Thread by @hautepop

The Concept Creep of ‘Emotional Labour’

Arlie Hochschild, the sociologist who invented the term, says it’s specifically about managing your emotions.

Remembering the kids’ schedules & your mother-in-law’s birthday? That’s just regular cognitive labour.
theatlantic.com/family/archive…

“There’s no doubt that the unpaid, expected, and unacknowledged work of keeping households and relationships running smoothly falls disproportionately on women. But that doesn’t make it emotional labor. Organizing to-do lists and planning family Christmases are just labor.”

Also, emotional labour is also not necessarily oppressive or “bad”

Hochschild’s focus is on whether the labour is alienating. But it can also be fun!

“If you’re the one that people are turning to for advice … Chances are you’re gratified at being able to help people.”

Julie Beck observes:

“If we talk about all the unpaid labor women do in the home as ‘emotional labor,’ we’re insinuating that any kind of labor that falls most often to a woman is ‘emotional.’”

This feminises the work, and suggests “It’s inherently, then, a female thing.”

There’s a trope in internet-feminism of (desiring to) push back on the demands men make on you - by charging for emotional labour.

Jess Zimmerman, 2015: the-toast.net/2015/07/13/emo…

Hochschild’s position:

“Added to a feminist concern for equity… we need to add clarity about our social-class position & explore the idea of alienation.”

ie The problem is not this care-giving labour in itself, but the fact it’s become exhausting to people.

Back to Zimmerman: Why is this labour alienating? Because it’s demanded, not freely given.

the-toast.net/2015/07/13/emo…

The bit I disgree with is the idea that it’s “more radical” to charge for this labour than refuse it.

That’s not radical - that’s just capitalism! It’s market logic expanding into new frontiers of life.

Sugar babies get paid in handbags & cash “gifts” for providing girlfriend services to men they otherwise wouldn’t. That’s not radical either.

Being paid for emotional labour doesn’t stop it being emotional labour. & emotional labour isn’t in itself bad. The problem is alienation

As Hochschild reminds us.

In the family, “I don’t think it’s a solution if both husband and wife are now 50-50 with alienated labor.”

The real goal is not to redistribute alienating labour more equitably or to get paid for it, but *fix the conditions that make it alienating.*

If the alienating thing is men demanding women’s attention when they don’t want to give it, IMO a denial of service gets closer to fixing the problem (ie discouraging entitled asks) than does indulging those demands for cash.

If your boyfriend or husband makes disproportionate demands on you for emotional & logistical management, him buying you expensive gifts or sharing his salary with you isn’t radical.

This is heteronormativity as normal.

If charging the dudes in your mentions for your emotional labours is producing a useful income - fair play.

Don’t ask me to believe this commodification is radical, or disrupting gender relations. But neither do most ways of earning a living. So I only fault the mystification.

Ultimately, the idea of charging for undervalued gendered mental labour is much like Silvia Federici’s “wages for housework” (1975)

• A good thought experiment for making visible the value in it

• Less ideal in practice, as it furthers the dominance of the market in our lives

And remember, as per Arlie Hochschild, that much emotional management in the workplace is *already paid for*.

The debate here is whether this emotional labour is paid *enough*. In salespeople, often yes. Teachers, nurses, childcare workers: arguably no.

/thread.

Discussion spurred by this interview with sociologist Arlie Hochschild here: theatlantic.com/family/archive…

Buy her book: ‘The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling’ (1983) here: amazon.co.uk/dp/0520272943/…