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Even more than in her previous essay, she doesn't seem to actually like any of her "friends." The men are all cads, the women all fools, and she feels like talking to her female friends about their lives is "emotional labor." Is she also suffering from "dark triad" behavior, and honest, emotionally stable people keep their distance?
I feel like "emotional labor" is among the most toxic memes to come out of feminism, in the actual near-Lovecraftian sense that it insinuates itself into your world model and begs you to cleave reality at that particular joint to your permanent detriment as a human being. I'm not even in the target group, but every time I get even a little frustrated dealing with someone else's mental state (like, say, listening to a friend complain about how they were avoiding their advisor even though they and I had gone through the "I'm having [unfounded anxiety] and rationally I just need to psyche myself up to send that email already" conversation path many times already) the idea floats up and wants me to start keeping score.
I've always found it weird that that concept came out of feminism when women are the more neurotic sex. It's like someone took a bad comedy skit from the 50s about the husband complaining his wife is a battleaxe and just flipped it around.
But yeah it's a terrible idea that saps the fellowship between all humans. Treating the duties of a friend or lover as a form of labor is yet more unwholesome commodification of basic decency. It's evil, there's little else to call it.
The concept was originally applied to job, if I remember correctly. Ex: the flight attendant whose father passed away yesterday but still serves snacks and drinks on the flight with a smile and pleasantries is performing emotional labor.
I don't mind it as an idea in that context, honestly, but the people applying it to personal relationships are insane.
I always found it strange for activists to complain about emotional labour (rather than simply describing it neutrally). I mean sure, most emotional-labour heavy jobs are predominantly female, but that's because those are the jobs women want. A woman doesn't become a nurse because she likes changing bedpans, she becomes a nurse because she likes caring for people. The emotional labour is the main appeal of the job.
Uh, I’m pretty sure women go into nursing because it pays very well and is female gendered:
This study suggests its appeal lies in it being a caring profession. This one too. I don't know how things are in every country but in the UK, nursing doesn't really pay well. The average nursing wage is only slightly above the average wage for the country as a whole. Also, we see in other jobs that higher salaries attract more men than women, relative to the pleasantness of the job. High salaries should make nursing more male, not more female.
That's tautological, surely? I'm asking why is it female gendered.
Because of conditions on the ground in ~1950 when it was one of the few acceptable female jobs?
That doesn't explain why its female dominated now though. Medicine and law used to be male dominated. Now women make up a majority of new doctors and lawyers. These things can and do change.
A better explanation is that nursing, a caring profession, is majority female because all caring professions are majority-female, because women enjoy caring (for obvious biological reasons relating to maternity).
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