Another quick hit on emotional labour

[kaberett]

These are ones I'd already internalised as true so didn't excerpt last time around, but probably bear repeating anyway.

From the author of the sparking article:

The switch from men's default "I will if you ask me" to "I will if you don't ask me not to" is simple but really powerful in terms of where it sites the responsibility.

This is already someting I do in set-ups where I'm in a caring role (because I know that accepting help can be very difficult, whereas not refusing it is easier -- setting up a default course of action is to some extent a way of handling people, but what that also means is facilitation, so). It has always been a genuine surprise and delight when people have spotted that me doing this works for them and have reciprocated it.

And, as linked to sebastienne, the idea that keeping track of what needs doing is significant emotional labour in itself:

Another puzzle piece: was thinking about religious life. Convents, monasteries. We think of these things as big sacrifices, but in fact, they are places designed to dial the emotional labor burden way, way down. You are removed from regular family and social life. You don't have to stress about the cleanliness and conditon and chores around the places, because all of these things are taken care of in a fair and equitable rotation of tasks - when it's your turn to do the dishes, you do the dishes, but on the other days, you blissfully ignore the dishes. Life is so regulated and organized that you really can be mentally and emotionally free to concentrate on the tasks you are there to do - whether it's contemplation, human services, or whatever. This wasn't a stupid organization of life. Religious orders recognized that emotional labor had to be wrestled to the ground before anyone stood 5 minutes' chance of being able to devote attention to anything else.

I also think this is what drew me to life in summer camps and residential education settings for many years: a similar level of organization of chores, and an equitable sharing. Men and women alike did their duties when it was their turn, and were penalized for shirking. Both the emotional and the menial labor were sorted - labor was never a negotiation; you never had a long-running standoff as to who was going to take out trash or scrub the pots: it was all written there right on a rotation chart. This did more to create gender equality than any number of manifestos or heartfelt discussions. A basic rota. A recognition that everyone needed to contribute equally to the boring work of daily life. The beauty of it: when you're on, you're on: you do the work outlined in the rota. When you're off, you devote not a second's thought to the condition of the kitchen or the bathrooms or the trash. It's a big old SEP until it's your turn in the rota again.

This gets discussed elsethread in terms of being The Knower Of The Things, and division between Knowing and Doing; the idea of the Deal Token comes up too, of "I am responsible for making sure this thing Gets Done; I can delegate every single task comprising the Thing but I am responsible for tracking that everything that needs to happen for the Thing to get done happens", which is pretty much how I run committees when I'm on them. (There's something related, about how similar skills in men and women get designated "leadership" and "teamwork" respectively - women doing emotional labour is consistently devalued, because the hard work of knowing how your team's doing in detail and who might need a break and so on is fundamentally exactly the same thing as keeping track of which of the kids have activities this afternoon and when their homework's due, and that shit isn't important. I have a lot of bitter feelings about parenting related to all of this, okay, because - yeah - so much of it is about who, and what, matters.)

And finally: on tumblr there's a discussion of why tumblr's fantasy man is like he is, and over on AskMe people are working out an emotional labour checklist for self-assessment.

Comments

[redsixwing]

...huh.

There's a whole department in my company of people whose job is "tracking that everything that needs to happen for the Thing to get done happens, and removing blocks from in front of people who Do The Thing."

Their role is both essential and frequently filled by well-meaning people who can't execute it at all.

Thinky, thinky.

[alexseanchai]

Yeah, that, that sounds like one of my friends. Not the "can't execute it" part, but it sure sounds as though everyone else around her is that part.

[redsixwing]

Oof. :<

[simont]

Their role is both essential and frequently filled by well-meaning people who can't execute it at all.

I read this and immediately checked your profile to see if you might turn out to work at my company :-)

[redsixwing]

Haha! It appears we're on slightly different continents, but this sort of problem doesn't seem to be stopped by that kind of barrier. :)

[alexseanchai]

Huuuh. Okay.

[naath]

At one point I was explaining to My Mother that when we do group holidays there is a CHORE ROTA and this is great, and that if she wanted to do a group holiday with all her family (for a big birthday party, that was eventually a different thing) having a ROTA was essential to Domestic Harmony... she thought this was a stupid plan, and shouldn't you just... all come to some agreement over each chore or something? uhhuh that way your WHOLE HOLIDAY can be arguing about chores, or someone doing all the chores and resenting it the whole time. nuhuh. ROTA. Solves all arguments (well, brief pre-holiday discussion over who is able to do what), allows holiday to focus on more interesting things like reading Buffy scripts or arguing about version control systems or something.

Kentwell also has a rota. Works for hundreds of people v. well. Much better than expecting them to magically "figure it out".

[shewhostaples]

Aha, yes. I am more than half convinced that the only reason my marriage works is that we're still operating on the rota system that we had when we were housemates at university, before we were romantically involved at all.

[simont]

It's interesting that you characterise 'having the deal token' as essentially a form of labour. I certainly see that in some situations it can be, but in others I know that I find not having the DT to be a source of stress, and feel much more relaxed if I'm the one holding it.

I'm not at all sure I can put my finger reliably on what distinguishes the two classes of situation in general, but one case I'm particularly thinking of is being in charge of the kitchen when a big complicated roast dinner is being cooked: I always used to hate playing kitchen-helper to my mum as a teenager, and when I started cooking the same kind of meal myself a few years later it turned out that I feel much more comfortable being the one in charge – in spite of the fact that that means considerably more actual work and having the DT.

I think the key point might be the 'being unpredictably on call' nature. If I'm doing my own thing in another room and I know Mum will yell at me any moment now to drop everything and come and help with the gravy, then I can't give full concentration to whatever it is I'm trying to do in the meantime. But if I'm the one who knows when all the chores are coming up, then I can go and do my own thing for 20 minutes somewhere in the middle of the process with much more confidence that there won't be an unwelcome surprise, because I'm the one delivering the surprises.

[kaberett]

Which is some of why, when I have assistants for cooking, I take care to give timings as best as possible so they can decide what else to do if I don't need them for a bit! But it's the thing of how many plates you can keep spinning, isn't it? But yeah, I absolutely loathe being unpredictably on call ("let's talk about this sometime tonight" NO GIVE ME A TIME "let's talk about this in about three weeks" NO SPECIFY A DATE I DO NOT WANT TO BE HANGING AROUND DEDICATING PRECIOUS ENERGY TO STANDING in READINESS TO LEAP INTO ACTION AT POINTS WHEN YOU KNOW PERFECTLY WELL YOU AREN'T GOING TO WANT ME etc etc etc).

[simont]

"The sitting around is the hardest part. They may sit for a year, and then be called to five minutes of all-out action of deadly importance. But they have to be instantly ready for that five minutes the whole year. Quite a strain. I much prefer attack to defense." – Barrayar

[azurelunatic]

Ha, that's the bell that was ringing!

[pipisafoat]

Hmm. For me, if someone gives me basic parameters ("i might need you at a moment's notice any time in the next twenty minutes" or "i will need you in ten minutes for five minutes of help, and then i think i won't need you after that but if i do i will be able to you approx 5 minutes warning" or "i'm not sure if i need the help but if you want to help you can") along with whether or not it's acceptable to, say, be in or near the kitchen offering conversation helps me a lot. I love being a kitchen minion under those sorts of guidelines. If it's a moment's notice for a certain amount of time, I spend that amount of time doing something that can keep my hands clean enough for kitchen work (so, not playing with the animals) but that can be put down instantly (so no timed games, no phone or text conversations unless they're aware that i'm on call and might have to run with no warning). Etc.

But for longer tasks (like kabs's "let's talk about this in about three weeks" thing) I find that very exhausting and a lot of emotional work. Or the most work to me is something like running a facebook page for a small group - there will nothing nothing nothing and then suddenly there are 14 events to announce and 27 things in the news that are relevant and you have to get all of these things out in a certain time frame before they're irrelevant or people don't have time to plan for the events but you can't oversaturate or nobody's going to read all the things so there's so much decision making and everybody's like "i did my part and provided you with the information to post even if it is only two days before my event, so what's the big deal?"

It seems that I like to be the minion working under a very clear and explicitly stated set of rules. hmm. good to know about myself.

[kaberett]

Whereas I want to be either minioning or delegating everything, by and large, and hitting the sweet spot where I can actively and constructively collaborate is pretty rare, I think. (And I tend to fall hard for people that dynamic Just Works with.)

[cadenzamuse]

I like the offer culture "I will do nice things for you unless you mean I shouldn't" but the way it's been framed over on MeFi is hitting my "but what is the difference here about women saying no and men doing things they explicitly said no to than in talking about sex?" They are both "ignoring a no" cases, but one is a Good Thing and the other is not. And I don't know what the difference is, and that's getting my hackles up at the "I will unless you ask me not to": it reads to me as a consent problem.

[kaberett]

*handwave* I agree that I'm not very comfortable with the way it's been framed on MeFi; and indeed this is why I do it as "I will unless you ask me not to", because 1. I'm very very careful only to use that framing in situations where I know the party I'm saying it to will have difficulty accepting offered help and 2. it's... never about bodily autonomy for me? It's never about me getting something directly out of the interaction? It is always always always about "your washing up needs doing. you do not feel up to doing your washing up. unless you tell me not to, I am going to come and do your washing up." -- it's pretty much always about environment not body? Does that... shift the viewing angle to one where we might be able to work out the disconnect? Because I agree that there is one, and I haven't actually properly formulated how and why I make the decisions I do here.

[cadenzamuse]

Hmm. Not quite, and I don't know why. I suspect part of the disconnect is that I present strongly in ask culture (because maternal offer culture failure mode: my upbringing was often guess culture), so all offer culture runs a little weirdly to me when it comes to consent?

Also also, since I think men (in...white American Southern culture? IDK) are socialized more ask/tell and tend to disparage women's socialized offer/guess (because they don't want to do the required emotional labor in order to be able to offer? maybe? and want to offload the problem onto women?), I have worked very hard to get better at asking explicitly for help instead of hinting in hopes that someone will offer. So there is a part of me that is tripping all around the "But working towards being able to as..." and on the other hand wishing for the "unrealistic romantic fantasy" of having someone do the external emotional work to be able to offer in this "unless I am reading wrong, this would make you happy even if you are struggling with asking for it" way. (Umm, this might be why I tend to want my offer-culture mom rather than my ask-culture spouse around, even though that is counter to cultural ethic and upsets spouse, when I am sick.)

[kaberett]

Not much more by way of actual coherent thoughts, but I see this and am mulling it over <3

[jesse_the_k]

Your notion here:

begin quote

---

This is already something I do in set-ups where I'm in a caring role (because I know that accepting help can be very difficult, whereas not refusing it is easier -- setting up a default course of action is to some extent a way of handling people, but what that also means is facilitation, so).

---

end quote

speaks to me in the same key as Mia Mingus's idea of access intimacy. Your carefully-worded-offer comes from a place of recognizing that we're schooled to prize independence, and yet we want/need to live interdependently.

If I'm too impaired to perform the task you're offering to do, chances are also good I'm too impaired to ask you to do it for me: your formulation obviates that discussion, and feels comfy to me as another disabled person.

[firecat]

they are places designed to dial the emotional labor burden way, way down. You are removed from regular family and social life. You don't have to stress about the cleanliness and conditon and chores around the places, because all of these things are taken care of in a fair and equitable rotation of tasks - when it's your turn to do the dishes, you do the dishes, but on the other days, you blissfully ignore the dishes. Life is so regulated and organized that you really can be mentally and emotionally free to concentrate on the tasks you are there to do - whether it's contemplation, human services, or whatever.

I've always been fascinated by life in a monastery, and now I have words for one reason why I am fascinated.

[sylvaine]

Another puzzle piece: was thinking about religious life. Convents, monasteries. We think of these things as big sacrifices, but in fact, they are places designed to dial the emotional labor burden way, way down.

Oh! Oh. This explains so much about why I wanted to become a nun for such a long time. Emotional labour and the executive function necessary for it is exhausting.