(This is even before we get to the "Well actually if you read The Managed Heart, you'll find that emotional labour *really* means..." criticism which I also think is valid)
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What if the reason why women do most of the emotional labour is that we don't count it as emotional labour when men do it? (I was surprisingly reluctant to tweet this even on alt)
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The basic problem is that doing emotional labour more or less requires performing gender roles, and performing feminine gender roles involve expressing emotion and performing masculine gender roles involves suppressing it. The former is much more visible than the latter.
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Oh another common example of male emotional labour (in some spaces) is pretending that "men are terrible" discourse doesn't upset them.
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I guess another way to look at this is that women are expected to perform emotional labour to come off as friendly and helpful, while men are expected to perform emotional labour to come off as strong yet safe (except when doing power games, in which case just strong).
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It's maybe worth noting that emotional labour is not intrinsically bad, and many of these examples of men doing emotional labour are in fact things we probably want men to keep doing, I just think it needs acknowledging that this is indeed expecting emotional labour of them.
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So obvious I didn't even think of it: heterosexual dating norms are full of examples of male emotional labour - e.g. expecting men to approach women (Also full of examples of female emotional labour, just different things)https://twitter.com/GeniesLoki/status/1300523796470861832?s=19 …
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I’ve had similar thoughts, but struggled to come up with a lot of examples. Basically I came up with things that are defined as “courtesy” (asking about someone’s day, listening to someone without criticism or unwanted “fixing”) that may feel more like labor to men...
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I think being a source of stability and calm is the most central example of emotional labour typically done by men. A lot of men describe it as being the only one not allowed to fall apart in a crisis. Many men don't do this and many women do, of course, but it's skews male.
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...but it still feels like a) women still do that more although we may find it less difficult and more fulfilling and b) men are more frequently congratulated for doing very basic versions of those
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