It finally ended after an hour, and afterward I realized I felt totally emotionally drained. I had spent the entire time reacting emotionally (internally), and then reacting mentally (externally). All that emotion, even if it was "inside", had been chewing away at me as a form of stress. I had to take an hour break from work to calm down. It did not feel good. "Emotional labor" might not have been the right phrase, but it sure felt like my emotions had just unloaded a 25-foot box truck.
One of the biggest (and unintended) benefits of the emotional labor movement is detecting either martyr-like or unhelpful behavior at home and the workplace and coaching the person towards stopping it.
My story is more one of explaining how what I experienced could be invisible, as nobody came to me and said, wow, you must have gone through a lot. But people do go through a lot, and it's often invisible. In my case I "volunteered" for it, but others may be expected to take it on, which I imagine is more stressful.
This seems to be a common theme in emotional labor discussions with the laborer taking on labor they weren't asked to take on.
And he possibly prevented a flamewar and a lot of company drama. Maybe it wouldn't have developed into a flamewar, but without him, it's more likely everyone's temperaments would have been worse off and they'd be more likely to snap over something else.
Imagine if he posted that he saw a very expensive piece of work equipment about to fall over, and spent an hour holding it up and managing to prevent it from breaking and negatively impacting everyone's jobs. It's more than fair for him to mention to others the work he did that possibly no one had noticed. If people respond to him saying that no one asked him to help like that, then that discourages people from taking initiative like that. A workplace needs people who take initiative. Things end up worse if people avoid fixing preventable problems because they think it's not their place. It's important not to discourage people from taking the initiative.
I'll admit it's good to try to set the boundaries so people don't take the initiative too often on things that don't matter, but I think this is a thing that matters though. I've had coworkers that go above and beyond to make the workplace a pleasant place, and I really value it. Having that easily beats any other office perks and helps make everyone so much more productive.
Shifting the topic a little: people on forums rarely ever ask for moderators, but people repeatedly choose well-moderated forums over ones that aren't. If a moderator complains about how much work it takes, then it's short-sighted to tell them that no one asked for it. Whether people realize it or not, people implicitly ask for it by choosing well-moderated places over others.
All this to say: you shouldn't have to worry about sensitivity for most of those kinds of phrases, except where someone is trying to make you say what you didn't want to say. Call it out when it happens and move on; don't apologize, and don't allow people to read malice into your intentions that you never had.
As far as I know, "guys" isn't really gendered, with the exception of a few people on a linguistic crusade trying to make a point.
There's some subtlety, though, because "the guys" or "some guys" or anything like that remains gendered, as in "I'm going out with the guys"—that'd be a group of at least mostly men, and probably entirely men.
I've found that people can usually relate to this sort of difficulty. If I said, "Phew! I just spent 3 hours keeping the coding style thread from getting out of hand." I think most people would understand. Many of us have been there.
That's the whole problem with this idea. Proclamations of emotional "work" are actually just passive-aggressive pleas for others to affirm one's values. Well, people value different things, we might just need to accept that.
You dealt with something that weighed on you. Okay? Life can be like that sometimes. What an interesting revelation [rolls eyes].
About 10 people privately messaged me that they appreciated my effort in keeping the conversation civil and helping everyone be heard.
> Proclamations of emotional "work" are actually just passive-aggressive pleas for others to affirm one's values.
I could honestly give a shit what anyone thinks of my values. But I do want everyone to treat everyone else with respect, to try to understand each other, and have compassion for each other. That is my plea: please care about people.
When people say it about chores, they mean they are in an unacknowledged managerial role, and that "just tell me what you want me to do, and I'll do it" doesn't solve the problem, because knowing what needs to be done and when in the first place is a huge part of the work in question.
So sure, "emotional labor" is the wrong term. But it'd be better if the argument against using it in this broad way were directed at the strongest version of the claim, instead of a strawman.
One of the stories stuck out for me was a woman who was sick of writing birthday & christmas cards for her husband's relatives. She tried not doing it, but her mother in law got snippy with her for not writing a card. Her husband didn't care at all and refused to help. So she felt stuck doing an unacknowledged and unappreciated job.
I find this story really interesting because there are so many approaches here. To name a few, 1. She could suck it up and keep unhappily writing cards. 2. Her husband could write the cards. 3. She could stop writing the cards, but tell her mother in law to talk to her son if she didn't get a card. 4. She could ask her husband to run interference with the mother in law and back her. 5. She could just stop writing cards and tell everyone to piss off.
I understand the perspective of "I feel like I have to write these cards. People expect me to write these cards. But I hate it and I feel like I don't have an out". But I think its too simple to label it as sexism and call it a day. Her husband is legitimately allowed to ignore the card thing, and so is she. In a sense, the pain comes from caving to a bad expectation - and thats something she does, not something anyone does to her.
But its also true that we somehow raise girls to be more sensitive to societal expectations than men. The whole thing is deliciously complicated.
My take is that we have poor terminology and a bad shared understanding of how to qualify the types and amount of work that go into maintaining relationships of any kind.
Instead of being able to say "I don't want to be the manager of this relationship" we misappropriate "emotional labor" since it's a catch phrase of sorts.
I also think the article didn't do a good job of explaining concept creep in other contexts, which would have been more interesting imo.
It's really obvious when you come up with more efficient ways to get what they want done done, and they get angry that it isn't being done exactly as they wanted.
Oooh, I've never hard of work multipliers before, thanks. I disagree with your main premise (in that sentence) though.
It's the first I've heard of "emotional labor" and I think its a great concept, as valid as "mental" or "physical" labor in the original author's context: a flight attendant (male or female) would have tasks that require all three types of labor during their work day.
But you can also view that as a power relationship.
If one person demands to set the standard for what chores should be done, when and how, and expects the other person to obey, it seems fair that the orders should be spelled out explicitly to the powerless person.
...then they are exerting dominance over the other person. That's true regardless of whether they're setting the standard above or below what the other would prefer. They might also be taking on a greater burden in meeting that standard ... or they might not. There are plenty of families where one person sets the standard for the other to execute, or to work and pay for hired help to execute. In the end, it's usually impossible to address the work-imbalance issue without addressing the power-imbalance issue first, and anyone who makes assumptions about who exercises the power within a household is a fool.
But it would be hard to argue that the maid is oppressing you because you have to manage them.
What people actually use the term incorrectly for is the internal tracking necessary to manage the process of maintaining a household and relationship, including doing chores.
The first version is a strawman because no one thinks that the straightforward action of chore-doing is also, secretly, emotional labor.
The stronger version makes it more clear why any person acting in good faith would try to apply the term at all: the managerial work is unseen, mostly unacknowledged, internal, and as a bonus it's emotionally taxing under many conditions. That is to say, it has a lot in common with the real concept of emotional labor.
So it's true that the wrong term in being used, but a stronger understanding of what the incorrect people are trying to refer to makes it clear why there is a problem here to discuss in the first place.
And one thing I was very clear about was that even when you use the better frame, the people are still misusing the term, so I'm explicitly not disagreeing with the inventor of the term.
Her definition of "Emotional Labor" is most succinctly: Work performed with the intention of creating a feeling. Additionally, it's important in such roles that you manage your own feelings: You might need to be nicer or less nice in your role than you're typically comfortable with.
Her examples are social workers, teachers, flight attendants. It might also be a clown who is paid to make kids feel happy at a party even if the clown is really sad that day.
The inventor of the term wants to be clear that there is no gender specificity to it and that it might be a tool used by the feminist movement to classify work mostly done by women as emotional work because women are emotional, but that line of thinking shuts down conversations about emotional work that apply to all parties involved regardless of gender.
So.... the entirety of art?
Creator of the phrase defines it a bit differently:
"Emotional labor, as I introduced the term in The Managed Heart, is the work, for which you’re paid, which centrally involves trying to feel the right feeling for the job. This involves evoking and suppressing feelings. Some jobs require a lot of it, some a little of it."
I think she meant mostly just smiling (with attempted sincerity) at people you don't feel like smiling at or doing the same on the opposite side of the spectrum - being stern to people you have no genuine feelings towards. And this being the significant part of what you are being paid for.
When I first heard the phrase I was thinking it meant spending your emotional capacity on your job. Like something about having a job that causes so much emotions in you that you fell emotionally burned out after finishing your shift.
This sounds like a pretty pointless classification to me. Any work that involves any form of social interaction is going to fall into that category.
A waiter at a fancy restaurant interacts with customers with an intent of creating relevant feelings and the service is a big reason why that job exists (it's not really about delivering stuff from kitchen to the table); while a clerk taking applications at DMV also interacts with customers, but managing their emotions isn't part of their prescribed duties, the job is about processing the applications.
The latter is a different job. It is more work.
How do we talk about the portion of the work which isn't just about transacting money for goods and services, but about making the customer feel good about interacting with you, and thereby feel better about the whole transaction, and be more likely to do so again?
I know I do a lot of domestic work that my wife barely knows needs to be done, or assumes it's trivial, or assumes "you are intelligent/strong/used to/a XY warm body, so it's easy for you". And it mostly consists of things that cannot be outsourced (perhaps a butler or secretary would help, but these are more expensive than a maid).
Honestly I don't know who the hell falls for this kind of narrative.
At least 50% of the population, I'd wager.
There's physical, mental and emotional labor. The first is pretty self-explanatory, the second involves thinking and the third involves keeping your emotions in check in order to complete a task.
Whenever you have to put up a fake smile, that's emotional labor. Whenever you have to be tough, but don't want to, that too is emotional labor. If your emotional stability (or lack of) aligns with the task, it isn't. So if you're a flight attendant and smile without forcing it (thus it isn't a fake smile to begin with), there's no emotional labor involved. If you're a drill sergeant and naturally grumpy and condescending, there isn't any either.
EDIT: In the cases above, when I meant that there's no emotional labor involved, I meant that there's no effort involved. The value of the labor is still derived from the emotions nonetheless.
I think that helps people expand the word's meaning, because "People feel good when they are in a clean house."
EDIT: It appears it's a two-to-Tango issue. All the cases mentioned are with another party involved, and whether it is to incite emotion or prevent it (i.e. e.g. hiding an aggravation as a flight attendant), the emotional work being done is within the subject itself.
It could have some part of emotional labor. It's hard, you have callouses on your hands, it's hot, your cloths are all dirty and sweaty, your co-diggers criticize your digging speed. You want to cry, you want to stop. You do emotional labor to keep going.
> One thing that I read said even the work of calling the maid to clean the bathtub is too much. It’s burdensome. I felt there is really, in this work, no social-class perspective. There are many more maids than there are people who find it burdensome to pick up the telephone to ask them to clean your tub.
And:
> There seems an alienation or a disenchantment of acts that normally we associate with the expression of connection, love, commitment. Like “Oh, what a burden it is to pick out gifts for the holiday for my children.” Or “Oh, it’s so hard to call a photographer to do family Christmas photos, and then to send it to my parents.” I feel a strong need to point out that this isn’t inherently an alienating act. And something’s gone haywire when it is. It’s okay to feel alienated from the task of making a magical experience for your very own children. I’m not just judging that. I’m saying let’s take it as a symptom that something’s wrong. I think a number of my books speak to that. The Time Bind says, wait a minute, what if home has become work and work has become home?
The burden isn't so much in the act as the expectations and image management. Especially with things presented towards parents. Is it going to be "good enough"? Does it match the "perfect family" self-image? In situations like this people become heavily invested in maintaining an image towards everyone, including themselves. The work involved in this can be burdensome. But actually presenting the true "messy" self is far scarier.
> I’m not just saying, “Oh, how terrible to think making a magical experience is alienated work.” I’m saying, “Well, why has it become alienated work?” The solution is not for men and women to share alienated work. The solution is for men and women to share enchanted work. These are expressions of love.
Why is it our personal family life seems like a job?
I had never seen the original definition before, and that's exactly what I thought it meant when I first saw the term, and it's also what I thought it should have meant after I repeatedly saw it used in ways that I now know were erroneous.
By the article above, this definitely sounds like mental labour (although still tiring) rather than emotional.
Basically, managing people’s emotions.
That book posits that as you move up the ranks, this emotional labor becomes much more important and serves as much more of the basis for judging if you’re effective at your job than your nominal performance of subject matter tasks related to the ostensible job functions you have to perform.
[citation needed]
Study confirms that women tend to do more housework than their male partners, irrespective of their age, income or own workloads
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-017-0832-1 - "Time, Money, or Gender? Predictors of the Division of Household Labour Across Life Stages"
Results indicated women performed more housework than men at all ages.
[2]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4584401/ - "The Production of Inequality: The Gender Division of Labor Across the Transition to Parenthood"
Mothers, according to the time diaries, shouldered the majority of child care and did not decrease their paid work hours. Furthermore, the gender gap was not present prebirth but emerged postbirth with women doing more than 2 hours of additional work per day compared to an additional 40 minutes for men. Moreover, the birth of a child magnified parents’ overestimations of work in the survey data, and had the authors relied only on survey data, gender work inequalities would not have been apparent.
The concept-crept, popular-feminist definition of emotional labor is more about the target of your labor. The labor is emotional because the product you create is an emotional one. Knowing the roles men and women typically choose, it makes sense that feminism has latched onto emotional labor in this respect.
I don't think those uses are necessarily innacurate as I think they classify a real phenomenon, but it is unfortunate the popular feminist definition of emotional labor collides with the original creator's definition.
The continued financialization of all things cultural is not a positive development.
It’s effectively trademark dilution.
The other reason why concept creeps is connotations of previous meaning. Call digital sharing a piracy. Call privacy breaching a personalization. Call protester a terrorist. Call different opinion a hate speech. Call looking lustfully a rape.
[1] I do.
This strikes me as something worth examining closely. Attempting to manage (solicited or not, though I would guess most often not) other people's emotions seems guaranteed to end in discord.
