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What's the strawman here? "Emotional labor" very clearly is being used for things that Hochschild did not mean when she coined the term. You might disagree with

What's the strawman here? "Emotional labor" very clearly is being used for things that Hochschild did not mean when she coined the term. You might disagree with her belief that the things covered by these other uses are sufficiently different that they should be addressed separately or differently, but there's still no strawman. When you say "the strongest version of the claim" it's not even clear that you're talking about a claim that exists outside of your own head, so if there's a strawman here I'm afraid it's yours. Can you clarify what claim you're trying to refute and why you think it's incorrect?

pmichaud 7y ago
The article says that the term "emotional labor" is used incorrectly to refer to things like doing chores. 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.
- notacoward 7y ago
  > no one thinks that the straightforward action of chore-doing is also, secretly, emotional labor. The article leads with examples of people doing just that, most notably the one from Gemma Hartley, so your axiom is false.
- baked_ziti 7y ago
  It would be reasonable I think, to extend to the woman who devised the concept enough charity of interpretation to believe that she is capable of understanding the nuance involved in discussions and arguments of this sort.

pmichaud 7y ago

The article says that the term "emotional labor" is used incorrectly to refer to things like doing chores. 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.

notacoward 7y ago
> no one thinks that the straightforward action of chore-doing is also, secretly, emotional labor. The article leads with examples of people doing just that, most notably the one from Gemma Hartley, so your axiom is false.
baked_ziti 7y ago
It would be reasonable I think, to extend to the woman who devised the concept enough charity of interpretation to believe that she is capable of understanding the nuance involved in discussions and arguments of this sort.