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The Concept Creep of ‘Emotional Labor' (2018)

143 points by agarden 7y ago

peterwwillis 7y ago
Recently there was a conversation on Slack at work about gender pronouns. Several people asked that everyone use "hey ya'll", "hey folks", "hey everyone", etc instead of "hey guys" (when addressing an entire not-all-male channel, for example). Two or three people fought this giving various arguments about why this was unnecessary, calling it word-policing, value-signaling, etc. Throughout, I made an attempt always to respond in a civil manner, to try to explain reasoning behind counter-points, provide examples, and make sure all voices were heard. I basically took it upon myself to be a mediator for 30 people. 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.
- 1123581321 7y ago
  That’s a good example of the problem. Your reacting emotionally internally didn’t help you do a better job, and may have been a liability, so a less emotional person may have been more qualified to mediate. Also, you took on a job no one asked you to do, and then complained about the cost using the emotional labor term as an acceptable ploy for sympathy. 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.
  - peterwwillis 7y ago
    That's a strange response. I never complained, and I certainly never looked for sympathy. Also, is the martyr comment directed toward me? 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.
    - 1123581321 7y ago
      Yes, it was directed at you (and others who act similarly.) I also am glad you shared your experience and liked your comment.
  - ghgfhgfhn 7y ago
    This is peak hacker news. Maybe one day we will wake up and not be able to tell the difference between the machines and the programmers.
    - 1123581321 7y ago
      Ultimately, it’s a problem wide liberal arts literacy will solve. In the interim, it’s okay to turn bad quantification against itself.
  - sfink 7y ago
    On the other hand, many situations like this require someone who isn't emotionally insensitive. The hypothetical person who would be less reactive may very well not notice that there was trouble looming in the first place, and so would have no reason to moderate. (And if nobody steps up, it's very very common for things to descend into flamewars or at least very subjective argumentation.)
- tartoran 7y ago
  Hey guys always made my brain think too much about inplications when i said it to a mix gendered group. Granted, English is my second language and inadvertently imitated others. When in Rome do as romans do. I took it as is, when i saw women adressing a group of women with hey guys. I thought that folks is a coloquial term. I wish there was a proper guidebook to all these phrases, how they came in use and what is expected. The small talk is like a dynamited field. There should be some guidelines
  - Fellshard 7y ago
    Especially in English nowadays: Some people intentionally attempt to introduce more meaning into a phrase than is actually meant in general usage of the phrase, just so that they can be disruptive in this way. Others aren't attempting to be disruptive, but are misguidedly raising alarms thinking they are being helpful towards others, when in fact no-one is actually offended in the first place. 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.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - peterwwillis 7y ago
      This is just really bad career advice, but also you do see how your advice is logically problematic, right? In this model, nobody can ever have a valid complaint, if you never intend malice or offend an existing party. Example: If there are no black people in your office, and you use the N word a million times, and I complain, am I wrong to complain because there were no black people around to get offended or because you didn't intend malice? What's the point of caring whether someone uses a racial slur? Is it just because "that's what we're supposed to do" ? Or is there a deeper problem that we're trying to address?
      - 7y ago
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Sounds like you volunteered for emotional labor you weren't tasked to do. How is this any different than the squeegee men who run up to wash your windshield when you're stopped at a red light? This seems to be a common theme in emotional labor discussions with the laborer taking on labor they weren't asked to take on.
  - AgentME 7y ago
    >Sounds like you volunteered for emotional labor you weren't tasked to do. 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.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    It sounds to me like the poster did the emotionally intelligent thing of reading a room and realizing a flame war was about to break out, and thus put in the labor to prevent it- which is a really normal thing for humans to do in social dynamics. It's literally a leadership quality. Later, this poster comments that it was emotionally exhausting- not a complaint, since I don't see them blaming anyone for their exhaustion besides themselves.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tomp 7y ago
  Surely you mean "emotional hobby" instead of "emotional labour"? After all, nobody paid you, nobody asked you to work, and I'm sure many didn't really appreciate your "work" and maybe even thought energy (both your own, and of all other 30 people) could more productively be spent doing other things. 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.
  - tenaciousDaniel 7y ago
    And when this idea is discussed, it's talked about like it's some sort of societal issue. Ok so it's an issue...what's the solution? What should have happened in the above scenario that didn't? I really don't understand it. You dealt with something that weighed on you. Okay? Life can be like that sometimes. What an interesting revelation [rolls eyes].
    - peterwwillis 7y ago
      You know how Japanese train conductors have that point-and-call system? Well what these discussions are about are like point-and-call. They're not pointing at the people on the track (society). They're pointing in directions, and at the train, and calling out what is happening. They're pointing out these things going on around them so that everyone is aware of them, so that people will think, act, and react. Hopefully, the end result is better overall outcomes. I think we still have a long way to go in figuring out how to have these discussions in a way that's more productive, but at least they're happening.
    - sfink 7y ago
      ...it was a good example of the exact topic of the article? One that illustrated it in a way that was likely to be familiar to people here. Especially since it involved a common work situation rather than home life. If that's not worthy of posting in a comment thread, what is? Where is the implication that you have to pose - and maybe even solve! - some problem in order for your comment to be worth posting? Perhaps you are holding onto the definition the article is claiming is incorrect? Because that definition is associated with systemic issues. And your followup comment only makes sense to me in that light.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  It's so nice working in a (nearly) all female environment, where a person (woman) can refer to other people (women) as "you guys" and nobody bats an eye let alone starts long rancorous debates.
- XorNot 7y ago
  The downvoting on this anecdote is staggering.
- sfink 7y ago
  Great example of the original definition from TFA, thanks. 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.
pmichaud 7y ago
I think this article misses the point. It's not about doing the chores. It's about being the one who has taken ownership of the chores being done, by whom, when, etc. 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.
- mobileexpert 7y ago
  One of the aspects related to an unacknowledged managerial role with chores, is that I find it often comes with caring about the outcome more strongly or more specifically than others. Expecting everyone to care about your hobby horse as much as you do is a recipe for feeling overburden and under-appreciated. If people are happy with your work NOT happening then your “emotional” or other labor will not be something they find valuable.
  - josephg 7y ago
    I read a piece awhile ago where they asked a lot of people (particularly women) to describe the unacknowledged emotional labor they were doing in their relationships. (Using / misusing the term as they like. Hochschild would be appaled.) 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.
fibbery 7y ago
Huh. I would have termed "emotional labor" as doing the work to maintain harmony of relationships within and outside of the home. Like being the person responsible for setting up family events, sending cards, remembering birthdays etc. Also in parenting being the more present parent. While the need to be household manager is more "mental load" like are we out of laundry soap or when is the kid's next doctor appointment. But apparently those uses aren't really accurate.
- bendbro 7y ago
  Emotional labor is about managing _your_ emotions, not others. Managing another's emotions may end up demanding physical, mental, or emotional labor of your own- a massage, thinking about what gift someone might like, or containing your irritation at someone not understanding what you are teaching. 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.
Causality1 7y ago
>There’s no doubt that the unpaid, expected, and unacknowledged work of keeping households and relationships running smoothly falls disproportionately on women. [citation needed]
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  [0] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170926105448.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170926105448.h... - "Household chores: Women still do more" 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 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/ 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.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    Thank you.
klingonopera 7y ago
Reading that interview leads me to assume that it must've been emotional labor for Hochschild to keep her cool at how badly people can misinterpret it. 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.
- anon1m0us 7y ago
  It's not just about managing your own emotions, but emotional labor might also be about producing emotions in other people according to her definition. I think that helps people expand the word's meaning, because "People feel good when they are in a clean house."
  - klingonopera 7y ago
    Apparently so, yes, but I'd contest that evoking an emotional response in other people is actually mental labor to begin with, and correctly applying the ideas derived thereof is then the emotional labor. 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.
  - al_chemist 7y ago
    Digging a ditch is not emotional labor, because "people feel good when they have the ditch they need". It is physical labor, because dig it. 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.
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
The concept that 'emotional labor' has been sort of co-opted from its original meaning, thus losing the actual significance of the term is quite interesting. I kind of internally related it to 'spoon theory' use- clearly it was originally meant explicitly for chronic physical illnesses, but I often see it used for depression and anxiety.
- faceplanted 7y ago
  It makes sense that happens, "spoon theory" is basically a metaphor for "limited resources", anyone who looks at it without context is just going to see a nice metaphor for a very common issue.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    Yes, but the expansion of the term somewhat dilutes and transforms the original meaning of the term and its original context and usefulness. Similar to what is being done here.
baked_ziti 7y ago
> I think this gets to perhaps a main confusion that is happening. I often see emotional labor referred to as the management of other people’s emotions, or doing things so that other people stay happy and stay comfortable. 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.
anon1m0us 7y ago
This article is about a term, "Emotional Labor" being used more broadly than the inventor of the term appreciates. She thinks it waters down the impact of the word. 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.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  > Work performed with the intention of creating a feeling. 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.
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    No, there's lots of work that involves social interaction, but any feelings created during it are an accidental side-effect and not the intent or primary goal of that work. 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.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      Any form of social interaction involves this kind of ‘labor’. Some jobs more than others, but your distinction is complete nonsense. The DMV is just a poor example, it still involves the same ‘labor’, just arguably less, as the DMV has little incentive to care about their customers. But this relates only to the value the company is trying to provide, not the nature of the work.
xenihn 7y ago
On the few occasions I've heard someone use the term "emotional labor" in real life (and not on Twitter), I've asked them to specify what it means, and every person gave a different answer. It did pretty much boil down to "doing chores and mailing holiday cards", though. 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.
- taneq 7y ago
  The discussions I've had around it have generally involved people defining it as "managing and planning chores even if someone else is doing them," with the canonical example being the stay-at-home wife who manages the household and the husband who "helps" by asking her to micromanage him rather than just taking the initiative. By the article above, this definitely sounds like mental labour (although still tiring) rather than emotional.
  - klodolph 7y ago
    The example I think of is choosing a meal for a household—anticipating every household member’s reaction to the meal and accepting the consequences if people don’t like it. Basically, managing people’s emotions.
    - taneq 7y ago
      That sounds like a more reasonable example that matches the original definition. I'll use this one next time it comes up amongst my friends.
mlthoughts2018 7y ago
Moral Mazes talks a lot about emotional labor, especially the expression of fealty to one’s employer and enthusiastic participation in signalling activities that demonstrate compliance with the internal moral and ethical system the company creates. 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.
- par 7y ago
  Hot damn this is so true. This is exactly what comes to my mind when I think of emotional labor.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  I think that being bad at emotional labor even (especially?) outside of work is something that is looked down upon quite a lot in society. We generally don't like the person that seems to get angry over minor issues, we expect them to manage their emotions in these kinds of situations, especially when they're not like 'us'.
dwoozle 7y ago
I see the following phenomenon repeat itself: someone convinces the world that a particular behavior, described by a particular term, is bad: bigotry, racism, emotional labor, transphobic, sexual assault. Usually this is straightforward because the behaviors are truly monstrous and the offenders deserve to be un-personed. Then a bunch of other people draft behind this term to air out their grievances: this person did something racist, racism is bad, this person is bad. This works for some years, but eventually society just normalizes out the effect of the word: if so many actions are racist, then racism must not be so bad. When this happens, it actually lessens the opprobrium that the hardcore offenders, the people whom the term was designed to denigrate, experience. It’s effectively trademark dilution.
epx 7y ago
It is strange how people always associate domestic work with women, or something women are not compensated for. 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.
- foobar1962 7y ago
  > Honestly I don't know who the hell falls for this kind of narrative. At least 50% of the population, I'd wager.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  I think you bring up an interesting point. In a discussion about household work, I've never actually heard a discussion about the types of things that men are just expected to do without anybody batting an eye. It makes sense that usually a man would be the one to bring up the 50 kg sack of potatoes to the 3rd floor apartment, but I've never actually heard this point being made that men also have some expectations placed on them in the household. It's always just summarized as "earn money, open jars, reach high places".
- raarts 7y ago
  I never thought of family care as something that needs to be paid. Should I pay my wife for doing that work? In that case should she pay me for shouldering the burden of working hard in a job I don't like making money I don't spend myself? All this doesn't sit well with me. It's too individualistic.
  - epx 7y ago
    The law accommodates for that - 50% of the assets for each in case of divorce. Guaranteed not to be fair for most particular cases, but puts an end to the discussion, and everybody knows the deal before marrying.
jrochkind1 7y ago
A couple points that hit home to me: > 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?
- pjc50 7y ago
  > “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.” 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.
  - jrochkind1 7y ago
    In that second passage, I like that Hochschild tried to be clear, she is not blaming these (mostly women) for finding that burdensome, she's saying we should ask "What is up with our society that things that ought to be enjoyable time with and caring for family, expression of love have become burdensome and alienating"? And And, the unsaid next step, what can be done? > 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?
erichocean 7y ago
It's a sign of cultural decline that people can only relate to each other using financial terminology. The continued financialization of all things cultural is not a positive development.
- jdjjdflknfjj 7y ago
  Actually, it is just a sign that you shouldn't date feminists. Normal people don't act that way. If your spouse frames being with you as "emotional labor", it is high time to break up.
_monster_ 7y ago
We need MORE rabid feminism to solve this!
al_chemist 7y ago
Concepts creeps because when we want to affect world, we need to name things first. When we name them, we need short phrase that will fit twit. Who cares if somebody already used it to describe something different?! [1] 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.

143 points by agarden 7y ago

Recently there was a conversation on Slack at work about gender pronouns. Several people asked that everyone use "hey ya'll", "hey folks", "hey everyone", etc instead of "hey guys" (when addressing an entire not-all-male channel, for example). Two or three people fought this giving various arguments about why this was unnecessary, calling it word-policing, value-signaling, etc. Throughout, I made an attempt always to respond in a civil manner, to try to explain reasoning behind counter-points, provide examples, and make sure all voices were heard. I basically took it upon myself to be a mediator for 30 people. 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.

1123581321 7y ago
That’s a good example of the problem. Your reacting emotionally internally didn’t help you do a better job, and may have been a liability, so a less emotional person may have been more qualified to mediate. Also, you took on a job no one asked you to do, and then complained about the cost using the emotional labor term as an acceptable ploy for sympathy. 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.
- peterwwillis 7y ago
  That's a strange response. I never complained, and I certainly never looked for sympathy. Also, is the martyr comment directed toward me? 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.
  - 1123581321 7y ago
    Yes, it was directed at you (and others who act similarly.) I also am glad you shared your experience and liked your comment.
- ghgfhgfhn 7y ago
  This is peak hacker news. Maybe one day we will wake up and not be able to tell the difference between the machines and the programmers.
  - 1123581321 7y ago
    Ultimately, it’s a problem wide liberal arts literacy will solve. In the interim, it’s okay to turn bad quantification against itself.
- sfink 7y ago
  On the other hand, many situations like this require someone who isn't emotionally insensitive. The hypothetical person who would be less reactive may very well not notice that there was trouble looming in the first place, and so would have no reason to moderate. (And if nobody steps up, it's very very common for things to descend into flamewars or at least very subjective argumentation.)
tartoran 7y ago
Hey guys always made my brain think too much about inplications when i said it to a mix gendered group. Granted, English is my second language and inadvertently imitated others. When in Rome do as romans do. I took it as is, when i saw women adressing a group of women with hey guys. I thought that folks is a coloquial term. I wish there was a proper guidebook to all these phrases, how they came in use and what is expected. The small talk is like a dynamited field. There should be some guidelines
- Fellshard 7y ago
  Especially in English nowadays: Some people intentionally attempt to introduce more meaning into a phrase than is actually meant in general usage of the phrase, just so that they can be disruptive in this way. Others aren't attempting to be disruptive, but are misguidedly raising alarms thinking they are being helpful towards others, when in fact no-one is actually offended in the first place. 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.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - peterwwillis 7y ago
    This is just really bad career advice, but also you do see how your advice is logically problematic, right? In this model, nobody can ever have a valid complaint, if you never intend malice or offend an existing party. Example: If there are no black people in your office, and you use the N word a million times, and I complain, am I wrong to complain because there were no black people around to get offended or because you didn't intend malice? What's the point of caring whether someone uses a racial slur? Is it just because "that's what we're supposed to do" ? Or is there a deeper problem that we're trying to address?
    - 7y ago
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Sounds like you volunteered for emotional labor you weren't tasked to do. How is this any different than the squeegee men who run up to wash your windshield when you're stopped at a red light? This seems to be a common theme in emotional labor discussions with the laborer taking on labor they weren't asked to take on.
- AgentME 7y ago
  >Sounds like you volunteered for emotional labor you weren't tasked to do. 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.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  It sounds to me like the poster did the emotionally intelligent thing of reading a room and realizing a flame war was about to break out, and thus put in the labor to prevent it- which is a really normal thing for humans to do in social dynamics. It's literally a leadership quality. Later, this poster comments that it was emotionally exhausting- not a complaint, since I don't see them blaming anyone for their exhaustion besides themselves.
deleted 7y ago
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tomp 7y ago
Surely you mean "emotional hobby" instead of "emotional labour"? After all, nobody paid you, nobody asked you to work, and I'm sure many didn't really appreciate your "work" and maybe even thought energy (both your own, and of all other 30 people) could more productively be spent doing other things. 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.
- tenaciousDaniel 7y ago
  And when this idea is discussed, it's talked about like it's some sort of societal issue. Ok so it's an issue...what's the solution? What should have happened in the above scenario that didn't? I really don't understand it. You dealt with something that weighed on you. Okay? Life can be like that sometimes. What an interesting revelation [rolls eyes].
  - peterwwillis 7y ago
    You know how Japanese train conductors have that point-and-call system? Well what these discussions are about are like point-and-call. They're not pointing at the people on the track (society). They're pointing in directions, and at the train, and calling out what is happening. They're pointing out these things going on around them so that everyone is aware of them, so that people will think, act, and react. Hopefully, the end result is better overall outcomes. I think we still have a long way to go in figuring out how to have these discussions in a way that's more productive, but at least they're happening.
  - sfink 7y ago
    ...it was a good example of the exact topic of the article? One that illustrated it in a way that was likely to be familiar to people here. Especially since it involved a common work situation rather than home life. If that's not worthy of posting in a comment thread, what is? Where is the implication that you have to pose - and maybe even solve! - some problem in order for your comment to be worth posting? Perhaps you are holding onto the definition the article is claiming is incorrect? Because that definition is associated with systemic issues. And your followup comment only makes sense to me in that light.
perl4ever 7y ago
It's so nice working in a (nearly) all female environment, where a person (woman) can refer to other people (women) as "you guys" and nobody bats an eye let alone starts long rancorous debates.
XorNot 7y ago
The downvoting on this anecdote is staggering.
sfink 7y ago
Great example of the original definition from TFA, thanks. 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.

pmichaud 7y ago

I think this article misses the point. It's not about doing the chores. It's about being the one who has taken ownership of the chores being done, by whom, when, etc. 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.

mobileexpert 7y ago
One of the aspects related to an unacknowledged managerial role with chores, is that I find it often comes with caring about the outcome more strongly or more specifically than others. Expecting everyone to care about your hobby horse as much as you do is a recipe for feeling overburden and under-appreciated. If people are happy with your work NOT happening then your “emotional” or other labor will not be something they find valuable.
- josephg 7y ago
  I read a piece awhile ago where they asked a lot of people (particularly women) to describe the unacknowledged emotional labor they were doing in their relationships. (Using / misusing the term as they like. Hochschild would be appaled.) 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.

fibbery 7y ago

Huh. I would have termed "emotional labor" as doing the work to maintain harmony of relationships within and outside of the home. Like being the person responsible for setting up family events, sending cards, remembering birthdays etc. Also in parenting being the more present parent. While the need to be household manager is more "mental load" like are we out of laundry soap or when is the kid's next doctor appointment. But apparently those uses aren't really accurate.

bendbro 7y ago
Emotional labor is about managing _your_ emotions, not others. Managing another's emotions may end up demanding physical, mental, or emotional labor of your own- a massage, thinking about what gift someone might like, or containing your irritation at someone not understanding what you are teaching. 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.

Causality1 7y ago

>There’s no doubt that the unpaid, expected, and unacknowledged work of keeping households and relationships running smoothly falls disproportionately on women. [citation needed]

SolaceQuantum 7y ago
[0] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170926105448.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170926105448.h... - "Household chores: Women still do more" 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 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/ 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.
- Causality1 7y ago
  Thank you.

klingonopera 7y ago

Reading that interview leads me to assume that it must've been emotional labor for Hochschild to keep her cool at how badly people can misinterpret it. 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.

anon1m0us 7y ago
It's not just about managing your own emotions, but emotional labor might also be about producing emotions in other people according to her definition. I think that helps people expand the word's meaning, because "People feel good when they are in a clean house."
- klingonopera 7y ago
  Apparently so, yes, but I'd contest that evoking an emotional response in other people is actually mental labor to begin with, and correctly applying the ideas derived thereof is then the emotional labor. 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.
- al_chemist 7y ago
  Digging a ditch is not emotional labor, because "people feel good when they have the ditch they need". It is physical labor, because dig it. 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.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago

The concept that 'emotional labor' has been sort of co-opted from its original meaning, thus losing the actual significance of the term is quite interesting. I kind of internally related it to 'spoon theory' use- clearly it was originally meant explicitly for chronic physical illnesses, but I often see it used for depression and anxiety.

faceplanted 7y ago
It makes sense that happens, "spoon theory" is basically a metaphor for "limited resources", anyone who looks at it without context is just going to see a nice metaphor for a very common issue.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  Yes, but the expansion of the term somewhat dilutes and transforms the original meaning of the term and its original context and usefulness. Similar to what is being done here.

baked_ziti 7y ago

> I think this gets to perhaps a main confusion that is happening. I often see emotional labor referred to as the management of other people’s emotions, or doing things so that other people stay happy and stay comfortable. 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.

anon1m0us 7y ago

This article is about a term, "Emotional Labor" being used more broadly than the inventor of the term appreciates. She thinks it waters down the impact of the word. 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.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
> Work performed with the intention of creating a feeling. 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.
- PeterisP 7y ago
  No, there's lots of work that involves social interaction, but any feelings created during it are an accidental side-effect and not the intent or primary goal of that work. 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.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    Any form of social interaction involves this kind of ‘labor’. Some jobs more than others, but your distinction is complete nonsense. The DMV is just a poor example, it still involves the same ‘labor’, just arguably less, as the DMV has little incentive to care about their customers. But this relates only to the value the company is trying to provide, not the nature of the work.

xenihn 7y ago

On the few occasions I've heard someone use the term "emotional labor" in real life (and not on Twitter), I've asked them to specify what it means, and every person gave a different answer. It did pretty much boil down to "doing chores and mailing holiday cards", though. 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.

taneq 7y ago
The discussions I've had around it have generally involved people defining it as "managing and planning chores even if someone else is doing them," with the canonical example being the stay-at-home wife who manages the household and the husband who "helps" by asking her to micromanage him rather than just taking the initiative. By the article above, this definitely sounds like mental labour (although still tiring) rather than emotional.
- klodolph 7y ago
  The example I think of is choosing a meal for a household—anticipating every household member’s reaction to the meal and accepting the consequences if people don’t like it. Basically, managing people’s emotions.
  - taneq 7y ago
    That sounds like a more reasonable example that matches the original definition. I'll use this one next time it comes up amongst my friends.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago

Moral Mazes talks a lot about emotional labor, especially the expression of fealty to one’s employer and enthusiastic participation in signalling activities that demonstrate compliance with the internal moral and ethical system the company creates. 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.

par 7y ago
Hot damn this is so true. This is exactly what comes to my mind when I think of emotional labor.
Mirioron 7y ago
I think that being bad at emotional labor even (especially?) outside of work is something that is looked down upon quite a lot in society. We generally don't like the person that seems to get angry over minor issues, we expect them to manage their emotions in these kinds of situations, especially when they're not like 'us'.

dwoozle 7y ago

I see the following phenomenon repeat itself: someone convinces the world that a particular behavior, described by a particular term, is bad: bigotry, racism, emotional labor, transphobic, sexual assault. Usually this is straightforward because the behaviors are truly monstrous and the offenders deserve to be un-personed. Then a bunch of other people draft behind this term to air out their grievances: this person did something racist, racism is bad, this person is bad. This works for some years, but eventually society just normalizes out the effect of the word: if so many actions are racist, then racism must not be so bad. When this happens, it actually lessens the opprobrium that the hardcore offenders, the people whom the term was designed to denigrate, experience. It’s effectively trademark dilution.

epx 7y ago

It is strange how people always associate domestic work with women, or something women are not compensated for. 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.

foobar1962 7y ago
> Honestly I don't know who the hell falls for this kind of narrative. At least 50% of the population, I'd wager.
Mirioron 7y ago
I think you bring up an interesting point. In a discussion about household work, I've never actually heard a discussion about the types of things that men are just expected to do without anybody batting an eye. It makes sense that usually a man would be the one to bring up the 50 kg sack of potatoes to the 3rd floor apartment, but I've never actually heard this point being made that men also have some expectations placed on them in the household. It's always just summarized as "earn money, open jars, reach high places".
raarts 7y ago
I never thought of family care as something that needs to be paid. Should I pay my wife for doing that work? In that case should she pay me for shouldering the burden of working hard in a job I don't like making money I don't spend myself? All this doesn't sit well with me. It's too individualistic.
- epx 7y ago
  The law accommodates for that - 50% of the assets for each in case of divorce. Guaranteed not to be fair for most particular cases, but puts an end to the discussion, and everybody knows the deal before marrying.

jrochkind1 7y ago

A couple points that hit home to me: > 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?

pjc50 7y ago
> “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.” 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.
- jrochkind1 7y ago
  In that second passage, I like that Hochschild tried to be clear, she is not blaming these (mostly women) for finding that burdensome, she's saying we should ask "What is up with our society that things that ought to be enjoyable time with and caring for family, expression of love have become burdensome and alienating"? And And, the unsaid next step, what can be done? > 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?

erichocean 7y ago

It's a sign of cultural decline that people can only relate to each other using financial terminology. The continued financialization of all things cultural is not a positive development.

jdjjdflknfjj 7y ago
Actually, it is just a sign that you shouldn't date feminists. Normal people don't act that way. If your spouse frames being with you as "emotional labor", it is high time to break up.

_monster_ 7y ago

We need MORE rabid feminism to solve this!

al_chemist 7y ago

Concepts creeps because when we want to affect world, we need to name things first. When we name them, we need short phrase that will fit twit. Who cares if somebody already used it to describe something different?! [1] 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.