On emotional labor

I spent a great deal of time yesterday reading this essay on emotional labor: http://the-toast.net/2015/07/13/emotional-labor/ and also the a large portion of the very extensive and insightful comments on the essay here: http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor

This was truly an a-ha! moment for me. The term "emotional labor," one I was not familiar with, is a pretty broad umbrella and inextricably bound up with other unpaid/undervalued "women's work," such as domestic labor. I could see this in operation in all aspects of my life, with men and women, with men I have close relationships or long-time friendships with, with paid and volunteer work. And also here on LT (which I'll get to in a second).

The issue is not that we, as human beings, have to perform emotional labor. The work of maintaining relationships and a civilized society is good and worthwhile work. The issue is that 1) women are often expected/assumed to do the bulk of this work; 2) this work is seen as something that comes "naturally" to women; 3) this work is not valued and often not reciprocated; 4) this work is baked into women's jobs without adequate compensation; 5) men often do not feel the need to do this work and often do not even recognize it as work; and 6) taking on the bulk of the emotional labor exhausts women and takes a real physical toll.

I've seen two very real examples of men demanding emotional labor in recent threads here on LibraryThing. One was the thread on "What Men Can Do to End Sexism" (yes, I ill-advisedly waded back into Pro and Con). I felt like my posts there were very even-toned and were meant to help illuminate the issue. The response from a male commenter was that he was tired of hearing about what men can do, that he only wants to be valued and respected. In other words, in talking about sexism and men's part in it, women were expected to do the additional emotional labor of soothing his hurt feelings and making him feel good about himself.

The other thread was in this group on the inevitable sexism of the presidential campaign. I started that topic by commenting on what I saw as biased media coverage of white men and who they were voting for, and lamented that I was so tired of hearing about white men's problems, of course with the underlying assumption that this bias was excluding reporting on issues of importance to women and minorities, which most readers of the thread understood. However, a male poster immediately took umbrage at my wording and clearly expected me to soothe his ruffled feathers after daring to say that I was tired of hearing about his problems. When I didn't, he then spewed a lot of venom my way.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this concept.

>1 sturlington: Men got angry, and then women explained to them that to have their anger acknowledged, they would have to pay. This made them angrier, of course, but without a donation, who was listening?

Heh. I am once again reminded of Suzette Elgin's novel Native Tongue, where the women's revolution happens not via arms, but because all the women just stop paying attention to the men.

The concept of "value" is tricky though. There are things we don't value, and things we can't set a value on. In a capitalist society, where "value" is associated with how much something costs, we're often guilty of mistaking the latter for the former.

I haven't looked at the Pro & Con thread yet since the last time, but concerning the one here, if it helps at all, the individual in question seems to issue standard insults to pretty much any woman--he said the same things to me, and, I think, to Nicki as well. Which may not change the essence of your observation, but perhaps does point to some general condition that makes the worth of engagement and/or "pacification" moot.

The response from a male commenter was that he was tired of hearing about what men can do, that he only wants to be valued and respected. In other words, in talking about sexism and men's part in it, women were expected to do the additional emotional labor of soothing his hurt feelings and making him feel good about himself.

Yes, this is super common and super annoying--the latter especially because they never notice that by doing that they are actually demonstrating what tremendous assholes they are, so it's all such a bleeding waste of time. People who are genuinely well-meaning but confused about issues and concerned about doing the right thing don't sail in assuming they already know everything and then ignore everything you say, and then to top it all make themselves the topic.

I think "emotional labour" is very real and should be acknowledged but I wouldn't like to see the joke about "monetizing it" taken too far. Maybe it's more clearcut with strangers but surely there are grey areas when it comes to those close to us. It should still be acknowledged, of course, like any effort. And men do or should be able, should be taught, to do it as well.

But this goes to an old problem, the whole issue of men and emotions, how we are taught to think about them, and even further--to the extremely unfortunate, extremely stupid Cartesian duality that colours our ideas about what "emotions", "reason" and "thinking" and "feeling" are.

>2 southernbooklady: That book has been on my TBR for a while. I'll have to get to it sooner rather than later.

>3 LolaWalser: Yes, I'm aware that particular individual is an all-purpose PIA, but I just thought it was telling how personally he took my general comment that I was tired of hearing about white men's problems. This is the pattern I see--it is so hard to talk about the harm that sexism and other -isms do because the privileged group is constantly getting offended just by talking about it and demanding to be reassured.

While I don't think we should actually charge for our emotional labor--unless we are expected to do it as part of our jobs, then we should be compensated for it and it should be considered a professional skill. But by framing it in capitalist terms, I think it helps women really acknowledge that it is work. This was the a-ha moment for me. This is work, and work has value. That value doesn't have to be expressed in terms of money, but by thinking of it that way, we can better evaluate whether this is worthwhile work, whether we are getting adequate reciprocation, whether it is worthwhile doing work for certain people, why there are times when physically/mentally we just are not to up to doing this work and shouldn't have to. We are conditioned from birth to do this work all the time and for free and for everybody (even strangers), and it takes a moment of recognition to say to ourselves, "This is not worth it to me and I will no longer do it."

I ended up leaving the thread after the Bernie guy too over -- I hate to abandon you all but I just don't have the time and emotional energy to deal with someone who is basically a troll. Sorry to hear (though not surprised to hear) it got no better.

I often think of emotional work in terms of relationships and housekeeping more than my job, because it's a constant source of frustration to me even in my generally very good relationship with a feminist man. He was raised not to bother thinking about housekeeping or logistics (all the things women traditionally have to mind) so even if he wants to help he doesn't. He doesn't notice chores that need to be done. He doesn't think about when we next need to go to the grocery store. He feels no guilt about having leisure time while dishes go unwashed. My mind, meanwhile, is always juggling household chores needing to be done and the level of food in the fridge and whether we sent his aunt a thank you note for a gift and when I know he'll be having an especially stressful day so I should be extra supportive. I can't not notice and think about those things. I doubt he has ever in his life predicted when I would have a stressful day and he could act accordingly.

Re: that poster: there are a couple of things to consider - first, for you, don't forget the faux Latin phrase - illigitimi non carborundum (don't let the b!!!!!ds grind you down) and one of my all time favorites - from the mouth of MM1 Martinez during a particularly awful quarterdeck watch - " You b!!!!!!, I hope I die before you do because I'll get to hell first and I'll have seniority when you arrive."

...as for proximity fuses - precision and accuracy are not their strong suit. :-)

>5 sparemethecensor: This is the conundrum, isn't it? When otherwise thoughtful, supportive men have never been taught that these things matter or even that these are things that need to be done, even if you take it on yourself to educate them, that in itself is a lot of additional emotional labor to shoulder. Yet since many women have been basically trained to do these things since an early age, we at least become competent in them and it seems almost easier to just do it rather than to try to train your partner to shoulder his load. But all that emotional labor over time is wearying and grinds you down. I love my husband, but it doesn't sometimes keep me from fantasizing about a single life.

One place I have drawn the line is family. I take care of my family's emotional needs, he takes care of his. By that, I mean all the little things: remembering birthdays, thank yous, addressing Christmas cards, buying gifts, etc.

I remember having a conversation with some women friends recently about the work that needs to be done. A lot of this is emotional labor, but it's also such simple things as remembering to make doctor/dentist appointments for the kids. It's work that has to be done, and if the man refuses to recognize it as such, then it so often falls on the woman to do it. Because the consequences of not doing it are worse. After reading up on emotional labor, I wondered how a strike would work--just to bring it to everyone's attention that work is being done, it consumes time and energy, and there is fallout if it's not done. But who would bear the brunt of the consequences of it not being done?

>7 sturlington:
One of the conversations we had early on after moving in together was about coming to an agreement that "comparative advantage" in completing tasks could NOT be a basis for assigning them between us. I came into the relationship with a comparative advantage for all tasks, basically: cooking, cleaning, organizing, keeping track of a calendar, everything. I could do everything faster, more efficiently, and typically better than he could. But I am NOT willing to do everything.

I'm intrigued by your idea of a strike -- I wonder what would happen? Would people who aren't aware of this work, or don't value it, really see the importance of it? This seems definitionally like something that it is easy for people to ignore.

Sociological Images recently had an interesting post about "worry work" that aligns nicely with this conversation:
https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2016/05/09/the-invisible-worry-work-of-mot...

>3 LolaWalser:

Lola --

I'm not sure that's a fair cop when it comes to Descartes' own views but, leaving that aside for the sake of agreement, it is quite true that many people apparently subscribe to this dichotomous view of "reason" versus "emotion."

I agree-- it's a false dichotomy and has fostered much mischief. There are other men I know of who'd also agree with you:

Sam Harris , Antonio Damasio , Richard Dawkins , Daniel Dennett to name just a few.

Another "field to plow" -- (1) women do the bulk of emotional work and (2) are neither compensated nor appreciated for it.

(1), as usual, is alleged and presumed to be true. On what ground is not quite clear but from my experience here I suspect that it's assumed to be true by virtue of the fact that the world in general is just so damned unfair.

----------------------

>1 sturlington:
... " . However, a male poster immediately took umbrage at my wording and clearly expected me to soothe his ruffled feathers after daring to say that I was tired of hearing about his problems. When I didn't, he then spewed a lot of venom my way.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this concept."

Yes, "Right of reply", anyone?

"Ruffled feathers"! Hardly! Zero "soothing" expected--none! You're the last person to whom I'd look for or from whom I'd expect anything even remotely resembling "soothing" !

Rather, I called on you to leaven your own heavy "emotional" component with some greater application of reason's missing part in "emotion."

Does all "feminist theory" boil down to such "women's" (i. e. your) resentment-driven false-claims of their (i. e. your) special suffering under an exvlusively male-produced oppression?

( From the page link @ Metafilter blog)

..."but if there was one archetype in particular I could choose to destroy first, it would be the one that says sensitivity and nurturing and saintly levels of understanding and boundless, ceaseless patience aren't just women's work, but the fundamental tenets of womanhood itself. It feels like I've swallowed poison every time someone says "feminine" when what they really mean is "acquiescent, submissive, and willing to put up with infinite shit in exchange for absolutely nothing at all." ...

Lol! Credit-where-credit-is-due Dept.

That "archetype" now a smoldering heap. Contemporary feminists may congratulate themselves for some things and destroying this "archetype"/notion (in the minds of men (and women?) ) is, if they want , one of the things to which they may point with pride and say, "There! I did that! Well, not necessarily all by myself but I certainly helped. Together, we women showed insensitive men that, once again, we're their equals. They've got nothing on us. We're through doing their emotional work for them and, thanks to our work-- mine and my many sisters-- they're all through expecting that from us."

Congratulations! Job done!

-------

>8 sparemethecensor:

"I'm intrigued by your idea of a strike -- I wonder what would happen? "

I recommend a basic "work-to-rule" or "slowdown" strategy rather than an announced strike action with picket-signs and a picket-line.

Simply don't "show up" for any emotional work by which you feel imposed upon. When (if) it's noticed not being done, respond with a puzzled shrug of the shoulder--as though you have no idea. Let Mr. Emotional-work-shirker take up his own responsabilities for a change.

Do not, however, overlook the possibility of various unintended consequences. Rather,-- well, on second thought, never mind: that would simply be taking on yet more emotional work.

"You deserve a break today," as a famous restaurant advert had it.

Does all "feminist theory" boil down to such "women's" (i. e. your) resentment-driven false-claims of their (i. e. your) special suffering under an exvlusively male-produced oppression?

So, proximity, you read a thread full of intelligent discussion and come up with the above? I suppose -- and here I'm doing a lot of emotional, soothing work -- that it's a great question, though rather roundabout, if your real intent was to invite us to ignore your condescending, rude, privileged p-o-v. It's probably easier not to post at all and you'll get the same results with less effort. Though you have been kind enough to alert us to your trollishness and now we know to avoid your future comments. So thanks, I guess.

To everyone else: I'm mostly a lurker on these discussions but I love them and appreciate all your thoughtful posts.

>11 susanbooks: You probably already know this, but it is very handy if you don't. If you would like to ignore someone's posts, you can click their name and then click Block Member at the very bottom right corner of their profile. I find that feature very helpful for keeping threads clean and uncluttered by trolling.

Ah! Sturlington, I didn't know that -- thank you! I know the first person I'll use it for . . .

Yeah, fine, whatever.

Alain de Botton--a man--wrote this, and I, another man, post it here for your consideration:

" But though we believe ourselves to be seeking happiness in marriage, it isn’t that simple. What we really seek is familiarity — which may well complicate any plans we might have had for happiness. We are looking to recreate, within our adult relationships, the feelings we knew so well in childhood. The love most of us will have tasted early on was often confused with other, more destructive dynamics: feelings of wanting to help an adult who was out of control, of being deprived of a parent’s warmth or scared of his anger, of not feeling secure enough to communicate our wishes. How logical, then, that we should as grown-ups find ourselves rejecting certain candidates for marriage not because they are wrong but because they are too right — too balanced, mature, understanding and reliable — given that in our hearts, such rightness feels foreign. We marry the wrong people because we don’t associate being loved with feeling happy.

" We make mistakes, too, because we are so lonely. No one can be in an optimal frame of mind to choose a partner when remaining single feels unbearable. We have to be wholly at peace with the prospect of many years of solitude in order to be appropriately picky; otherwise, we risk loving no longer being single rather more than we love the partner who spared us that fate.

" Finally, we marry to make a nice feeling permanent. We imagine that marriage will help us to bottle the joy we felt when the thought of proposing first came to us: Perhaps we were in Venice, on the lagoon, in a motorboat, with the evening sun throwing glitter across the sea, chatting about aspects of our souls no one ever seemed to have grasped before, with the prospect of dinner in a risotto place a little later. We married to make such sensations permanent but failed to see that there was no solid connection between these feelings and the institution of marriage.

" Indeed, marriage tends decisively to move us onto another, very different and more administrative plane, which perhaps unfolds in a suburban house, with a long commute and maddening children who kill the passion from which they emerged. The only ingredient in common is the partner. And that might have been the wrong ingredient to bottle.

" The good news is that it doesn’t matter if we find we have married the wrong person.

" We mustn’t abandon him or her, only the founding Romantic idea upon which the Western understanding of marriage has been based the last 250 years: that a perfect being exists who can meet all our needs and satisfy our every yearning.

" WE need to swap the Romantic view for a tragic (and at points comedic) awareness that every human will frustrate, anger, annoy, madden and disappoint us — and we will (without any malice) do the same to them. There can be no end to our sense of emptiness and incompleteness. But none of this is unusual or grounds for divorce. Choosing whom to commit ourselves to is merely a case of identifying which particular variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for.

" This philosophy of pessimism offers a solution to a lot of distress and agitation around marriage. It might sound odd, but pessimism relieves the excessive imaginative pressure that our romantic culture places upon marriage. The failure of one particular partner to save us from our grief and melancholy is not an argument against that person and no sign that a union deserves to fail or be upgraded.

" The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn’t exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently — the person who is good at disagreement. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate differences with generosity that is the true marker of the “not overly wrong” person. ..."

The New York Times , 06/29/2016
Alain de Botton, "Why you will marry the wrong person"

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-will-marry-the-wrong...

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What I see going on here --as well as more generally in what seems to pass for contemporary feminism--is an effort to use a very large social phenomenon, "feminism," as a towing-and-garage boyfriend/husband repairs-and-trouble shooting service.

The husband, the boyfriend--even the most promising--still doesn't quite have it all right. What to do? Hey! Contemporary feminism to the rescue! I'll not address my homelife's relationship troubles at home; instead, I'll have a tow-truck take them to worldwide feminism where thousands women like me will dissect these problems and seek a general once-and-for-all-reform of not just my defective model but of defective men everywhere. The key is to make men everywhere stop and learn about what my relationship needs from the man in it who's falling short of the goal and ensure that all those men--who I'll never meet--don't go and repeat the same shortcomings with some other woman--who, by definition, I assume to be like I am.

Rather than taking a vast socio-political movement--the product of over a century of effort by women and men--and expecting to turn it to repairing your personal relations with men, it would be more effective to address your friends and partners directly.

That, of course, entails risks and burdens that are avoided by resorting to ritualistic open commiseration with similarly disgruntled women:

the risk is that you might fail to get what you want and need if you address the individual concerned directly;

the burden is that, rather than dumping your relationship troubles upon the feminist movement and expecting society to reform so that your partner's behaviour shall improve, you take on yourself this responsibility.

I know what I expect your reactions to be from your record of commentary here.

You don't want responsibility, you want to dump and vent and find others with whom to commiserate.

>13 susanbooks: You would think someone could take a hint, but evidently not.

I also mostly lurk in this group, but read all (well, most) posts and always learn something. This thread in particular is really resonating with me, but I'm still processing it. Thank you for starting it.

>8 sparemethecensor: I'm intrigued by your idea of a strike -- I wonder what would happen? Would people who aren't aware of this work, or don't value it, really see the importance of it? This seems definitionally like something that it is easy for people to ignore.

I had lunch yesterday with a friend and she told me a story that made me think of this conversation and the idea of "emotional work." She is in a writers group, which happens to be all women, and once a year they go on a retreat to the mountains in Western North Carolina, and spend a long weekend sort of intensively writing and critiquing at a little resort run by a friend of one of the group. Very five star.

The woman who owns the resort and runs it is a former actress, now in her seventies, I think, and someone who always seems to have a younger man hanging around her. Younger in this case being a "boyfriend" in his late sixties. The women in the writing group are also all older, retired or financially secure enough to take off for a few days for something like this retreat.

So my friend--who is in no way a shrinking violet -- comes back from this retreat extremely irritated because the boyfriend had spent the entire time coming on to her. "It wasn't my imagination" she said "I thought it must be at first because we're all past that age and I don't flirt" (she doesn't, and she wears her wedding ring) "but all the other women in the group noticed it too." She said he had a habit of invading your personal bubble -- sitting too close, making slightly off-color comments under the guise of being flattering, all the usual.

As a result, she said she spent most of the weekend trying to avoid him, and the other women in the group did their best to help her by doing whatever they could to limit his access to my friend or the group as a whole --making sure he couldn't sit next to her at meals or corner her at evening social gatherings. The writing group leader, who is a man, by the way, apparently remained mildly oblivious to the problem. He thought it was sort of funny, the predatory boyfriend sort of pathetic.

So my friend's take on this whole situation was "why would this successful woman resort owner bother to keep a boyfriend like that one?"

But I couldn't help but be struck by how it was the women's job to "handle" this predator in their midst. To arrange things so that there were no confrontations and they could still get their writing done, and to make sure the collegiality of the retreat, the enjoyable atmosphere of it, was preserved. "Weren't you kind of pissed off," I asked my friend, "that you had to spend so much energy dealing with him when you could have spent it on your writing?"

Yeah, she said, YES.

>16 southernbooklady: Thanks for sharing. That's a powerful story to illustrate this point. How much energy are women (and others regularly dealing with the potential of threats like this -- trans folks come to mind) expending on keeping vigilant? What could be accomplished with that energy redirected into things that are productive?

What really came home to me about the story was the strong suggestion that if any reasonable response had been made, like, say, "You are being inappropriate" or "please stop that" it would have been the woman who came off as rude or bitchy, even though the entire situation was instigated by the man's behavior.

16-18

..."The woman who owns the resort and runs it is a former actress, now in her seventies, I think, and someone who always seems to have a younger man hanging around her. Younger in this case being a "boyfriend" in his late sixties."

"Boyfriend" of the owner here must mean, "no particular 'rights.' " It's also clear from the narrative that the resort-owner has serial admirers of this sort. Hence, she holds the high cards. She'd also have a strong incentive on more than one ground to curb this guy's (late 60s!) boorish behavior. So I see at least two quick shortcuts to doing all this onerous "emotional labor. " Any one of the group's women--and most of all the one closest to the resort's owner--could have

1) taken the old guy aside and said quietly, "Look, I'm a friend of (owner) and I'm telling you that your behavior toward (various) is unwelcome. If you don't drop it immediately, I'll be having this talk with (owner) next. As I know her, your sweet gig here is at risk. It's now your move. The smart thing is to stop now." (This takes less than four minutes of hard labor and could have saved, what? Hours of voluntarily undertaken chaperone duty?)

2) gone straight to (owner) instead. (Probably the better course.) It's her place and her responsibility to keep her boorish boyfriends on a shorter leash--not to mention keeping the paying regular group-guests happy. Did that not occur to anyone?

Unless either (owner) or boorish boyfriend replies--

"I know all about it and
I do this at her /
he does this at my

behest" --- your problems are over.
And my hunch is that boorish boyfriend finds it's "check-out time."

Had any of the ladies done that, this story should have been briefer and a good deal less grist for your mill here about how men are just so damned ...!

By their 60s, how are women so caught out by such behavior on the part of boorish men? I'm the age-peer of these writing-group members. I don't recall that the women along side of whom I grew up and knew all through life were unfamiliar with the art of getting rid of unwelcome male attention--not at twenty and certainly not twice that age and older.

By the way, in case one is tempted to reply by saying that there's no excuse for such behavior in a 60-year-old man, let me point out that it can and it does happen in life that both men _and_ women--even at 60+ years old--have been known to be in the role of the boor of this story. People are that varied and that flawed, even at that age.

The whole point of the story is that his behavior was not considered "boorish" -- just your usual run of the mill patriarchal sense of entitlement (and obliviousness) that some men feel over every woman they meet.

But I agree that saying "back off, you prick" would have been justified. It's just sad how often that phrase is appropriate.

>20 southernbooklady:

"The whole point of the story is that his behavior was not considered "boorish" -- just your usual run of the mill patriarchal sense of entitlement (and obliviousness) that some men feel"...

Indeed!? And what if I should be so bold as to consider it boorish?--my term for such behavior and very far from " just your usual run of the mill patriarchal sense of entitlement"? That's an unwelcome view and ruled out of order here?

"It's just sad how often that phrase is appropriate."

No doubt. But, as a practical matter of life and living, the facts remain--and so does the question:

what are you going to realistically expect? To see the actual end of such behavior once and for all? If that's the idea here, then obviously you're in for a "very long wait."

If you want to take to group consolation, that's your business of course. But it won't change any facts the ground--nor shall making this a part of the feminist cause célèbre. The future's examples of this old man's type haven't even been born yet.

>21 proximity1: And what if I should be so bold as to consider it boorish?--my term for such behavior and very far from " just your usual run of the mill patriarchal sense of entitlement"? That's an unwelcome view and ruled out of order here?

Not at all. It is gratifying to know that if you had been there, you would have called out the man on his behavior. But what the people on this forum think of you is hardly germane to the story.

what are you going to realistically expect?

As a feminist, I realistically except men to treat women as if they were equal human beings, not sex objects. I think they are capable of it. Realistically, if they are called on such behavior now, and the group dynamics pointed out to them so they can avoid falling into such behaviors again, then those future examples of this old man's type that haven't been born yet, won't be.

>20 southernbooklady: The entitlement and obliviousness you refer to is, I believe, engendered by a lifetime of not experiencing consequences for this type of behavior, which you point out in >22 southernbooklady:. Women are trained all their lives to shelter men from the consequences of their behavior and, as you say, if we do try to call it out, we are punished for being "bitchy" or "nagging" or whatever choice word you want to use.

I believe this resurgence in concern about so-called political correctness is really a reaction to suddenly experiencing consequences, or being called out on, speech that would have previously been allowed to slide by. It makes the entitled group uncomfortable to be told that what they say and think is actually offensive or harmful to others. Instead of doing the hard work of rethinking their assumptions and modifying their speech, instead they protest "political correctness," which won't let them just say whatever's on their mind and not have to be made uncomfortably aware of the damage their words can cause. I have seen some people say that this is the most important issue in the presidential campaign, which kind of boggles my mind considering the enormous problems our world is facing.

This is but a minor example, but I was thinking about this as I loaded the dishwasher this morning. My husband cooked last night for his office picnic and (sort of) did the dishes. But I noticed he had put bowls and glasses in the dishwasher with the open part facing up, and I had to fix it all. I had this thought process: 1. Doesn't he know that they won't get clean that way? They'll just fill up with dirty water. 2. No, he doesn't know, because I am the one who always empties the dishwasher. 3. I could leave them that way and let him figure it out. 4. No, because I will have to deal with them later when I empty the dishwasher.

Those of us who raise or work with children know that they do not learn unless they can experience some consequences for their actions.

>22 southernbooklady:

I can't be certain exactly what I'd have _done_ in the circumstances since I wasn't there. But had I seen or heard these things at the time, they'd have struck not only myself as out of line but also anyone else I know. No one arrives at this old man's age unaware that such behavior is likely to be unwelcome. There is more going on with this fellow than we've taken account of.

& >23 sturlington:

"Women are trained all their lives to shelter men from the consequences of their behavior and, as you say, if we do try to call it out, we are punished for being "bitchy" or "nagging" or whatever choice word you want to use."

My own older sister wasn't. I'm witness to that. Nor was I ever encouraged by anyone, man or woman, peer or adult superior, to hold any such expectation from women. Quite the contrary! The _young_ women I knew as a young man frequently demonstrated their lively capacity to tell men who tried to impose on them just where to get off. I'm witness to _that_, too. Nor is there anything about that which is even remotely unusual. I knew no male peers who found their relations with women much different. Anyone who crowded a woman's "comfort zone," was treated to a response which cannot be described as being "sheltered from the consequences of his action."

Re:

"...is really a reaction to suddenly experiencing consequences, or being called out on, speech that would have previously been allowed to slide by."

No one--men included--past age sixty is "suddenly experiencing (these) consequences." By his age, nothing in the world of "PC" comes as new or sudden.

It makes the entitled group uncomfortable to be told that what they say and think is actually offensive or harmful to others. Instead of doing the hard work of rethinking their assumptions and modifying their speech, instead they protest "political correctness,"

Yes, I've seen firsthand people's resistance at "rethinking their assumptions." But I've also noticed that not everyone is necesssrily at all concerned about whether or not she gives offense--never mind their entitled-group members' feeling "uncomfortable to be told that what they say and think is actually offensive ... to others"

I don't agree with everything in this editorial but it has some interesting things to say about political correctness and sexism in the presidential campaign.

The Anti-P.C. Vote http://nyti.ms/1RLTDrf

The presidential election as an unruly 8th grade homeroom class. Oh joy.

>24 proximity1:

Every single post of yours in this group has been chock full of insults to, variously or simultaneously, all of us here, all feminists, women in general, and specific individuals, and you expect responses, polite dialogue? From the same people you've called idiots, shallow, stupid and so on ad nauseam?

Nobody gives a flying fuck about your "more laters". Your posts aren't worth a pixel's fart.

Buy a clue, take a hint, and go fly a kite somewhere, you insufferable wonder of obliviousness and total lack of self-awareness.

And that earns me lunch and a rest. Emotional labour is a killer.

>28 LolaWalser: Put your feet up. You've earned it.

>27 LolaWalser:

Lol! You have incredible nerve to accuse me of being an "insufferable wonder of obliviousness and total lack of self-awareness" !

The following --

Nobody gives a flying fuck about your "more laters". Your posts aren't worth a pixel's fart.

Buy a clue, take a hint, and go fly a kite somewhere, you insufferable wonder of obliviousness and total lack of self-awareness.

was written by you, one of this group's "feminists"-- one of those apparently so concerned about the labor involved in getting men to treat women with the respect they see as so lacking, and seconded,

" Put your feet up. You've earned it."

by another.

-----------
Hey, Shirl'?
Yeah, Barb?
Did I tell you that my husband kinda sorta filled the dishwasher last night after we'd had dinner?--his night to cook.
Yea!
Not so fast! When I opened the dishwasher, I discovered that he'd put bowls and glasses in open-end up!
You're kidding me!
I am _not_ kidding you!
So I guess you set him straight, huh?
Well, no. I put everything in correctly.
Men!
I know! Right?
So he still doesn't know how to fill the dishwasher properly ?
Well, you know this, right?-- women are trained all their lives to shelter men from the consequences of their behavior.
And how!
If I'd spoken to him about putting the dishes in the dishwasher correctly, I'd have been the "trouble-maker"!
We just can't win!
We do the emotional labor and they can't even fill the dishwasher!

I me glad you told me. Sounds so familiar! In fact, I was reading a blog I frequent and there was this story about a group of women at a writing retreat held at a resort owned by a former actress who's a friend of one of the group. Well, the resort owner's near-seventy-something 'boyfriend,' kept bothering one of the group. She made it clear to this jerk that she wasn't interested but he just kept trying.

Amazing! Men! So then what? Did someone tell him to leave her alone?

No, all her writer group friends ran interference for her.

Well, what about the owner? Wouldn't she have been more than ready to rein him in?

I can't say. Apparently no one bothered to notify her about it. You know--we're always getting blamed if we complain. That's why we don't make an issue of things. We handle them ourselves.

Men!

I know! Right?

Back off, you prick

Oddly enough, Proximity1, you've been the recipient of variants of this phrase on multiple occasions and in multiple threads.

Your own continued posting simply proves how stunningly unsuccessful men are at respecting women's boundaries.

You've made it more than apparent that your own advice is ineffective.

>31 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

"Your own continued posting simply proves how stunningly unsuccessful men are at respecting women's boundaries."

"Women's boundaries"?

This is an open discussion thread in a discussion group of which I'm a member. --at a website of which I'm a member.

This is not a "women's-only" club, it's a discussion group on so-called feminist theory open to any member of this website.

Anyone may join the group and participate in discussions in its threads. If you want to have private exclusive women-only whining sessions, you're free to do that at a private site.

That's a very _restrained_ reply on my part compared to what has been addressed to me here by _you_ and others.

Thank you for proving my point.

>34 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

You had no "point"!

No, my point is that multiple members of this group have made it more than clear that your behavior is boorish, degrading and insulting. It has been made more than clear that people don't want to interact with you. Yet you insist on doing otherwise.

Ergo, if all women needed to do to spurn unwanted interaction were say "Back off, prick," you would be nowhere to be found.

Your unasked for advice is useless and proven so by every post you make.

Logic's a motherfucker, man.

Personal attacks are against the site Terms of Service, sir.

As you highly value membership on the she, I'd urge you refrain from them in the future.

>38 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

Citing _you_ in a post to me : >31 Jesse_wiedinmyer: "Back off, you prick! "

I've flagged your post as a violation. Instead of lecturing me on the terms of service here, start respecting them yourself!

I applaud all the efforts to keep this a civilized discussion. I especially appreciate Jesse's observation that just telling someone to "back off" and having that be respected is many times not respected, as is being proven in this very thread. I suggest in the future that if someone does not want to engage on the respectful and thoughtful level that has been well established in this forum, that we all just block that person and continue on with our discussion around him. It is clear that he has no intention of leaving and perhaps thinks he is "scoring points." Let's not expend any more emotional labor on him.

>37 proximity1: How the hell do any of you even have male companionship in such wretched self-pitying lives?

I have dogs. They only whine when they are hungry.

>23 sturlington: Your thought process mirrors something I go through whenever I think someone isn't doing something the right way. I always put it down to me being a control freak -- this assumption that I might as well do it myself because it's easier than dealing with the fallout from someone else doing it differently, aka "wrongly."

It's a bit of a character flaw, but I think where the "emotional labor" comes into such scenarios is not in the "I'll just do it myself" impulse. It's the aftermath that follows -- the way we tend to tamp down our own irritation to preserve a genial or civil atmosphere. We "smooth things over" in the interests of getting the task done. (in another thread somewhere I related how I have better success getting a point heard and accepted by presenting it in such a way that the person I'm talking to thinks they came to it on their own). That's the emotional labor. It's basically that women are expected to dispense with great heaping piles of validation to everyone around them.

I don't know that men don't also do this, but I do know that women are conditioned to do this, and that when we don't, it registers as more jarring, more startling. It's a vicious cycle, because at least in my case I get frustrated and resentful at not only having to do the work, but also having to act like its okay that I'm doing the work.

But the only way out of such a tangle is to be honest, even if the price is an uncomfortable atmosphere for awhile. Women aren't just conditioned to give all this emotional validation, society is conditioned to expect if of them. And really, the only way you can change a person's expectations is to show them they are unfounded or unnecessary.

Post duly edited to note that the intent and not literal meaning of the phrase was meant.

Now, if you would like, we might take a poll and see how many of the women in this thread wish you to back off and back out of the group (no use of the word "prick," as that would be a violation of the TOS)... I'm certain, since you've already noted that such warning is sufficient, that you would respect those wishes and remove yourself accordingly, no?

>41 southernbooklady: That's the emotional labor. It's basically that women are expected to dispense with great heaping piles of validation to everyone around them.

This is it exactly. It would be interesting to try being absolutely honest for a while. Not to get angry or even irritated, but just to say what I'm thinking. "When you do this, it makes more work for me..." Hmm.

>40 sturlington:

"I applaud all the efforts to keep this a civilized discussion. I especially appreciate Jesse's observation that just telling someone to "back off" and having that be respected is many times not respected, as is being proven in this very thread.

There is simply and obviously no comparison between my participation in this forum's open internet discussion and, on the other hand, the case of a stranger personally imposing his undesired attention on a woman staying as a paying guest at a hotel with the apparent desire to make her his potential sex partner. To insinuate that these are comparable ought to constitute a violation of the TOS here--for that insinuation is deliberately insulting.

Those actual words were, "Back off, you prick!"

You stated your "especially" appreciating that part of this "civilized discussion."

I suggest in the future that if someone does not want to engage on the respectful and thoughtful level that has been well established in this forum, that we all just block that person and continue on with our discussion around him. It is clear that he has no intention of leaving and perhaps thinks he is "scoring points." Let's not expend any more emotional labor on him.

Laughable! You've contributed to giving faux-feminism the abysmal reputation it deservedly has today. Young women, I hope, observe the tawdry examples set here defending sexist bigotry and are properly disgusted by those examples.

>43 sturlington: It would be interesting to try being absolutely honest for a while.

Lola is my role model for this. :-)

Again, Proximity, if we were to poll the women of this group and they requested you leave, you would obviously honor that, right? Because all a woman needs to do to forego unwanted attention is indicate that the attention is unwanted and makes a woman uncomfortable...?

If that's the case, then a simple poll would be sufficient, right?

>45 southernbooklady:

You (of anyone whose acquaintance I've made I'm my life) have read Rich's "Women and Honor", yes?

>42 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

"Post duly edited to note that the intent and not literal meaning of the phrase was meant."

"Duly edited"? What's "duly edited" !? Where ?!

And do I "understand" you to say that you *merely* intended the remark as it is *usually* understood *rather* than some other so-called *literal* sense?

I don't think you even understand whatever the he'll your convoluted statement is supposed to mean.

-----------

"Now, if you would like, we might take a poll and see how many of the women in this thread wish you to back off and back out of the group .
... I'm certain, since you've already noted that such warning is sufficient, that you would respect those wishes and remove yourself accordingly, no?"

Why take a poll on what amounts to asking participants if they dislike having their nonsense shown up as nonsense and whether they'd prefer not to have such cogent arguments posted against their patently bigoted views of men?

Would you resign participation wherever and whenever your correspondents found your arguments unanswerable--just to relieve them of having to face criticism they cannot adequately answer?

I'm telling you for the third time:

This is a public, open-forum at a site to which I belong as a member.

--------

"(no use of the word "prick," as that would be a violation of the TOS)"

It's too late to use the conditional "would be." You've already used the term.

>46 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

See my answer at >48 proximity1: .

And, speaking of the minimum in respect, you'd show enough respect to refrain, at my request, from further "inviting" me to quit this group, wouldn't you?

Why take a poll?

Because you have already straightforwardly suggested that men will stop being assholes if women make it apparent how uncomfortable a man's behavior has made them.

So I would assume that if enough people make it clear to you that you are hurting them, you will desist, without reference to how valid you think their assessment of the situation is.

>47 Jesse_wiedinmyer: I have. In fact, it is one of my touchstone pieces. My copy of On Lies, Secrets, and Silence is well-thumbed, heavily used. Her question-- how do women unlearn this lifelong condition of being forced to lie? -- is pretty central to my idea of feminism.

Let's try it this way....

As you have already assured everyone in this thread that a simple "back off; (again, I won't use a superfluous "prick") is sufficient to deter unwanted interaction...

Anyone who wishes Proximity to back off and cease interaction, please send a pm to Tim asking that "Proximity" be removed from the group.

And if you enjoy interaction with Proximity, feel free to interact with him.

>51 southernbooklady:

I don't know.

I can tell you that as a "man", the events in my life that have fucked me the worst have been those where I found that those women that I thought cared were simply coddling my perceived inability to accept rejection.

To discover that one has been lied to can, of course, lead one to.feel that they are crazy.

>50 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

...you have already straightforwardly suggested that men will stop being assholes if women make it apparent how uncomfortablea man's behavior has made them.

So I would assume that if enough people make it clear to you that you are hurting them, you will desist, without reference to how valid you think their assessment of the situation is.

You are very confused on multiple points.

Women have a right to object to and to be relieved of the undesired sexually-interested attentions of strangers--immediately on their informing those strangers that they aren't interested. That's one thing .

Expecting to be left completely "comfortable" (which, in this context, is nothing short of expecting any and all male participants in this discussion group to drop out upon the first occasion of their arguments' being deemed uncooperative toward, less than agreeing with, the stated views of others acting as a closed and self-supporting clique)--that is something else.

This makes twice I've stated my position on this to your rude and inappropriate invitation that I quit here. Any other such invitation addressed to me by you is going ignored.

Brah, why do you keep inserting yourself where it's obvious that you are not wanted?

Pun intended.

I'll gladly leave the group if you will.

Hopefully, I'll still have enough of a relationship with some of the posters that I'll be kept abreast.

Let's go...

1 for 1.

You and me, we'll unjoin the group together.

>23 sturlington:

Re : dishes loaded improperly in dishwasher by husband--here's a totally crazy, off-the-wall idea:

Talk to him about it.

I'd bet that if you explained once to your husband how to properly load the dishwasher, he'd do that and at least that bit of emotional labor would be behind you.

>58 proximity1:

Holy fucking shit.

You talked sense.

Now when people talk to you about how obnoxious they find your interaction to be, will you listen?

I want Proximity1 to leave this group?

Agreed or disagreed?

>59 Jesse_wiedinmyer: While he did give a superficially reasonable answer, he's missing the whole larger point of the discussion. Of course, I can talk to my husband and perhaps solve this one rather minor issue. What we are talking about is the constant and unceasing, practically invisible and certainly undervalued, work of emotional labor. He should go back and read >7 sturlington: and especially >41 southernbooklady:

In other words, the dishwasher is not the problem.

>53 Jesse_wiedinmyer: where I found that those women that I thought cared were simply coddling my perceived inability to accept rejection.

Right. It's a recipe for disaster. As if relationships between people must be founded on the perception of trust instead of the reality of trust.

But commitments to honesty do require bravery. You have to be brave enough to be honest with others, even if there are unpleasant consequences. Equally, you have to be brave enough to accept honesty from others, even if they tell you things you don't want to hear, without lashing back and becoming the source of those unpleasant consequences.

Ultimately, I think if our own sense of self worth is grounded and solid, then it is all doable, even preferable. But if our sense of self worth depends on all this validation we want from others -- and in a patriarchal culture men require huge amounts of validation from women, it's built in to the culture -- then such honest relationships are all but impossible -- they navigate a minefield of other unreasonable emotional expectations.

Ultimately, I think the only answer is to govern oneself, since one can't govern others. Witness this very thread, which has ironically turned into an online version of my friend's experience with her writing group. Since we can't dismiss every unwanted presence from our lives, really the only solution is to talk around and over the people we don't want to expend any energy on. Perhaps only occasionally resorting to "back off, you prick" when the decibel level gets too annoying (and I have to say I find it amusing that you are getting pilloried for using the phrase when I'm the one who first said it).

I disagree with none of the immediately above.

I can very straightforwardly tell you that there have been points in my life where I've slept with razor blade in grasp simply because I found I'd been told a relationship was one thing only to find out at the wrong time that there was no relationship at all.

>64 Jesse_wiedinmyer: I like to think that if we all treated each other as human beings (which is really what feminism wants), none of us would be driven to such a point. But we are all works in progress, I suppose. I'm currently single right now because a relationship I thought was one thing turned out to be...not that thing at all.

Bell Hook's book All About Love is on my TBR stack because from what I understand it is a deep exploration of how patriarchal assumptions and expectations sabotage relationships between men and women. And, I expect, between women and women.

>62 sturlington:

Men are not mind readers.

As a general reminder and warning, let's keep things civil, please. Per LibraryThing's Terms of Use: Comment on content, not on the contributor. Personal attacks on members are prohibited, regardless of context.

Members who continue to violate these Terms will be suspended.

>66 Jesse_wiedinmyer: No, neither are women. That's not my expectation. I could elaborate but I don't want to make this conversation about my personal relationship. I'd rather talk about the larger concept. I probably shouldn't have used the dishwasher example at all; I was just trying to illustrate a process I go through probably many times each day and with many other people besides my husband.

>63 southernbooklady:

..."That's the emotional labor. It's basically that women are expected to dispense with (strike?) great heaping piles of validation to everyone around them.

I don't know that men don't also do this, but I do know that women are conditioned to do this..."

Some women, perhaps even most or all the women you know and have known. If so, I live on a another planet. I know scant few such "conditioned" women. My sister did such emotional labor only for those she cared for--or only for others at the behest of those she cared about. And I did the SAME. If someone imposed on me in that way it was because I cared enough about them to undertake that labor for them or for someone else important to them : read "in-laws."

Relationships are practically by definition emotional-labor in perpetuity. That's what they are. That is why beyond the age of minority, IN PRIVATE LIFE, there's something called "freedom of association," with a corollary right to not associate except voluntarily.

Now it's true that there are people who are the living examples of a Florence Nightingale. And there are others clever enough to recognise and take advantage of their patience.

I suppose there are many marriages or unmarried couples in which one partner bears more of this labor than the other. It would strike me as strange if somehow there just naturally and effortlessly occurred a happy balance in most homes.

There's also "emotional labor" done in the workplace between "superiors" and "inferiors" ( because the employees see it as useful to their desire to remain employed) and between peers at work for lots of different reasons.

if this "emotional labor" is always mostly a burden and never a labor of love, then I think the validity and value of the relationship itself is in question. If you don't care enough for your partner to do such "labor," what are you in the relationship for? There may be something--but whatever it is, you're feeling imposed upon for the sake of protecting it.

And indeed, that can breed resentment.

>67 lorannen:

See >61 Jesse_wiedinmyer: above. And >27 LolaWalser: , >31 Jesse_wiedinmyer:, >50 Jesse_wiedinmyer: , >52 Jesse_wiedinmyer: , >55 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

How do the TOS regard repeated demands that one *Get lost!* ?

(That is _not_ a rhetorical question.)

I don't know why you assume that warning weren't directed at me.

I shat on the tos when I called you a prick.

I was wrong to violate the TOS, I apologise.

BTW, no one has demanded you get lost
They simply don't want to interact with you.

Here is a non-personal example of the pervasiveness of this problem that I stumbled across on Tumblr (Tumblr is hard to link to so I hope you can read it): http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/134751488175/vixyish-sailoreuterpe-dare-to-...

The initial post is about how some men mistake basic human interaction for flirting when it comes from a woman, and then several women comment with stories of this happening to them and the extreme measures they had to take to deal with it without coming to harm or getting fired from their jobs. I think it's very telling that one example is given so many women can immediately chime in and describe how this happens to them too, not just occasionally, but all the time.

>73 sturlington: something about my browser made that link almost impossible to read, but this:

this is why a lot of women do the resting bitch face when out in public. Cause dudes swear a glance or a smile is flirting.

is food for thought. The idea that we have to pro-actively discourage contact, because what should be relatively normal, neutral interactions -- like smiling at someone -- risk being interpreted as an invitation -- is one of those tools in the toolbox we all create for ourselves to get through life with minimal risk of dangerous confrontation.

For what it is worth, I also spent much of my professional life in a bookstore, and most of college working as a waitress, and smiling was always part of the job. So, for that matter, was flirting. In the waitress job is was regarded as par for the course, or what I would now call "good customer service." It was your job, as a younger woman serving up coffee and eggs to the early morning breakfast crowd, to make them feel good about themselves. You weren't just serving a meal, you were serving up an attitude. If you wanted the tips, you had to dish out the attitude.

The bookstore job was less blatant about it, but a big part of customer service is about making the customer feel special.

>74 southernbooklady: For what it is worth, I also spent much of my professional life in a bookstore, and most of college working as a waitress, and smiling was always part of the job. So, for that matter, was flirting. In the waitress job is was regarded as par for the course, or what I would now call "good customer service." It was your job, as a younger woman serving up coffee and eggs to the early morning breakfast crowd, to make them feel good about themselves. You weren't just serving a meal, you were serving up an attitude. If you wanted the tips, you had to dish out the attitude.

So this is an example of emotional labor being a job expectation. Is the expectation different for men and women in the same job? Are women who fulfill this job expectation then subject to unwanted harassment or even physical danger from male customers who mistake the basic customer service for romantic interest?

>74 southernbooklady: The idea that we have to pro-actively discourage contact, because what should be relatively normal, neutral interactions -- like smiling at someone -- risk being interpreted as an invitation -- is one of those tools in the toolbox we all create for ourselves to get through life with minimal risk of dangerous confrontation.

Here's an example of the very thing that happened to me recently. I was leaving a meeting at a hotel at 9 p.m., walking into a dark parking lot, when a man who I did not know passed me and grunted, "How you doing?" I did not answer or make eye contact because I did not want him to think I was interested or worse, a prostitute, since the meeting was at a hotel. Using that tool in my toolbox. Then he got angry at me for not replying and screamed at me--again, this is a strange man in a dark parking lot at night--"I said, how you doing!" Basically, I got to my car as quickly as I could.

After that, whenever I attended that regular meeting, I had to take the additional step of making sure someone was around to walk out to my car with me after the meeting ended.

These are not unusual experiences for women.

>75 sturlington: Is the expectation different for men and women in the same job?

Oh, absolutely. At the very least, many male customers wouldn't react too well by being flirted with by the male staff. On the other hand, it's also a case of different strokes. "Making the customer feel special" meant a different set of interactions if I was dealing with women -- some of whom, let's be honest, I would have happily flirted with! But the point is that when it came to dealing with men, flirting was commonly the most appreciated course of action.

In fact, I think in the professional sphere, one good way to tell if you are behaving unprofessionally towards a woman -- in any industry, not just service -- would be to ask yourself, "would this sound inappropriate if I said it to a man?" If it would, if the compliment you were about to make ("You like really nice today") would make you feel uncomfortable saying it to a man -- then the odds are, it's unprofessional to say to a woman.

>76 sturlington: Then he got angry at me for not replying and screamed at me--again, this is a strange man in a dark parking lot at night--"I said, how you doing!" Basically, I got to my car as quickly as I could.

Ignoring carries its own risks. Some men don't react well to being ignored. Women really have to contend with a very unsafe world pretty much 24/7. We're used to it, we adapt to it, and we take whatever necessary precautions we can. But it is ridiculous and frankly criminal that the society we live in allows this state of affairs to be the status quo.

>78 southernbooklady: Yes, he was annoyed because I didn't give him the appropriate response he was expecting. At the same time, I was trying to figure out whether I was about to be attacked.

But I should have just told him to "back off," right? I'm sure he would have respected that.

>79 sturlington: "None of your business" would have been a valid answer. But not something he'd have wanted to hear.

>76 sturlington:
But such an experience has never happened to my sister. And I can assure you that, even if it did, she would have handled it appropriately without making the poor chap feel like he could never ask another woman how she was, lest he be labeled as sexist, chauvinistic, entitled or clueless. That's just rude. Nor would my sister therefore become a man-hating resentful negative nancy, because who can live with a feminazi, amiright? Instead, she could have just politely and calmly explained to him, just as you've done above, that at certain points in life, sometimes other men (er, I mean, people, because there are predatory women too, and excluding them is sexism!)--though of course not him, I'm sure--have sometimes not had the best intentions, and therefore she's a little shy when it comes to talking to strangers in a dark parking lot at night. There, problem solved. How hard was that?!? But no, you have to discuss your experiences on the internet! And make connections with other experiences! And those of other people!

I forgot to add "/sarcasm" at the end (just in case)

>81 omargosh: I was just going to say that it sounds like your sister would get along well with my black friend. We should get those two together.

>81 omargosh:

That's an excellent post.

And I'll completely agree that women can be as predatory as men.

Tell me, though... when was the last time you feared for your physical safety when dealing with a predatory woman?

I don't see the tenth-rate mocking sarcasm of #81 as any positive addition to a discussion that looked like it might at last emerge from nonsense into something at least remotely related to common sense.

To recap--first, recall that the whole point here was about women's emotional labor.

This is clearly intended--perhaps not exclusively but, it seems, primarily-- to refer to any and all kinds of things women do in the service of their relationships with others, and, in this context, in their relationships with men--men they know and with whom they associate.

Into the mix, in the exchange of posts 16 -18 (and at subsequent posts by others) there have been cited, as examples of onerous cases of emotional-labor-demanding men, the elderly "masher"-boyfriend of a hotel/resort's owner who apparently prowls the premises looking for opportunities for casual sexual encounters with some of the guests. Another cited case is that of an even more complete stranger --happened upon at night in a dark and empty urban parking lot who spoke uninvited and in a manner ambiguous in its purpose, "How you doing?"--the kind of undettling experience which virtually every woman knows because it is part of the consequences of the spectrum of human losses.

What is striking about both key examples--beside the fact that they're supposed to tell us something interesting about the generality of men with whom our correspondent has to frequently cope--is that these men were in no way in any relationship with the woman describing them. Unlike others with whom she voluntarily associates, she had zero obligation to consider owing either of them anything at all in emotional labor.

Those cited examples are mixed with others which indeed are circumstances of voluntary relationships--and, by that fact, completely different in character from the hotel masher or the anonymous man in the parking lot at night.

We have no good reason--and we're offered none--to bring these very different cases together as similar examples of something.

Their only common features are
a) in each case, the culprit is a man, his victim, a woman and b) the situation was something between annoying and potentially dangerous to the woman.

What's striking about both examples is not just the fact that the women have zero relationship with either man, but the fact that both men feel completely entitled to disregard that fact..

Why, again, are you still posting in this group?

I mean, surely you are not disallowed from posting.

But as the whole discussion has readily indicated, that doesn't make your intrusion is wanted.

>70 proximity1: The name of this group is Feminist Theory. So far, you have shown zero knowledge or comprehension of feminist theory and zero willingness to learn. So why are you here? Your only purpose for being here, as far as I can see, is to mock the entire reason for this group's existence and belittle its participants. And then to get all "outraged" when you're called on it and told to get lost.

It's like if I went into the science fiction group and posted on all the threads about how I'd never read any science fiction because obviously it's all crap and anyone who would read it is a total idiot. They'd be well within their rights to tell me to leave because I'd be acting like an asshole.

You want to debate the validity of feminism? Start a thread on Pro and Con. The name of the group tells you what it's for. Reading comprehension 101.

You want to discuss feminist theory? You want to honestly discuss the topic of this thread? How about you start by doing what everyone else here has done and read >1 sturlington:, including the links. Because it's obvious from your posts you have not even done that minimum amount in order to participate intelligently in the conversation here.

>70 proximity1: In fact, I can see from your post here https://www.librarything.com/topic/223112#5604104 that you do understand that different groups are set up for different purposes and you respect the boundaries set by group participants for their own groups. You also seem to understand what the Pro and Con group is for. So i have to wonder why you persist in posting here when you've been repeatedly told by group participants that your posts don't fit the purpose of this group and belong more appropriately in Pro and Con? Why do the participants of this group not deserve the same respect as the participants of the History group?

>88 sturlington: & >89 sturlington:

There are in fact several related answers to those questions and reasons behind those answers.

But I think the best course is to skip delving into them here and answer simply that I am concerned here with directly addressing the comments in this (and the other) threads themselves and critiquing first and foremost the validity of these comments' apparent logic--agreeing when and where I think it's good and, when I disagree, presenting my arguments for my disagreement. I can and sometimes do refer to links and read the background. But often that's not at all necessary in seeing and responding to flaws in the comments here. For that, it's usually enough to read and understand the comment as it stands. There's a lot of deep feeling here--but not a lot of deep thinking that I see.

Whatever Feminist Theory is or isn't, whatever it means or doesn't mean, feminism as a movement is large, diverse and more than a century old. There are both women and men in its ranks. Neither you and your friends nor your ideas and theirs are the only representatives or interpretations of feminism.

I'm a feminist, too. I consider much in the claims and views posted here in the name of feminist theory to be not just debatable but indistinguishable from plain sexist bigotry. As a feminist, I object to such bigotry standing as the unchallenged idea of what feminism is and ought to be.

To actually suppose that you have the right to own and run a cloistered haven for such bigotry in the very name of feminism, seeking to drive out those (men-- when did you last openly challenge a woman's right to participate here?) whose opinions you don't like, typifies the attitudes on display here. It's profoundly anti-intellectual--a charge which cannot be alleged against the history blog.

IF you and your clique are "true to type," this reply I've cared enough to compose shall be quickly buried in little red flags. And nothing I could argue could demonstrate the validity of my assessment more effectively than that.

You seek as a first priority safety from criticisms--but you don't deserve that.

>90 proximity1: So basically, you've decided that everyone here is wrong, a bigot, and stupid, and it is your duty as a "true" feminist to prove us wrong at every opportunity. You don't find if necessary to read in order to refute our wrongness, yet we're the anti-intellectual ones. If we disagree with you, then we can't take criticism and only want to be protected from the truths that you espouse. If we find your comments insulting, we are a clique conspiring against you.

Wow. I'm starting to believe your posts are actually some kind of performance art.

Do you even read my posts? >10 proximity1: cited an excerpt from the metafilter blog--beside your OP, the only citation so far here of that link. Then, ironically, in looking at Jess Zimmerman's linked article, I recognised that I'd already read most of it. So, this time, I read over it to the conclusion. Should I be charged for the privilege of reading your posts? Are you expending heaps of emotional labor (EL) on me?

Did it strike you that Zimmerman only objects to the emotional labor she expends on men? She doesn't tax women with this fault--is that because she doesn't expend any EL on women or because she doesn't mind it if the recipient is female?

The rampant sexism of her exclusive focus on the onerous character of men (and their needs) as objects of her EL just doesn't occur to you, does it? No other participant here has mentioned that specifically, either. It struck me.

It also strikes me that this mischaracterization,

'So basically, you've decided that everyone here is wrong, a bigot, and stupid, and it is your duty as a "true" feminist to prove us wrong at every opportunity.'

is typical of the generally reductive view you bring to those topics you so readily generalize about--"men," for example. You constantly refer to "men" this and "men" that, as though they're a uniform entity. Your habit of reducing complexities to oversimplifications whenever it suits your prejudice marks your commentary. No wonder. It's much easier to rant about "men" than to consider distinguishing particularities.

-------

Does Ms. (?) Zimmerman object to her work being cited?

Originators and adherents of #GiveYourMoneyToWomen didn’t just suggest that women should get paid for existing, although yeah that too if you’re buying. Rather, women should get paid for all the work they typically do for free – all the affirmation, forbearance, consultation, pacifying, guidance, tutorial, and weathering abuse that we spend energy on every single day. Imagine a menu of emotional labor: Acknowledge your thirsty posturing, $50. Pretend to find you fascinating, $100. Soothe your ego so you don’t get angry, $150. Smile hollowly while you make a worse version of their joke, $200. Explain 101-level feminism to you like you’re five years old, $300. Listen to your rant about “bitches,” $infinity."

" Jess Zimmerman makes sentences on the internet and enjoys misandry and subtweets"

And you? Do you "enjoy misandry," too?

>92 proximity1: #notallmen

There, fixed!

>92 proximity1: Oh, I started a new thread where you can explain to us "what feminism is and ought to be." Here it is. I personally cannot wait to find out how I've been doing feminism wrong all my life.

But Jess Zimmerman indulges in "femsplainig" ad libitem and you not only don't mind femsplaining, you cite it with approval and adapt it for use as examples of your points.

Femsplaining= "good"
"Mansplaining" = "bad"

At every turn here, it's one standard for women and something else for men.

>79 sturlington: he was annoyed because I didn't give him the appropriate response he was expecting. At the same time, I was trying to figure out whether I was about to be attacked.

A couple of years ago I posted an article (in Pro/Con, I think) about a woman who became frightened because a man started following her while she was running:

Running while female

Basically, she is on her usual run, a bicyclist passes her and she smiles and waves the way we all do when we are acknowledging others with whom we see some collegiality -- in this case, exercising, (I smile and wave at the people I pass when I'm walking my dog). Then, a little later the man is back, not on his bike, steadily following behind her for long enough and closely enough that she became really frightened, her run became an escape attempt and she even called her husband to come and follow her home.

The LT response to the story was something along the lines of "I don't want to dismiss her fear, but how did she know the man was aware he was scaring her?"

But to me, that misses the point. Even if he was oblivious (an huge problem in itself right there) the scenario brings home just how aware women are, all the time, of how potentially dangerous their circumstances are, and how quickly an innocuous gesture (a smile and a wave) can turn into a scary situation. Every woman lives with the awareness of this low-grade fear. Sure at any given moment we are not cowering or refusing to leave our homes. But we're always aware of the dangers. Which is why any situation where we are alone, isolated, and are approached by an unknown man feels threatening to us. Common sense tells us that assault, rape, is a real possibility. It's not necessarily wise to assume the best about a man's intentions, rather than the worst.

To have anything approaching an equal society, we need to get rid of that habit of fear. That means much more than taking self defense classes. It means creating the kind of society that rejects misogyny, that abhors and is appalled by rape and sexual assault, that is disgusted by the abuse of power and sense of entitlement many men seem to feel over women, and finds sexist behavior to be pathetic and contemptible. It means eradicating rape culture.

But even if every woman on the planet woke up tomorrow with black belts and Buffy-like powers, rape culture won't go away until men stop wanting it. They have to realize how much of what they take for granted in their lives simply perpetuates misogyny. And that means everything from downplaying the consequences of sexual assault to asking why the woman approached in the dark parking lot by a strange man didn't give him the benefit of the doubt.

>95 proximity1: Femsplaining... that's so cute.

You see, I am reading your posts!

>76 sturlington: & >96 southernbooklady:

Again, what does this survival/personal-safety matter,

"Here's an example of the very thing that happened to me recently. I was leaving a meeting at a hotel at 9 p.m., walking into a dark parking lot, when a man who I did not know passed me and grunted, "How you doing?" I did not answer or make eye contact because I did not want him to think I was interested or worse, a prostitute, since the meeting was at a hotel. Using that tool in my toolbox. Then he got angry at me for not replying and screamed at me--again, this is a strange man in a dark parking lot at night--"I said, how you doing!" Basically, I got to my car as quickly as I could."

have to do with "EL" as Zimmerman's article, the impetus for this thread, described it?

Everyone, woman or man, has to have and use survival instinct in such situations. There aren't exceptions to this. You either assess dangers and risks instinctively or you put yourself at greater risk. Both men and women sometimes either overreact/overestimate or underreact/underestimate the actual danger. We aren't dealing here with dispensing EL on such occasions, except in a very perverse sense from that described by Zimmerman's examples. She wrote of dispensing EL other than under threat, under duress. Her cases, however grudging may have been her "service," are not borne of immediate fear for her personal safety --hence her elaborate shtick about charging for the "service" --for crying out loud!

When do you combine running to the safety of your parked car in a dark parking lot with the urge to levy a charge for EL services!?

Femsplain me that, if you can.

I'll mansplain it to you.

Women face many more of those situations than men.

That's not rocket science.

Where one lies by default on a spectrum of over/under-reacting to perceived threat is largely a function of power and privilege. Those two things are both historically largely accorded to males.

And yes, explaining the basics of this to a poster named Proximity1 (not to mention the fact that an entire thread is devolved to nothing but that effort) is laborious, to say the least.

As my mother use to repeatedly assure me, it's not always all about you.

Surely there's a reason we charge for education, no?

Here, you seem to believe you are owed one for free.

How frequently do you worry that someone is about to rape you, Proximity 1?

>101 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

You ignored the point: regardless of whether this happens more often to women or not, how is the parking lot situation a fitting example of the onerous duty of EL ?

------

Now, about the frequency of risk situations : No. They don't have more of them. In each case where a prudent woman has to assess a potential risk to safety, a prudent man in the same circumstances would _also_ have to do so.

In what circumstances does a woman necessarily face a potential risk when any and every man in the same or analogous circumstances should be free of any such risk ? This hasn't been 'splsained one way or another.

Quite often men (#notallmen) expect smiles, friendly greetings, etc.--all forms of emotional labor --from women they don't even know. If a woman refuses to give it, they can get angry, threatening, or even physically dangerous.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/03/13/pregnant-woman-says-she-was-attacked-for-...

>100 Jesse_wiedinmyer: That's okay, it's very difficult to educate someone who clearly knows so much more about feminism than all the rest of us. We should be paying him for the privilege of being enlightened by his superior knowledge!

>102 proximity1:

When was the last time you seriously considered the possibility that you were to be forced to perform sexual acts against your will?

With what frequency do such thoughts occur to you?

>103 sturlington: The expectation of a smile, coupled with the tendency to become hostile if it isn't received, is a measure of just how much validation a person needs from others to feel worthwhile in themselves.

it's very difficult to educate someone who clearly knows so much more about feminism than all the rest of us.

I think the feminist stance stated in
>37 proximity1: proximity1: ( How the hell do any of you even have male companionship in such wretched self-pitying lives? ) is pretty much all anyone needs to know.

I really enjoy this group and the posts by the thoughtful, well-read women here. I value the book recommendations, the links to posts elsewhere on the internet, and the discussions. I've learned a lot, and am especially grateful because the discussions here around what women have been forced to deal with have helped me better understand and be more sensitive to what other groups are going through and will hopefully make me a better, more respectful person and ally.

But I'm leaving because a member named proximity1 has turned this into such a toxic place and refuses to leave even when it's been made abundantly clear that his presence is neither valued nor wanted. I'd already blocked him months ago, but he keeps coming in to this group and disrupting otherwise excellent discussions.

So since he won't leave (despite the irony of the discussion further up the loop that women should just tell men when they're being made to feel uncomfortable or threatened), I have to. I hope to catch the rest of you elsewhere on LT.

Oddly enough, you assume that it's a male stranger one should fear.

There's obviously nothing simple about assault and battery, though.

Because all risks are equal.

"Being mugged and having Proximity1's wallet taken at knifepoint is completely equivalent to having a man force Proximity1 to be penetrated from behind " is what you're saying.

I mean, given a choice between being sodomized without consent and having your wallet taken by force, you'll consider that a toss-up.

If I understand correctly, you're saying you could go either way. :)

>105 southernbooklady:

Since this,

..." The expectation of a smile, coupled with the tendency to become hostile if it isn't received, is a measure of just how much validation a person needs from others to feel worthwhile in themselves."

is addressed to sturlington (@103), I guess this is a case of a woman explaining (so elementary a point! ?) to another woman. Would that also be femsplainig?

But this,

"The expectation of a smile, coupled with the tendency to become hostile if it isn't received, is a measure of just how much validation a person needs from others to feel worthwhile in themselves."

is always & only a post facto matter. You assess the danger immediately--In the instant you are aware of the other person's presence. Unless you only become aware at the moment you're spoken to, you'll always have made a preliminary and immediate assessment of risk. This occurs within a single second: sight, immediately followed by fight/flight or other intermediate response. We are, again, dealing with instinct--which this local variety of feminist seems to never take into account.

If there's no prior assessment of risk of danger from the strange man, then any dispensing of EL is not under duress, or fear. If it _is_ motivated by fear, then by definition any woman or man in the same circumstances would be reacting on survival instincts, and not dispensing the kind of "EL services" described by Zimmerman--it's one _or_ the other, not both.

Again! (No one answered this--can't you answer it!?): in what situation is a woman both seeking safety urgently and also reflecting on charging her perceived threatener for EL "services rendered" !?

Can none of you grasp this subtlety? Can none of you give it a straightforward answer?

When I first started this thread, I was greatly inspired by the conversation I linked to in >1 sturlington: at Metafilter. I was hoping we could have a similar conversation here. Quite frankly, I am angry that our conversation has been hijacked by one individual, and that now people are leaving our group as a result. I can only assume that this was his intention, because he certainly hasn't displayed any degree of respect or consideration for the other people or points of view in this group, nor has he shown any willingness to contribute positively to a discussion on feminist theory. All he seems concerned with is bashing other people over the head with his point of view, which suspiciously sounds not like feminism at all--despite his claims to the contrary--but more like the toxic MRA drivel that has infected so many other parts of the Internet.

I am reminded of the maxim that any conversation about feminism will inevitably result in a demonstration of why feminism is so needed. Here we have almost a caricature of that.

>111 proximity1:

Again, why do you repeatedly assert that it's a man I should fear?

>108 Jesse_wiedinmyer: >109 Jesse_wiedinmyer: >110 Jesse_wiedinmyer: :

You ignored the point: regardless of whether this happens more often to women or not, how is the (admittedly ambiguous and potentially dangerous) parking lot situation a fitting example of the onerous duty of EL à la Zimmerman ?

Why do you repeatedly assert that men should be feared?

Is this crass bigotry in action?

Surely stumbling across a strange woman in a dimly lit parking lot should set you to shitting your pants in terror.

Equal risks and all.

Though maybe you would simply view that as an opportunity to strike up a friendly conversation instead.

Or maybe the intelligent thing for a man to do when wandering through dimly lit parking lots at night would be to understand that for a woman, all men are the men that men fear.

>106 Marissa_Doyle:

Congrats, Marissa! Points for making this, your drparture, as everything must be --exceptions for obsequious, fawning, affirmation-giving men, of course-- "the man's fault."

Got it. Fare you well.

Because as a woman, she is obligated to put up with your shit.

>117 proximity1: She is not blaming men. She is blaming you. Because your behavior in here is consistently toxic, rude, insulting, and boorish, and because you persist with it despite being asked by numerous people, including a site administrator, to cut it out.

>116 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

All people in dark parking lots have to--and automatically do--Instantly assess any other's presence for a potential safety risk.

This is _not_ what Zimmerman describes as the EL she means. That labor concerns _known_ associates.

Unless it's given as a response to a perceived risk to safety, no one in the parking lot owes a stranger any EL services. But admitting that is a drag for those with a chip on their shoulder and an axe to grind. --which is why my pointing these things out makes me unwelcome here while others are not told to beat it.

>120 proximity1: which is why my pointing these things out makes me unwelcome here while others are not told to beat it.

No, you are unwelcome here because your posts are rude, disrespectful, and insulting. You have been told this numerous times by almost everyone who has posted in this thread. You have been flagged. Complaints have been lodged against you with the site administrators. I don't see how it can be any clearer.

>120 proximity1:

No, Proximity, not any other. You've already made it abundantly clear that men are the perceived risks. Women are opportunities for engagement.

By the way, since you've already made it clear you'd gladly go either way, what say you come over to my place some night. We can have some drinks, maybe delve a bit more deeply into the mysteries of gender and sexuality, engaging our masculinity in an increasingly emasculated world, if you get my drift. I'll throw some mood music on, we can dim the lights just the way you like them.

I mean, I know you think men are sort of scary, but I want you to understand that not all men are like that. You probably just haven't met the right one...

>112 sturlington: I am reminded of the maxim that any conversation about feminism will inevitably result in a demonstration of why feminism is so needed. Here we have almost a caricature of that.

It is also a fairly effective demonstration of what happens when women refuse to provide the emotional labor traditionally expected of them in conversation.

>124 southernbooklady: That circles back to my original post and also makes me think of why it is so difficult to discuss feminism at all, when male participants continuously insist on being reassured that the conversation is not about saying "all men are bad" but rather trying to identify systemic, cultural norms that oppress women.

Relevant to this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/224349

I'm posting this in recently active threads, so apologies for the non sequitur:

Vote on the group TOS:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/224406#5618895
http://www.librarything.com/topic/224406#5619215

Oh boy. Just catching up on this thread. So much to digest.

Thought this latest article re. the domestic and reproductive labor of women not being addressed in economics would be appropriate here. Please let me know if not.

This is actually a book review of a rather interesting book that I have yet to read. But, thought I'd share here for thoughts/comments. The concluding remarks are a bit disappointing because they indicate that the book does not have any specific or strong call to action. I am also interested that the book disregards "LeanIn" feminism because I have my own issues with that too.

"In the mid-eighteenth century, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith told a story about markets and goods and people, one that has become the dominant narrative about human nature, as well as the structuring principle for our daily interactions. Society is made up of self-interested individuals, he argued, and through markets these individuals make collective life possible. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner,” Smith says in The Wealth of Nations, “but from their regard to their own interest.”

"Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? is Marçal’s book-length attack on the idea of economic rationality as a whole, from Smith to the present day. For Marçal, the title story points to a fundamental error in economic ideology: “Somebody has to prepare that steak so Adam Smith can say their labor doesn’t matter.” Much of women’s domestic and reproductive labor quite literally does not factor within economic models. The old joke is that GDP declines when an economist marries his housekeeper, which is not so much a joke as a good explanation of Gross Domestic Product and what it does not account for. The economic rationality that is supposed to guide human behavior isn’t designed to apply to the half of the population expected to work for free. Marçal doesn’t argue that economics is sexist so much as that it’s totally clueless."

https://newrepublic.com/article/133904/moms-invisible-hand

The blog language: a feminist guide that Nicki introduced to this group, continues to be excellent.

I remembered this thread reading this recent post: A woman’s (shit)work is never done

The description of Pamela Fishman's work from the 1970s is fascinating to me--it's to the letter the dynamic between my parents. I wonder how many of us recognise it:

Fishman’s analysis was based on 52 hours of conversation recorded by three heterosexual couples in their homes. She did find that ‘men control conversation’, but she also found that to do it they depended on women’s support. Whereas men’s attempts to initiate talk were taken up enthusiastically by women, women’s own efforts were more likely to receive either very minimal acknowledgment (for instance, an unenthusiastic ‘yeah’ or ‘mm’ followed by the man changing the subject) or none at all. In fact, women received so little encouragement to talk, they often resorted to the attention-getting techniques young children use, like saying ‘d’you know what?’ (a formula which demands an answer like ‘what?’, or ‘no, tell me’, thus allowing the first speaker to respond to the ‘question’ she has essentially forced the second speaker to ask). ...{sample of transcript analysis}...

Fishman claimed that what we see in this extract was a recurring pattern in her data. Men talk about what they want, when they want, and women do the work of supporting them. They pay continuous attention to their partners, respond promptly when a response is called for, and stop talking when it clearly isn’t. They provide on-topic answers to men’s questions and tokens of agreement when men express opinions. Men evidently expect this from women, but they don’t feel obliged to do it for women. When women talk men pay less attention, produce delayed and unenthusiastic responses, and change the subject if something else is more important to them. ...

In complete contrast to these institutional encounters, the conversations Fishman analysed were personal exchanges in a domestic setting between people who knew each other intimately. In that context, the division of labour she observed (women doing the facilitating and men treating that as a form of service) raises the same questions feminists have asked about housework and the mental load. In a situation where there’s no institutional hierarchy, where the participants have equal status and have chosen to live together, why isn’t facilitating interaction a reciprocal obligation? Why do women do so much and men so little?

Fishman’s answer is that the participants in heterosexual couple-talk (a context where gender is highly salient) don’t really have equal status. They agree that the man’s interests come first.

"Both men and women regarded topics introduced by women as tentative; many of these were quickly dropped. In contrast, topics introduced by the men were treated as topics to be pursued; they were seldom rejected."

They also agree that the woman is ultimately responsible for the success of the conversation–and for intuiting what that requires of her in any given situation.

"Sometimes women are required to sit and “be a good listener” … At other times, women are required to fill silences and keep conversation moving, to talk a lot. Sometimes they are expected to develop others’ topics and at other times they are required to present and develop topics of their own."

At all times, however, women must avoid giving the impression that they are, or would like to be, in control.

"Women who successfully control interactions are derided…terms like “castrating bitch,” “domineering,” “aggressive,” and “witch” may be used to identify them. When they attempt to control situations temporarily, women often “start” arguments."

(...)What makes the problem of invisible female labour such a tough nut to crack (no matter how many times or ways we name it) is that the obvious form of resistance–refusing to do it–has such negative consequences for women themselves. What hurts our loved ones hurts us too: few women want to get into conflicts with the people they care about, or to forego the tangible benefits their unseen efforts produce (like comfortable homes and meaningful conversations). In many situations it costs less to maintain the status quo than to challenge it.

>129 LolaWalser: Good stuff, which reminds me of my own personal interactions and how I subconsciously support this dynamic.

Which leads one to the obvious conclusion: that women are better off living alone. I can better maintain a comfortable home on my own and have meaningful conversations with other women.

>130 sturlington:

(By the way, sorry if resurrecting thread opened old wounds, I clean forgot the Asshole Festival that went in here.)

It never ceases to amaze me just how MANY skills and duties women are expected to have and perform... it's human Swiss army knives in action, 24/7.