its author, while acting like she is just an unr…

I find altering environment to be much (like, much ) more effective than altering behavior. Clothes chronically on the floor somewhere[1]? That spot needs a hamper. Toddlers' toys all over the place and spouse vetoes throwing out like 80% of that junk? Bins, in child-locked cabinets. Time spent cleaning massive toy messes immediately down by well over half, for a one-time cost of a few dollars, time spent policing ho…

I'm a big fan of that approach. I recommend it often. But, at the end of the day, if your spouse is simply monstrously inconsiderate, you going out of your way to find environmental solutions is just more work on you to minimize problems that will never really go away without taking the bull by the horns and confronting your spouse about their bad habits. (Or, you know, divorce. That is the other way to stop getting crapped on by a consistently inconsiderate spouse.)

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#193

Post by dominotw »

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…

> if we went to restaurant A or restaurant B, so she always had to make the decision.

If this is considered some sort of labor then we are truly in golden age of human civilization.

Most people everywhere in the world would die to do this sort of labor.

Also why not do a coin flip , outsource the labor to a coin.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#194

Post by Strom »

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…

Well said. It was real clear to me when in the middle of the article there is the following line:

“That’s the point,” I said, now in tears, “I don’t want to have to ask.”

Either she has communication problems and is unwilling to have even one talk about her tidiness standards, or she has already tried that and he just ignores it.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#195

Post by klipt »

gyardley wrote: post #150
didgeoridoo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're arbitrarily privileging "giving a fuck" over "not giving a fuck". Try this: Alice wants Task X to be done. Bob does not care whether Task X is done. Let us stipulate that, if Task X is not done, nobody will be materially, objectively harmed. Alice says: because I want Task X, you will do Task X. Alice does not ask Bob's opinion on Task X, but rather assumes that Task X is inherently necessary, and ther…

It’s usually because not doing the task has very real negative consequences and due to the sexist nature of modern society the consequences fall most heavily on Alice, not on Bob. Don’t buy the nephews birthday cards? The relatives think badly of Alice, not Bob. Take your son out in mismatched or slightly too small clothes? People pass judgement on Alice, not Bob. When Bob doesn’t think something is necessary and Ali…

> Take your son out in mismatched or slightly too small clothes? People pass judgement on Alice, not Bob.

Or they'll just laugh it off with "I see daddy dressed you today". Meanwhile if Bob dresses his son impeccably, Alice will get all the credit.

If Bob keeps house instead of working overtime, Alice will get all the housekeeping credit and Bob will be judged for not being an effective breadwinner.

It's almost like societal gender roles can screw over both sexes.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#196

Post by ynniv »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #173

It is interesting to read the comments here and compare them to my own experience. I've been married for more than a couple of decades and recognized both the author's complaint and the responses of the people in the article. I have also participated with my wife in very similar discussions. Three things that I now believe, having lived through this, are that my wife and I see value and obligation differently (and pr…

Yes, the comments here assume that life outside of working for a paycheck is “preference”. I expect most commenters are unmarried, don’t have children, and think that money by itself solves problems. It seems like I was there not so long ago...

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#197

Post by dan00 »

zethraeus wrote: post #131
dan00 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't directly connect irrationality with anxiety. Sure, there's a connection between the rational and emotional parts in humans, but this doesn't mean that being anxious automatically means being irrational. Quite a few fears have their origin in the childhood, when the rational parts of the brain haven't been that developed, and perhaps that's the reason why these fears can have such a deep impact. When thes…

As someone who often has anxiety: that anxiety is often irrational. Extrapolating fears rooted in one environment to another in which there is no danger is: 1) very human 2) irrational.

I think my point is: yes, the fear is irrational, but you're not irrational because you have the fear. Or saying it the other way, you can't be just rational and the fear will disappear.

So it's quite unempathic to think about someone being irrational because he's anxiously, and you don't have anxiety because you're rational.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#198

Post by [deleted] »

dleslie wrote: post #177
seattle_spring wrote: post #85

I love working 10+ hours a day to pay for 100% of me and my fiancé's expenses, coming home, cooking dinner, and cleaning up everything while she studies for med school; going to bed early so I can do some shopping before work; and then being told I'm a useless man by some nobody with a shitty marriage on a website that's supposed to be about technology.

> on a website that's supposed to be about technology This is what irks me most. I come to Hacker News for the tech, and yet... This is here? What is this article doing on HN?

[deleted]

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#199

Post by seattle_spring »

d3ad1ysp0rk wrote: post #187
seattle_spring wrote: post #85

I love working 10+ hours a day to pay for 100% of me and my fiancé's expenses, coming home, cooking dinner, and cleaning up everything while she studies for med school; going to bed early so I can do some shopping before work; and then being told I'm a useless man by some nobody with a shitty marriage on a website that's supposed to be about technology.

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.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#200

Post by orthecreedence »

brighteyes wrote: post #114
EarthIsHome wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Socks laying on the floor doesn't affect people's health. You're missing the point. She mentions that the clean house isn't the goal, the clean house would "simply be a bonus" > complaining about her partner not telepathically reading her mind to "sense" her completely arbitrary standards She also makes the point that she has told him what she wants.

> You're missing the point. She mentions that the clean house isn't the goal, the clean house would "simply be a bonus" But all she actually asked for is the clean house, that's the communication problem here.

No, she asked for a cleaning service. Not a clean house.
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