it doesn’t sit well with me that “emotional labor” in it’s original context was Arlie Hochschild talking very specifically about how taxing face to face service industry jobs are for people (namely women) with this very nuanced context and is now used in everything from “i had to explain something to someone on twitter” or heavily in contexts of romantic relationships. not all emotional management and exchange is labor! to insert the idea of “labor” excessively into interpersonal relationships creates a system of “i performed ____ and now you OWE me for exerting ____” and it’s not healthy or what the term is for.
I disagree with this so strongly! fair enough I guess if you wanna say it’s been removed from it’s original context but the latter part of this paragraph has construed discussions around emotional labor very dishonestly. I have no idea how you could read women’s discussions around emotional labor and walk away from it thinking it’s women who have created an unhealthy system or are keeping manipulative mental scorecards. that’s not even remotely close to the truth. women use emotional labor to describe specific sexist power dynamics in their relationships with men, where they are expected to perform an unreasonable amount of emotional work because they are women. saying that women are demonstrating unhealthy behaviour by discussing this oppression is pretty next level!
I understand this may not be the original intention behind the term, but it’s pretty clear there was a gap where women didn’t have the language to describe this oppressive dynamic, and ‘emotional labor’ filled that gap.
“women are oppressed in consensual romantic relationships they can quit at any point because they experience emotions.”
“men also experience emotions”
“actually, men are meat robots who feel no emotion whatsoever except for the desire to subsume, but nice try”
I explained emotional labor to you in three sentences, don’t thank me.
Ranma, why do you even follow people who are either so negative about human interaction or just blatant trolls? Like you find a troll, identify trolling correctly, and troll back?
Such is life in the Russian Federation.
The system of rulership and social status of post-Communist Russia is based on a hierarchy of internet trolling, and therefore Russians (such as @ranma-official) must constantly engage in acts of internet trolling to protect their status and advance.
The greatest troll is then made leader of the country.
Oh wait, that’s not Russia. That’s 2017 America.
