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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

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dude. just... no. for fuck's sake.

You are kind of exemplifying the attitude that the parent comment complains about. You have standards that are not being met, but instead of communicating clearly you just try to shame the other person. I understand communicating such simple things is not as simple as the thing would make it seem. In fact, the point of the article was that such work is unappreciated. But just because it's not appreciated it doesn't m…

Let me be more clear, then: saying that a female author is sexist for expecting her partner to take an equal share of the emotional labor of their shared life is beyond disgusting. I can't say I'm at all surprised to see that sort of mens-rightsism around ycombinator, though.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#72
post #6

I found this comic on the topic also insightful: “You should’ve asked” https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/

I find that comic sexist; many men are house managers. Not all, but to assume that men are passive parents is insulting.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#73
This article focuses on one kind of labor needed for a family to operate, but doesn't really talk about the others, such as the kind that bring in money. Equal share of labor is very important, but I don't think it's wise to expect a 50/50 split on every individual kind of labor. Theres been a lot of push back in society against the dynamic where one spouse goes to a paying job, and the other takes care of household matters, but how is that not an equal split of family labor? If both spouses work paying jobs, then it makes sense to start dividing household matters more.

That being said, I think parent-child interaction is something that needs to always be a 50/50 split, because it's good for the child.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#74
This sounds like someone with an anxious attachment style that is terrified of expressing her needs and who has grown resentful of a lifetime of suppressing her feelings for the approval of others.

Notice how she resents that her husband wants appreciation for the things he does, and yet she doesn't feel appreciated?

This is a dynamic they co-created and one they could work on together.

Healing the underlying stuff that is driving this resent would lead to a happier more connected experience for her (and in the process, I imagine he would become more of what she wants).

It's not her fault, he appears to not know what really drives conflict, so no matter how much he does, it will never be enough -- until he makes an effort to learn how to make his woman feel seen and understood and safe with all of her emotions.

Most people lack these skills as they never had them modeled.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#75
post #6

I found this comic on the topic also insightful: “You should’ve asked” https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/

Humans are not telepaths.

Two humans won't have the same expectations for things.

Yes you should not have simply asked. You should have communicated your expectations about household work and discussed with your partner. And if you're not compatible split-up. You don't have to be part of a couple to be happy.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#76
post #48

This is a highly charged, and - frankly sexist - article about how people have expectations that are unfulfilled because they simply don't communicate with each other . There isn't a single example of this "emotional labor" in the article, where a consideration is given to "the man" about how much labor it takes, emotionally, to keep up with someone who has high expectations for their environment, but does not commun…

>>There isn't a single example of this "emotional labor" in the article, where a consideration is given to "the man" about how much labor it takes, emotionally, to keep up with someone who has high expectations for their environment, but does not communicate those expectations in a way that forms consensus - instead, opting to 'shame the man' for not having the same standards. Not to mention the 'emotional labor' of…

I think you and the parent comment have completely missed her point.

> Not to mention the 'emotional labor' of working full time to keep a family afloat.

She mentions this exact same defense that many men say. You also don't know their income breakdown; she has a job, she's freelanced, while also making household and familial decisions.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#77
I simplify can't imagine bearing the emotional burden of having to call someone to "deep clean" my bathroom. These are the woe-is-me thoughts of the top tier of society.

Anyways this is a classic example of expecting someone to be able to read your mind simply because they love you. One person is uptight about micromanaging their environment, the other more laid back. You talk about that and find an equilibrium. I would be very hurt as her husband to find she had communicated that to the world without communicating it to him.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#78
This article is flamebait. The title is "Women Aren't Nags", below a big middle finger to the reader, so it's not like it tries to hide it. And much of the article is saying that men are emotionally immature or worse.

For example, she asks her husband to get the house clean for mother's day. He assumes she meant what she asked for, and does a deep clean of the bathrooms himself. But

> What I wanted was for him to ask friends on Facebook for a recommendation, call four or five more services, do the emotional labor I would have done if the job had fallen to me.

But for a single cleaning, just doing it himself was more direct and effective, so what he did isn't unreasonable. But it didn't go through the specific process she didn't mention but was really what she secretly wanted. So there has been a failure of communication here.

Other examples also show similar problems with understanding and communication:

> 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.

One person's "willful ignorance" may be another's blind spot. Some people just don't notice some types of mess. An extreme form of this is sometimes called "clutter blindness" (itself a minor form of hoarding), but it exists in moderate forms too, leading to disagreements like this one. Neither the author nor her husband is in the wrong here, but they both need to do more to understand the other.

And about "emotional labor":

> If I were to point out random emotional labor duties I carry out—reminding him of his family’s birthdays [etc.]

Some people care more about those things than others. Unless he asked her to do that for him, it would probably be fine if she didn't - after all, what would happen if they weren't married? I'd recommend she stop doing it - not as "see how you get along without me!" to spite him, but as an honest experiment that both she and her husband might learn from. It's possible she'd see how his life works just fine without those reminders, or that he'd see how those things are important and start to do them himself.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are kind of exemplifying the attitude that the parent comment complains about. You have standards that are not being met, but instead of communicating clearly you just try to shame the other person. I understand communicating such simple things is not as simple as the thing would make it seem. In fact, the point of the article was that such work is unappreciated. But just because it's not appreciated it doesn't m…

Let me be more clear, then: saying that a female author is sexist for expecting her partner to take an equal share of the emotional labor of their shared life is beyond disgusting. I can't say I'm at all surprised to see that sort of mens-rightsism around ycombinator, though.

She's not sexist for expecting those things, she's sexist for trying to attribute her Husbands lack of those qualities to all male partners on the basis they are men.

Yeah, he's lazy. But that's for him to fix - not the male gender.

Also - It's not his responsibility to shoulder the burden of her emotions. It is his responsibility to get the things done that were agreed upon between the two of them. If she is not happy with the arrangement, they need to come to a new agreement.

The only direct failing I see is the main example she gave, he should have just picked a damn cleaning service. Everything else is a sexist, emotion fueled diatribe about how men are emotional vacuums and don't help out enough around the house.

Re: How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality

#80
Judging by the remarks on this thread, not many of you are interested - but those of you who are may find this compiled PDF of a Metafilter thread valuable:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0UUYL6kaNeBTDBRbkJkeUtabEk...

I can say without hesitation that learning more about emotional labor (and reading that PDF in particular) has helped me be a better husband and father.

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