GeniesLoki

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)

I’m not familiar with formal definitions of emotional labor, but there’s a distinction in that we do pay people to do the labor that women are expected to do for free (“a free therapist”). I’m not sure equating emotional *labor* with any expected gendered performance makes sense.

Well, nobody's familiar with the formal definition of emotional labour, or it wouldn't get used the way it is. The way "emotional labour" tends to get used is closer to what was called "emotional work" in the original context, where labour is the paid version (cont).

Emotional work in the original sense is work done specifically to manage your own emotions, to ensure that they're "right" for the particular context. I think there's a major element of that in the "free therapist" problem but that's not all that's going on there.

The typical examples of emotional labour in the original sense are things like how airline staff are expected to constantly be helpful and friendly - it's part of their job to project the right emotions.

As a side note, I'm somewhat sceptical of the idea that it's only women who do the "free therapist" thing and think this is a thing where most couples help each other process emotions and it's more acceptable for women to complain when it's disproportionate (which it often is).