I’d like to start with a quick definition, but that is much harder than it sounds. Emotional labor is a relatively new term in scheme of things, but it deals a lot with things like fake friendliness service industry workers have to put on, and the way we (especially women) are expected to BE when interacting with the world.
A good primer appeared in this blog post by Leah Fessler: “While the term emotional labor was originally coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in the 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, her description of the need for workers to regulate their emotions (so to satisfy their customers) feels a bit academic. Personally, I’m more disposed toward Hy’s definition of emotional labor as “shit someone does that goes unrecognized,” but again, that’s pretty general.”
She also references Adam Grant’s Worklife podcast about faking emotions . Emotional labor is likened to receiving a crappy gift from Aunt Bernadette and having to pretend you like it, but the concept is extrapolated out to having to be nice at work to everyone to assure everyone else’s comfort and ease, and the exhaustion that follows on that from having to wear a mask.
Now that the definition is out of the way, we can really get started. Emotional Labor has been widely adopted in feminist circles since women bear the unequal yoke, if not the whole yoke, of emotional labor. We bear the expectation of making others feel comfortable, of not burdening others with our troubles, and so on… women are often the ones who send the birthday cards, arrange the kids’ birthday parties, etc. while the men just show up. Emotional labor exhibits many nuances and definitions. However, I think the division of emotional labor illustrates a lot about the power structure in our society and also serves as a springboard to beginning to really understand and solve the problem.
A couple of articles and general trends of discourse in our country really sparked my thoughts on this topic this week and led me to extrapolate the emotional labor concept beyond just men and women…
1) From Raw Story: “Judge scolds four men who raped drunk teenage girls in Myrtle Beach instead of giving them jail time” My outrage meter maxed out, beginning with this story. We have seen this same story repeatedly, the young men are allowed to walk free with very little, if any punishment, and with every concern for their futures. In the meantime, the victims are blamed & shamed, and left with the entire emotional toll of being sexually assaulted. The emotional labor borne by these women includes the aforementioned shame & blame, then compounded by the fact that they did everything right (by reporting what happened & undergoing the experience of rape kit creation, which may or not be tested in all-too-many cases) and then have to watch their attackers walk off mostly unscathed and care free.
The young men receive the clear message that their actions aren’t so bad and they needn’t worry their little heads about it. The pervasive message of “boys will be boys” infuses our culture, absolving them of blame & responsibility. Emotional wreckage is left to the women they assaulted. In this case there is NO YOKE, as opposed just an unequal one. They probably experienced remorse for being caught, but the judge told them that they were just bad little boys and sent them on their way.
The womens’ burden isn’t considered because women aren’t considered whole human beings. Only straight white men are whole human beings.
2) From the Bradenton Herald: “Parents complain about ‘militant’ dress code at Lakewood Ranch middle school” In this story, a 12-year-old middle school girl chose to wear a sports bra to school, and this school has a “no visible bras” policy. The assistant principal actually had to move the girl’s hair to even see the bit of bra “peeking out”. She was then pulled from class and taken to a “holding room” until her mother could come and bring her “more appropriate clothing.” And, per the story, this young woman wasn’t the only girl pulled from class, as there were other girls changing clothes and mothers leaving with the “offensive” clothing.
A quote from the article states, “Young women are disproportionately cited for dress code violations, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which contacted the school district after Martinez’s story went viral. While she was accused of being a distraction to students, the organization said Martinez’s peers should learn to control their gaze.”
So again, we have emotional labor falling on women. Time and again, young girls and women are being burdened with boys & men being unable to control their feelings. So instead of teaching males to police themselves and control themselves, that labor is being put on females to do the policing… of what they wear, what they say, how they act, etc… to prevent inciting male emotions. Then you add in the fact that it’s usually the mothers having to bring the change of clothing for their daughters, often having to take time off of work, simply adding to the burden.
Males are again allowed to walk free with no emotional consequences or responsibilities because the women are carrying that load, as expected… another “no yoke” situation in which boys will be boys.
3) From the NY Post: “Nurse killed herself after being bullied at work, probe finds” This article served as my extrapolation springboard from emotional labor as just a feminist issue. I am a Registered Nurse, and have been MOSTLY lucky enough to work in places where the bullying hasn’t been that bad. A friend shared this article on Facebook, so I read it very quickly after the previous two. It really got me thinking how bullying is really someone with an inability to handle their own emotional labors trying to pass that work onto others. How that inability is acquired doesn’t matter.
However, I think the key is that these people have a deficit and addressing it is key. These are people who don’t feel a responsibility to their own emotional health or that of others. They believe and act (for whatever reason) like their emotional work and burdens are for others to bear. The thought of them ever being to blame for their actions is really beyond their base capacities, so they blame everyone else.
These stories are illustrative of trends that we are seeing in over media overall. These examples are mostly feminist, obviously, but I think of examples from my own life and our national discourse, and it seems to me there are some solutions embedded in the questions themselves.
Most personally, apart from the bullying that I suffered all from grade school through high school, the worst bullying and gaslighting lasted for 3.5 months. I took a job halfway across the country with great expectations, only to find myself in the most toxic work situation I have ever experienced. The place was the very definition of gaslighting, with moving goalposts, and blame for everything bad placed on my shoulders. I don’t know what the issues were there, but the emotional burden others had was happily dumped on the new person (me) by those who apparently couldn’t deal with their own issues.
My daughter recently divorced an emotionally abusive man. They lived with us for several years and the level of gaslighting he tried to use on us was apparently a small fraction of what he put her through. I never felt he particularly emotionally well-developed. He was always very good at coming up with blame and excuses when confronted. He would make great pronunciations about how he was going to change, over and over, but he never did. I knew she was carrying a lot of burden in that relationship, but only after it was over did I begin to appreciate all that he put her through. She carried the emotional water for a good number of years until she decided she’d had enough. She is now healing and moving forward with her life.
In our national political discourse, we have a man-baby in the White House who reminds me greatly of my former son-in-law, who was never taught or expected to do his own emotional labor. That is for the peons and little people to do, so he can stand there, living out his vision of being a “big man’. However, the blame for all of his failures falls on the string of ex-wives, mistresses, affairs, brown people, those who disagree with him, etc. And he is happy to tell us all about it in his tweets, ad nauseum. As I like to say, he has the self-reflection of a brick.
He really is the epitome of toxic masculinity and racism and misogyny, etc. Problem is, what he does and says is not being met with resistance from those who count, and those who idolize him take his words & deeds as tacit approval. Now brought to the fore, we see white straight males fighting back against being asked to do their own emotional work. They were so long relieved of that burden by social norms… giving it to women, blacks, other minorities who were all expected to serve without question. In that imaginary-world-that-never-existed, white men were unburdened, able to follow their noble pursuits without burden of care. This is where they want us to return, as the proper place for the “not-them” is wherever they say it is and the “not-them” is bound to act as they dictate.
Apparently, emotional labor is for the weak and those who have no choice.
The answer to the problem is fairly simple, start taking emotional health & labor seriously, start teaching others how to be emotionally healthy and to take responsibility for themselves. But first, we need a society that takes emotional well-being seriously for everyone and the basic recognition that emotional labor is a thing. Unfortunately while the cartoonish vision of men ala Toxic Masculinity remain the norm, we can't even begin to change.
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