Speaker 1: Hello, this is Annie, and this is Bridget, and you're
Speaker 1: listening to stuff Mom never told you. And today we're
Speaker 1: talking about something that I kind of stumbled into because
Speaker 1: I've been thinking a lot lately about the whole idea
Speaker 1: that girls mature earlier than boys, and I was thinking
Speaker 1: about it in wondering if there's any actual scientific evidence
Speaker 1: to that or if it's just more Yes that, um,
Speaker 1: it's expecting girls to take on more responsibility younger and
Speaker 1: kind of giving boys a free pass. This definitely sounds
Speaker 1: like one of those things that we just say without
Speaker 1: any real evidence, you know, along the same lines as
Speaker 1: women are cleaner than men, therefore women do the cleaning,
Speaker 1: or women are better at blah blah blah, therefore men
Speaker 1: you're off the hook. Just one of those easy things
Speaker 1: that we say, never bothering to see if there's any
Speaker 1: actual evidence to whether or not it's true. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: So I went to see if there is any evidence
Speaker 1: if it's true, and I did find several studies, kind
Speaker 1: of recent studies. I think that suggests that female brains
Speaker 1: do go through neural pruning earlier, which is basically being
Speaker 1: able to like cut out extraneous facts and sort of
Speaker 1: see that this is something useful. Therefore, I will remember this. Sorry,
Speaker 1: we'll focus on this. And it makes me think of
Speaker 1: her money, her mind, a granger of Harry Potter and
Speaker 1: the Deathly Hall is when she says, who should I
Speaker 1: do my hermony accent? Yes, you absolutely, Oh no, Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm highly logical, which allows me to look past extraneous
Speaker 1: detail perceived clearly that was others of a look. She
Speaker 1: even says it and like that, Cadence, the accident wasn't good,
Speaker 1: but the timing was very good. I thought it was good.
Speaker 1: I thought it was good. This reminds you of when
Speaker 1: I was I used to teach young people. So when
Speaker 1: I was teaching like a summer program with boys and
Speaker 1: girls who were all around age eight or nine, the
Speaker 1: girls would be sitting quietly, like working on their workbooks,
Speaker 1: and the boys would be murdering each other. They'd be
Speaker 1: they'd be climbing things and jumping all the things. The
Speaker 1: girls just wanted to sit quietly. Meanwhile the boys were terrors.
Speaker 1: And I always thought, gee, I I know it sounds
Speaker 1: a bit gendered, but maybe there is some truth to this,
Speaker 1: to this idea. Yeah. I remember, in particular, one time
Speaker 1: having what was a useless fight with my mom about
Speaker 1: how my younger brother got away with so much more
Speaker 1: than I did at that age, and she said something
Speaker 1: along the lines of, well, girls mature fast, like he's
Speaker 1: he's not going to be how you were at that age,
Speaker 1: and I just remember being so angry about different rules
Speaker 1: and rules, and also your mom is basically saying if
Speaker 1: you did the things that your brother did, you would
Speaker 1: get in more trouble, but he quote unquote can't control himself,
Speaker 1: so he kind of gets a pass. It's it is annoying, right,
Speaker 1: and it's I think when we say girls mature faster
Speaker 1: than boys, we're not talking about neural purning. I think
Speaker 1: what we're talking about is they're more well behaved at
Speaker 1: a younger age. And I think that that has to
Speaker 1: do with what society says is acceptable for girls versus
Speaker 1: boys at younger ages. And I did see more than
Speaker 1: once that this was an argument so that older men
Speaker 1: could date younger women. Oh, they'll use older guy who
Speaker 1: wants to date a younger woman will use I've seen
Speaker 1: so many things used to justify that. Now there's anything
Speaker 1: wrong with it, guys. The things I've seen to justify
Speaker 1: why that's a hearing that makes that is the most natural. Yes, exactly, Like,
Speaker 1: if that's the I don't really have a problem with
Speaker 1: that type of relationship as long as it's it's strange
Speaker 1: to hear outside society. Justify it on like a big
Speaker 1: scale with oh, girls which are faster than boys? Same?
Speaker 1: I agree completely. Yes. And if you're listening to this
Speaker 1: and you're looking at the episode title, like what all
Speaker 1: of this lead to today's topic, which is emotional labor?
Speaker 1: And a disclaimer right off the top, most of the
Speaker 1: research and discussion about emotional labor that we found was
Speaker 1: very heterosexual susgendered. We'd love to hear from listeners outside
Speaker 1: of that narrow window. But all right, let's talk about
Speaker 1: emotional labor. Let's break it down. So it's actually been
Speaker 1: coming up kind of a lot if you're someone who
Speaker 1: spends a lot of time online or in feminist spaces.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a it's a term that we
Speaker 1: are all sort of collectively thinking, Oh, that's the word
Speaker 1: for it. You can think of emotional labor as the
Speaker 1: often mental work of caring, and in our society, most
Speaker 1: of that work, while it pretty much falls on women, yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: it can be performed by anyone, but women have been
Speaker 1: conditioned to do a majority, whereas men typically get to
Speaker 1: opt in or opt out. They opted and they opt out,
Speaker 1: and when they opt in, I feel like we give
Speaker 1: them we basically throw a parade. Oh my god, he
Speaker 1: remembered to do this thing that I do all the time,
Speaker 1: per like confetti ratings down from the sky. Meanwhile, where's
Speaker 1: our parade for doing the emotional labor? Not at at
Speaker 1: ten times, which I think is when it falls to us.
Speaker 1: A lot of things about emotional labor do tie into
Speaker 1: things we've discussed a lot on the show. Um, women's
Speaker 1: fear being called a nag. Um. How even in the
Speaker 1: most equal relationships, women do seem to do a lot
Speaker 1: of the managing of scheduling an appointments, kind of house management. Um.
Speaker 1: And so examples of emotional labor would be asking questions
Speaker 1: and listening, listening to the response, scheduling things, remembering important
Speaker 1: dates like birthdays, coming up with gifts, anticipating needs, reminding
Speaker 1: someone that they are loved, detecting a change in mood,
Speaker 1: patiently allowing someone to vent a lot of things like
Speaker 1: that that do sound to me like yes, these are
Speaker 1: the things that you do in relationship. I'm sure for
Speaker 1: a lot of the women listening the list of things
Speaker 1: that you just gave sound like things they do every
Speaker 1: day without giving it much thought, because we kind of
Speaker 1: have to we you know, if you're in a relationship,
Speaker 1: if you have kids, if you're even in a workplace,
Speaker 1: these are things that need to get done, and if
Speaker 1: men aren't doing them, they just sort of faul to
Speaker 1: us and we sort of just have to pick up
Speaker 1: the slack and it's not there. But I don't like
Speaker 1: when I first heard of this concept of emotional labor,
Speaker 1: it had not even occurred to me. That was the
Speaker 1: first time that I saw how unequal it was. Like
Speaker 1: will put it that way, that even in places that
Speaker 1: are not you know, romantic relationships in workplaces, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like you get somebody a coffee once and you're
Speaker 1: the person who gets coffee. You plan a birthday, you
Speaker 1: you buy a birthday card for someone once, and you're
Speaker 1: the person who remembers birthdays. And if you don't, it's you.
Speaker 1: You know, you're dropping the ball. But why was that
Speaker 1: ball falling to you in the first place? You know,
Speaker 1: Like I never quite noticed how many different tasks that
Speaker 1: were frankly like, not my job dealt to me because
Speaker 1: it just did right. Yeah, And there is a huge,
Speaker 1: huge amount of filter thread where a common or put
Speaker 1: it this way, my partner is deeply and willfully blind
Speaker 1: in this area. He, like many men, is convinced that
Speaker 1: engaging in emotional labor is voluntary because for him it
Speaker 1: always has been, and I think for women it's just
Speaker 1: expected of us it is. That's why I found this
Speaker 1: sample that another woman shared on the thread to be
Speaker 1: so interesting. Basically, she was married and her husband handled
Speaker 1: most of their daughter's ballet stuff, taking in her practice
Speaker 1: to recitals, doing her hair, all of that. So then
Speaker 1: one day she actually shows up to drop off something
Speaker 1: and she said, oh, hello, I'm you know, Susie's mom,
Speaker 1: And the other people at the studio were shot. They
Speaker 1: were like, oh, she has a mother, what are you
Speaker 1: doing here? If you listen to the episode that we
Speaker 1: did around roll Overload, Tiffany Doofu, the author of Dropped
Speaker 1: the Ball, actually talks about this really eloquently in her
Speaker 1: own marriage, that she has an explicit arrangement with her
Speaker 1: with her husband that anything to do with the social
Speaker 1: life of their kids is his responsibility. So if it's
Speaker 1: a kid's birthday party, a kids dance recital, if it's
Speaker 1: a social event that's regarding their children, that is his purview.
Speaker 1: And that people will still send her notes to recall
Speaker 1: her to be like, oh, can your daughter come to this?
Speaker 1: Can your daughter come to that? And she has to say,
Speaker 1: my husband handles that. Please direct this to him. And
Speaker 1: it's just such a strange. It seems like it's such
Speaker 1: a strange thing for people to wrap their heads around
Speaker 1: that she's the mom, yet she is not the one
Speaker 1: that they're supposed to contact to arrange all of this.
Speaker 1: And it does sound like in her particular relationship it
Speaker 1: only functions that way because they have an explicit agreement
Speaker 1: that that is how it will function. It's not functioning
Speaker 1: that way because you know, he's just picking up the slack.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's a really interesting note, which
Speaker 1: is that if you want to have a more fair
Speaker 1: split of emotional labor in a romantic relationship, you might
Speaker 1: just have to make that very explicit and say, these
Speaker 1: things are gonna be things that I'm never going to
Speaker 1: be concerned about. You need to handle them. Yes, yes, absolutely, um,
Speaker 1: And I did want to note UM, partially because I
Speaker 1: like the term, but also because it's useful to know UM.
Speaker 1: In extreme cases of this, where one person is in
Speaker 1: a relationship the de facto emotional labor and the other
Speaker 1: person kind of feeds off that and never reciprocates and
Speaker 1: in fact probably disregards the other person UM, the person
Speaker 1: doing the feeding is called an emotional vampire. I don't
Speaker 1: want to make this a trash your ex podcast. I'll
Speaker 1: just say this, that sounds very familiar to me, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure it sounds very familiar to a lot of people. UM.
Speaker 1: The example I always give is in a in a
Speaker 1: relationship I had once the other person, if it was
Speaker 1: their birthday, I would plan a big thing, a big party,
Speaker 1: invite everybody, do all the things, by the cake, at
Speaker 1: the present book, the place decorated. When it was my birthday,
Speaker 1: I did the same thing for myself, so it was
Speaker 1: it regardless. It was me doing all the things. And
Speaker 1: it's tiring, and I think it creates a resentment. I
Speaker 1: think it's not sustainable. I think that nobody wants to
Speaker 1: feel like everything false to them all the time, and
Speaker 1: that your duty in a relationship or your role in
Speaker 1: a relationship is just to dole out support, appointments and
Speaker 1: reminders and all of that for someone else and for yourself. Well,
Speaker 1: I I agree in referencing that meta filter meta filter
Speaker 1: threat again. UM I remember reading a comment somewhere in
Speaker 1: there that um, someone pointed out, no one wants to
Speaker 1: feel like they're your parents, like they're managing your life.
Speaker 1: They're automatically going to start to like not feel. But
Speaker 1: that's the thing about those kinds of relationships, that's that
Speaker 1: slip happened so fast you don't even realize it. Like
Speaker 1: the first the at first, you're thinking, it's just me
Speaker 1: making sure they're they're they're going to their doctor's appointments,
Speaker 1: it's just me making sure that the dishes are done,
Speaker 1: it's just me booking the repair person, or making sure
Speaker 1: the bills paid. Whatever. I'm here to tell you you
Speaker 1: slip into that vibe. I'm there. I'm basically their caregiver
Speaker 1: and their parents so quickly that I don't think either
Speaker 1: person in the relationship really sees it. And it's not
Speaker 1: until least in my case, it's not until someone It's
Speaker 1: not until something happens that holds a mirror up to it.
Speaker 1: When you think, my God, is my? Is this really
Speaker 1: my relationship? Is my? Is my relationship really? A situation
Speaker 1: where I'm essentially someone's mom that I didn't give birth to,
Speaker 1: like an adult? What how did this happen? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think I think it. It's such a gradual thing that
Speaker 1: you don't realize it until you do. You find yourself
Speaker 1: doing something real out of pocket, and you think, oh
Speaker 1: my God, like this, need we need a hard refresh yes.
Speaker 1: Um of One other note too, is that single people
Speaker 1: do engage in emotional labor. Um Often they don't come
Speaker 1: up in the conversation because it is more about relationships,
Speaker 1: but studies show that single people are far more likely
Speaker 1: to care for an aging family member asked to stay
Speaker 1: at work more often situations where emotional labor is certainly involved. Definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean that that sounds very familiar right now. As well,
Speaker 1: the idea that you know as the not just this,
Speaker 1: not just a single sibling, but like one that has
Speaker 1: assumed to I don't know how to put it, but
Speaker 1: I think in some families there is a sibling that
Speaker 1: I mean you you've talked about this in your own experience,
Speaker 1: is that it seems as though your family doesn't is
Speaker 1: not holding out hope for you to like get married
Speaker 1: and settled down anytime soon, and thus your life is
Speaker 1: kind of I mean, I don't want to put words
Speaker 1: in your mouth, but thus it seems like you're what
Speaker 1: you have in your life is kind of assumed to
Speaker 1: be not as important. And I've I've experienced that quite
Speaker 1: a bit, that you know, and I we talked about
Speaker 1: it on the episode that we did around single women
Speaker 1: at work, and I actually people people weren't happy with
Speaker 1: what I said, but I remember it distinctly that when
Speaker 1: I was teaching, because I was the youngest person in
Speaker 1: my in my department and I wasn't married, that it
Speaker 1: was just explicit that I would get the teaching shifts
Speaker 1: that nobody wanted. And it didn't matter that at the
Speaker 1: time I was teaching full time and preparing to take
Speaker 1: the elside because I wanted to go to law school.
Speaker 1: None of that mattered because I was single, and that
Speaker 1: it was explicitly said, oh, well, the people that have families,
Speaker 1: they need to get home and like do family stuff.
Speaker 1: And I agree they do, but you know, my life
Speaker 1: will also had value. Absolutely. Um, there's actually quite a
Speaker 1: quite quite a bit, quite a many, a lot of
Speaker 1: studies about um, specifically looking at in families where the
Speaker 1: single sibling is just almost always the one that has
Speaker 1: to deal with kind of every family problem that comes up.
Speaker 1: So well, it's because because we have nothing of value
Speaker 1: in our lives. Do you your cat, your Netflix, your vibrator? Please?
Speaker 1: People have real problems any but my Netflix it was
Speaker 1: so loud, had things to do. If you've seen my
Speaker 1: DVR AND's so full, it's so full, I gotta I
Speaker 1: got things to do. I don't want to be spoiled.
Speaker 1: Come on, okay, um? Well. The term emotional labor was
Speaker 1: first used in Arlie hug child book The Managed Heart,
Speaker 1: and it was describing the practice used by bill collectors
Speaker 1: and flight attendants of keeping your own feelings in check
Speaker 1: while trying to influence the emotions of clients. And this
Speaker 1: was tricky, and it was task largely two women and
Speaker 1: the low income workers, and it was unpaid. And hush
Speaker 1: Child expressed concern that not acknowledging the work that emotional
Speaker 1: labor is would lead to resentment, anxiety, stress, and ultimately burnout.
Speaker 1: But we don't acknowledge that work. I've actually seen some
Speaker 1: radical progressive spaces on the left trying to add financial
Speaker 1: compensation to emotional labor and saying, you know, if you
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna give money to someone and have
Speaker 1: them be a fellow, and their job is going to
Speaker 1: explicitly be explaining to some dumb guy why what he
Speaker 1: just said to his coworker was was sexist, or helping
Speaker 1: the boss write an apology email when he when he
Speaker 1: missteps things that largely women and other marginalized folks have
Speaker 1: had to do on top of their regular jobs for free.
Speaker 1: I've actually seen some interesting, super radical, super super lefty
Speaker 1: ways of tying that to financial compensation. Um, someone I know,
Speaker 1: Jill Rainey, they have an organization. It's all about funding
Speaker 1: emotional labor. And so if you need someone to you know,
Speaker 1: do something, rather than task that out unpaid to someone
Speaker 1: in your organization who most times is going to be marginalized,
Speaker 1: is going to be a woman, a person of color,
Speaker 1: a trans person, or some kind nation they're in, pay
Speaker 1: someone and they will do it for you. Don't just
Speaker 1: don't just pile that on someone else. So they already
Speaker 1: had their other things going on. Yeah, yeah, and this, um,
Speaker 1: the that definition of emotional labor has definitely not gone away,
Speaker 1: And I kind of thought of it as like service
Speaker 1: with a smile um, which is still uncompensated in the workplace,
Speaker 1: particularly in the service economy. UM. The practice of tipping
Speaker 1: illustrates it pretty well. Here in the US, the federal
Speaker 1: tip minimum wage is two dollars and thirteen cents, And
Speaker 1: the customer is expected to pay for that emotional labor
Speaker 1: aspect of it. If they're being nice to you, do
Speaker 1: they remember your name? Are they personable, approachable, likable, friendly,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So we're as the customer paying for
Speaker 1: that emotional labor. Um. And since women do make up
Speaker 1: a higher percentage of lower paid restaurant jobs and UH
Speaker 1: also most likely to be her asked compared to any
Speaker 1: industry in the US, is the restaurant industry. We used
Speaker 1: to a whole episode on that because it's out of control.
Speaker 1: It really is. It's so out of control. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty upsetting. Um. And the concept of emotional labor
Speaker 1: is something that sex workers have tweeted about within their
Speaker 1: occupation as well. How they get paid for their sexual labor,
Speaker 1: but what about the emotional labor that they're expected to
Speaker 1: put in on top of that for no money? And
Speaker 1: I found a lot of articles saying that the on
Speaker 1: demand economy should be a part of this conversation as well.
Speaker 1: So if you think about ride sharing services where drivers
Speaker 1: are expected to maintain a really high rating from customers,
Speaker 1: like four point seven out of five, and it's vague
Speaker 1: as to how they are expected to go above and beyond.
Speaker 1: It's clear that they're supposed to do more than just
Speaker 1: drive customers from point A to point B. But gum
Speaker 1: water conversation, no conversation, it's not clear, it's not made clear. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that's another kind of aspect of emotional labor
Speaker 1: that's still still part of the like working conversation that
Speaker 1: we should keep having. And he just had of curiosity.
Speaker 1: H when you get into a ride share situation, do
Speaker 1: you want is a four star ride? The ride with
Speaker 1: a driver doesn't make to chat with you? Yeah? I UM,
Speaker 1: I wish there was a way to indicate when you
Speaker 1: got in, like, no conversation please, because I I understand,
Speaker 1: I completely understand if you are expected to get this
Speaker 1: super high rating. You want to seem friendly, you want
Speaker 1: to make conversation. But I'm usually just tired. My brain
Speaker 1: is like I can't I can't make conversation right now,
Speaker 1: or maybe I'm working and I feel really antisocial and
Speaker 1: horrible about it. Yeah, it's it is awkward. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love nothing more than your um brilliant suggestions for
Speaker 1: technology that are rooted in your like mild antisocial tendencies.
Speaker 1: It is one of my favorite things about you. I had.
Speaker 1: I had a situation recently where I was in a
Speaker 1: ride share and I was going to I was going
Speaker 1: to the airport, like four am, so already. In that situation,
Speaker 1: I think that generally the person is exhausted and doesn't
Speaker 1: want to talk. And the driver was very very friendly
Speaker 1: but kept asking me, you know, what are you doing,
Speaker 1: where are you going? How are you And the truth
Speaker 1: of the matter was I was going to see my
Speaker 1: father in the hospital because he's very sick, and you know,
Speaker 1: it is got to a point where I was like,
Speaker 1: you're ignoring all of my cues and I don't want
Speaker 1: to talk about it, but okay, you want to talk
Speaker 1: about it, Let's talk about it. Like you keep asking, fine,
Speaker 1: let's get into the nitty gritty, like what do you
Speaker 1: what do you know about long term care? You know?
Speaker 1: And clearly he was like, like, definitely should not have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotten down this conversation path, but it is it
Speaker 1: is difficult, I think, both for the driver and for
Speaker 1: the passenger to know where that line is. And we
Speaker 1: don't make it clear. We don't make it clear what
Speaker 1: they are supposed to provide, to provide that kind of service.
Speaker 1: And I think what it is that they're supposed to
Speaker 1: provide is this kind of invisible and impossible to determine
Speaker 1: emotional labor? Yeah, yeah, exactly like reading the person in
Speaker 1: your card and trying to suss out is this just
Speaker 1: how they are? Do they want to talk? Do they
Speaker 1: not want to talk? What are they expecting? On mad Men?
Speaker 1: When Peggy Olsen it's her first day being Don Draper's
Speaker 1: secretary or assistant, Joan tells her what the men are
Speaker 1: actually looking for is somewhere between a waitress, a nurse,
Speaker 1: and a housewife. So they want you to, you know,
Speaker 1: service with a smile, bring them what they need, sort
Speaker 1: of be kind of a wife to them in a
Speaker 1: kind of way. But it's clear that they are performing
Speaker 1: tasks that are that go away above and beyond, you know,
Speaker 1: book my appointments, Do this make copies kind of thing?
Speaker 1: And there was this viral article by Jimma Hartley published
Speaker 1: and bizarre, and she gave a lot of really good
Speaker 1: examples of an emotional labor imbalance. So for Mother's Day,
Speaker 1: she wanted a cleaning service for the house, and um,
Speaker 1: she asked her husband, says she, her husband and two
Speaker 1: kids live in this house and she wanted to not
Speaker 1: be the manager of the household for a day. She
Speaker 1: wanted to her husband to get quotes from cleaning services,
Speaker 1: to do the research in the wedding and the scheduling
Speaker 1: all of that stuff, and the house cleaning was a bonus,
Speaker 1: something that needed to be done, but the real gift
Speaker 1: was being free of the emotional labor it entailed. But
Speaker 1: her husband, whom she adores and loves and likes and
Speaker 1: is a feminist ally she frequently describes him as that
Speaker 1: sort of kept waiting around for her to change her
Speaker 1: mind to a simpler gift, like a gift card or something.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until the day before Mother's Day. He
Speaker 1: called one service, um, heard the price and decided it
Speaker 1: was too high, and decided he would clean the bathrooms
Speaker 1: and stuff. Um, okay, pause, First of all, if they're
Speaker 1: the kind of couple that haven't if they're the kind
Speaker 1: of couple that's in a financial situation where, you know,
Speaker 1: calling a cleaning service was in the cards. It's such
Speaker 1: a lesser gift to have someone I'm non professional do
Speaker 1: it for you. That's all I'm saying. Yes, so beyond
Speaker 1: the conversation of like him his misstep, also, having your
Speaker 1: husband clean the bathtub is not a good gift, Yes, agreed, agreed, um,
Speaker 1: and he he kind of presented the question to her
Speaker 1: like do you really want to pay this much for cleaning?
Speaker 1: Or I could just do it? I mean I could
Speaker 1: do it, and she she tried to get him to
Speaker 1: understand it, told me, this is the point of what
Speaker 1: she wanted, which is for him to do what she
Speaker 1: would have done, and that is investigate all the options,
Speaker 1: get recommendations from friends, handle the scheduling. And he did
Speaker 1: end up doing it. Um. But when Hartley, the woman
Speaker 1: who wrote this article, when she passed by him to
Speaker 1: put away like his clothes that he had left on
Speaker 1: the floor, she tripped over some gift wrapping he'd left
Speaker 1: out for two days and then went into the kitchen
Speaker 1: and retrieved a chair to put it away, and her
Speaker 1: husband was like, oh, you had to do was ask,
Speaker 1: and she responded, that's the point. I don't want to
Speaker 1: have to ask. And she later tried to walk him
Speaker 1: through the concept of emotional labor, and she she wrote
Speaker 1: about how it was such a fine line to present
Speaker 1: it in such a way that Um didn't come off
Speaker 1: to him. Are he didn't see it as an attack
Speaker 1: on his personal character. Again, like, this episode was kind
Speaker 1: of revelation for me because this was a very big
Speaker 1: thing in my house. In my house, you didn't have
Speaker 1: negative emotions because that would upset my dad. And so
Speaker 1: now I have a really hard time expressing emotions and
Speaker 1: communicating about things that accept upset me. And this is like,
Speaker 1: come all full circle to calls problems with my dad.
Speaker 1: Was like, you've never communicate with me. I'm like, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember how I wasn't allowed to be sad as
Speaker 1: a kid. Um And uh yeah again, women are the
Speaker 1: drama queens right anyway. Hayley Swenson over at Slate argues
Speaker 1: that emotional labor is not the correct term for what
Speaker 1: Hartley is describing, and in fact, most of what people
Speaker 1: call emotional labor, we're not giving it, we're not calling
Speaker 1: it by the correct name. She thinks a lot of
Speaker 1: these things are better described as maybe mental load, or
Speaker 1: clerical labor, or domestic labor or educational labor um, and
Speaker 1: she points out that sociologists might refer to some of
Speaker 1: this as maternal gate keeping. Are setting the terms for
Speaker 1: the appropriate ways for housework and parenting to be done,
Speaker 1: which is no good for anyone. Um. According to Swenson,
Speaker 1: when we say emotional labor, what we mean is patriarchy.
Speaker 1: And I thought about this a lot um and I
Speaker 1: kind of agree, But I also think it is useful
Speaker 1: to have a term for this that a lot of
Speaker 1: women connected with this thing that we're all kind of doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I sort of think both can be true. I mean,
Speaker 1: clerical labor does not or domestic labor does not describe
Speaker 1: you know, some of the examples that you lead the
Speaker 1: show with, you know, letting someone vent, or understanding when
Speaker 1: someone is upset and knowing how to perceive that and
Speaker 1: knowing how to deal with it. I think that as women,
Speaker 1: so much of what we talked about when we talk
Speaker 1: about emotional labor is emotional is about percepting and and
Speaker 1: sort of knowing how to deal with people in an
Speaker 1: emotional way. And you know, that's not clerical work, Like
Speaker 1: clerical work is being asked to make the copies because
Speaker 1: you're a woman or something like that. Right, I think
Speaker 1: that's I think, what what how I think of emotional labor?
Speaker 1: I think is so different where it's maybe mental load
Speaker 1: is is the right term, but again, so much of
Speaker 1: it is emotional. Like when sex workers are talking about
Speaker 1: what they have to do, that's not clerical work. That's
Speaker 1: at emotional being expected to be sweet and charming and
Speaker 1: loving and like, listen to the story that you really
Speaker 1: could give two about as if it's the most interesting
Speaker 1: story in the world. Right, these things are emotional tasks
Speaker 1: in a kind of way, and I think that we
Speaker 1: do need to have an explicit understanding of their value
Speaker 1: as such, because they're not valued and they I I
Speaker 1: almost actually i'm as I'm saying, list, I'm figuring out
Speaker 1: why I don't like this, because calling emotional labor, at
Speaker 1: least to me, clerical work or mental load divorces it
Speaker 1: from what I see as the as the emotionally charged
Speaker 1: nature of the work. And I think that just plays
Speaker 1: into the idea that emotional work, because we are so
Speaker 1: often associated with women, we don't put value on it,
Speaker 1: and so I think by saying, yeah, it is emotional,
Speaker 1: and guess what emotional can be labored too, and that
Speaker 1: labor should be compensated and affirmed and when you do
Speaker 1: it you should be thanked or whatever. I think that
Speaker 1: by taking the emotion out of it, I almost think
Speaker 1: that it's we should acknowledge it as emotional and then
Speaker 1: affirm it as such and attached the word labor to it,
Speaker 1: because emotional stuff, it's hard. It takes work. You know,
Speaker 1: people are born being emotionally literate. It takes work, and
Speaker 1: we need to acknowledge that. The reason why I like
Speaker 1: that term emotional labor is because it seems to acknowledge that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things people often respond to conversation about
Speaker 1: emotional labor with is, well, it is. If you don't
Speaker 1: want to do it, then don't do it. But we
Speaker 1: can't really check out. And even if we could, again,
Speaker 1: that's not really the point. Um, that's not a healthy relationship.
Speaker 1: And another another common refrain, as kind of illustrated about
Speaker 1: the story we just spoke about. Um, you just had
Speaker 1: to ask again. So there's this great comic by this
Speaker 1: artist Emma. I think her last name might be clipped. Uh,
Speaker 1: at least that's what her website is, Emma clip dot com,
Speaker 1: and it really, it really kind of explores this, and
Speaker 1: basically it describes her being in a relationship and she's
Speaker 1: making dinner, and she's making dinner and then the the
Speaker 1: you know, the stove is boiling over and this is happening,
Speaker 1: and that's happening, and everything turns into a mess. And
Speaker 1: her husband comes in and he's like, you should have
Speaker 1: asked if you needed help, and she sort of charts
Speaker 1: that phrase you should have asked? Why didn't you ask?
Speaker 1: To this idea that Listen, when you say when you
Speaker 1: tell someone you should have asked, you are basically deeming
Speaker 1: them the project manager of the household, and being the
Speaker 1: project manager takes more work. And so basically what you're
Speaker 1: saying is you are the person in charge here and
Speaker 1: I am the underling. I'm happy to do what you want,
Speaker 1: but you need to assign me to things otherwise I
Speaker 1: won't do them. And that's not an equal balance of labor,
Speaker 1: even if you are. I happen to think that when
Speaker 1: people say, oh, why don't you ask, they don't actually
Speaker 1: want to help, because if you wanted to help, I
Speaker 1: mean I pulled up. You should have asked all the time,
Speaker 1: but I don't actually want to do something, so you
Speaker 1: don't play a player because I know what's up. But
Speaker 1: if you wait to be asked to help out around
Speaker 1: your own household, you are saying that you are the
Speaker 1: underlying and the person who is doing the asking is
Speaker 1: the project manager or the boss, and that that that
Speaker 1: alone does not illustrate an equal balance of labor. Right.
Speaker 1: And there's another quote from the meta Felter thread on
Speaker 1: why no isn't an option um. Sometimes, especially when vulnerable
Speaker 1: children and elderly are involved, caregivers who are overwhelmingly women,
Speaker 1: get trapped as the final decision makers. Everyone else has
Speaker 1: been able to say no, but the woman who is
Speaker 1: the caregiver, her no is treated as the worst of
Speaker 1: all the nose possible, visible in a way that the
Speaker 1: rest of the nose from the people and society around
Speaker 1: her who failed to help so she finally had to
Speaker 1: say no, is held as a judgment on her, a
Speaker 1: judgment with punishment, social isolation, the withdrawal of practical support,
Speaker 1: down to outright misogynistic attacks because she's a quote such
Speaker 1: a cold bitch. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I've seen it
Speaker 1: in a million times. It's true. I think that as women,
Speaker 1: one of the words that we just can't say without
Speaker 1: some sort of harsh judgment is no. If someone asked
Speaker 1: you to do something and you're like, no, I can't
Speaker 1: just I mean, honestly, people who are listening, try saying
Speaker 1: no to you don't actually want to do and see
Speaker 1: how people react to it. Because people react very strongly
Speaker 1: when a woman says no. And I think when it
Speaker 1: comes to household tasks, especially when you're when you opt
Speaker 1: out of that, I think that people really hold you
Speaker 1: to a really harsh standard. Yeah. Yeah, And another common
Speaker 1: argument that really really bothers me, um, those things are pointless.
Speaker 1: So um. People like to get fixated on gift cards
Speaker 1: or birthday cards or gifts, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: who say, well, let's stop talking about emotional labors say, um,
Speaker 1: those are a waste of time. But it's it's the
Speaker 1: thought that counts, right, And it's showing someone you care,
Speaker 1: whether with a card or gift or however that translates
Speaker 1: to you. I personally prefer drinks and food for some
Speaker 1: kind of fun thing, but it's thinking about the other person,
Speaker 1: it's remembering that it's the the work that goes behind.
Speaker 1: I mean, coming up with gift ideas is generally not
Speaker 1: easy in my in my opinion, um, and those things
Speaker 1: are the social glue that hold together relationships and communities.
Speaker 1: And maybe in isolation, one or two of these things
Speaker 1: dropped doesn't matter, but all of them. Yeah, and think
Speaker 1: of it another way, could you really if you had
Speaker 1: a family and had kids, could you really say, oh,
Speaker 1: we'll give us are pointless so when it's Christmas time
Speaker 1: and because you've opted out of this pointless exchange of gifts, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think I mean this this is this
Speaker 1: was my household of the bit where my mom was
Speaker 1: the one who made sure that we all have a
Speaker 1: nice Christmas, on nice birthday. My dad was totally the
Speaker 1: dad who like snuck his name on the card. How
Speaker 1: come my mom would write it? And you know, that
Speaker 1: was the way it was. And if my mom had
Speaker 1: not been around, I don't think my dad would have
Speaker 1: gotten anybody a gift ever. And that was just a
Speaker 1: task that completely felt to her on that as a
Speaker 1: man he was just able to opt out of. Hopefully, hopefully,
Speaker 1: these days, I think with changing gender norms and gender roles,
Speaker 1: I hope that that is changing for for hetero sexual parents,
Speaker 1: but I know a lot of friends that would say
Speaker 1: the same thing that when it came to the little
Speaker 1: the little things that parents do that make their kids
Speaker 1: feel like their parents care or makes them feel special,
Speaker 1: that was the mom that was their mom, and their
Speaker 1: dad just sort of was sort of around for it. So,
Speaker 1: so improvements, improvements. We're gonna take a pause for a
Speaker 1: quick brick, and then we're gonna be right back with
Speaker 1: more talk about emotional labor. H and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So.
Speaker 1: Gender sociologist Dr Lisa Hoover said quote In general, we
Speaker 1: gender emotions in our society by continuing to reinforce the
Speaker 1: false idea that women are always naturally and biologically able
Speaker 1: to feel, express and manage our emotions better than men.
Speaker 1: This is not to say that some individuals do not
Speaker 1: manage emotion better than others as part of their own
Speaker 1: individual personality, but I would argue that we still have
Speaker 1: no firm evidence that this ability is biologically determined by sex.
Speaker 1: At the same time, and I would argue, because it
Speaker 1: is not a natural difference, we find all kinds of
Speaker 1: ways in society to ensure that girls and women are
Speaker 1: responsible for emotions and then men get a pass. So
Speaker 1: I actually have a anecdotal but I think correct theory
Speaker 1: about this, which is that, of course there is not
Speaker 1: a biological grounding for women being better at management managing
Speaker 1: their emotions. But I think that we are. We are
Speaker 1: taught that our emotions and the emotions of others are like,
Speaker 1: that's our business, right, And you know, think about shows
Speaker 1: like sex in a city where it's four friends sitting
Speaker 1: around trying to parse a text message a guy set right.
Speaker 1: It's it's ingrained in women from an early early age
Speaker 1: that you should be talking about how you feel, and
Speaker 1: not just that you should be talking about how the
Speaker 1: people around you feel, especially men. And you know, there
Speaker 1: aren't a lot of shows out there where it's a
Speaker 1: guy parsing how a woman is feeling. I think that
Speaker 1: we grow up as women with that just tacit understanding
Speaker 1: that one you have to understand your emotions, So talk
Speaker 1: to your friends about how you're feeling. You know, right
Speaker 1: in your journal about how you're feeling whatever. However it
Speaker 1: expresses itself, sometimes I think in a healthy way, sometimes
Speaker 1: not in a healthy way, but it's important to think
Speaker 1: about how you're feeling and talk about it with your friends.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. Two retell women, it is important to parse,
Speaker 1: even if it's a guess, parts the minusha, how men
Speaker 1: and other people in your orbit are feeling. And so
Speaker 1: when you have you know, magazine articles and are like
Speaker 1: ten ways to please your man, what's he thinking? That
Speaker 1: kind of thing? You know, that the old trope of
Speaker 1: asking a man after sex, you know, what are you
Speaker 1: thinking right now? I think that we are early on
Speaker 1: in grain that it is our job to not just
Speaker 1: understand our own emotions, but understand the emotions of those
Speaker 1: in our orbit. And I don't think men feel the
Speaker 1: same way. And I saw this really great tweet recently
Speaker 1: that said a man who was only in touch with
Speaker 1: his own emotions is not actually sensitive, right, because if
Speaker 1: you were actually sensitive, you would be like women are
Speaker 1: kind of forced to be, which is that thinking about
Speaker 1: the other people's needs, how other people are doing, how
Speaker 1: are they feeling, what are they thinking, what do they need?
Speaker 1: And your own? But I think that we ask so
Speaker 1: little of men emotionally speaking, that if a man is
Speaker 1: in touch with his own emotions, like that's good enough.
Speaker 1: In a kind of way. Yeah, And I would say
Speaker 1: probably most of us. If you had to stereotypically think
Speaker 1: of the more emotional sex, you would say women. And
Speaker 1: that's something that we see over and over again, where
Speaker 1: like if a woman expresses emotions, she's being emotional. We
Speaker 1: just have this like assumption that women they are the
Speaker 1: more emotional sex than that men are not. Um So
Speaker 1: there's probably a lot of that that's in the mix
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, And I describe myself as emotional. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a very emotional person. I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: bad thing. And I think that the reason why I'm
Speaker 1: emotional is because it's taken a lot of work to
Speaker 1: get to a place in life where I can identify
Speaker 1: very clearly and feel very clearly my emotions. And I'm
Speaker 1: really proud of that work. And I think getting to
Speaker 1: understand yourself emotionally and others emotionally is something that we
Speaker 1: you know, emotional literacy. Like I wasn't born with it,
Speaker 1: but it's a skill and I choose. It's a skill
Speaker 1: I choose to work on and refine. And I think
Speaker 1: that we when we say that women are emotional, I
Speaker 1: think what we actually mean is, oh, women have been
Speaker 1: up to the task of flexing their emotional literacy muscles,
Speaker 1: and men have never been asked to. So I think
Speaker 1: when we say women are emotional, what we actually mean is, oh,
Speaker 1: women understand the work that goes into being emotionally aware
Speaker 1: of your own feelings and emotionally literate. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: um Over. At Huffington's post, Christine Hutchinson, who is a
Speaker 1: therapist and the executive editor for Psyched in San Francisco magazine,
Speaker 1: wrote about her observations when counseling hetero couples, and she wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: when I work in therapy with heterosexual couples, the disparity
Speaker 1: of training each gender receives an emotional management is stark.
Speaker 1: Often the woman is aware of her male partner's knees
Speaker 1: and feelings at the expense of her own. Or as
Speaker 1: the male partner struggles to identify and understand both his
Speaker 1: his own and his partner's emotions, he has been taught
Speaker 1: that it is either dangerous, not manly, or not his
Speaker 1: job to feel and respond to feelings, including his own.
Speaker 1: It's tragic. I could honestly, I mean, I could talk
Speaker 1: all day, but I think that I want to note that.
Speaker 1: So that's annoying and burdens some in regular ish relationships,
Speaker 1: but if you take that to its ultimate location, it
Speaker 1: can be really toxic. A man who does not feel
Speaker 1: any responsibility to navigate or understand his own emotions, that
Speaker 1: can be really toxic to the point where it's dangerous.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, we have these men who
Speaker 1: are feeling intense feelings and they have no clue how
Speaker 1: to navigate them, and so they take those feelings out
Speaker 1: on other people, or they burden other people with them,
Speaker 1: or in the like ultimate perversion of that, they you know,
Speaker 1: they harm others because they don't understand their own feelings
Speaker 1: and are not up to the challenge of like navigating
Speaker 1: their own feelings. And so in rom in a in
Speaker 1: a healthy issue romantic relationship, having a partner who is
Speaker 1: not taking responsibility for their feelings is annoying. But I
Speaker 1: think the ultimate perversion of that can be really dangerous.
Speaker 1: Not not just like, oh, this relationship isn't working out,
Speaker 1: but actually dangerous. Oh yeah, absolutely. Um. And she also
Speaker 1: talked about um when male clients tell her that their
Speaker 1: partners blew up at them or that something came out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. Uh, and she she would wonder if it
Speaker 1: really had, or perhaps that the woman in these relationships
Speaker 1: had been communicating and the men who had never really
Speaker 1: been expected to listen or respond. I didn't listen to
Speaker 1: or respond. It's the dishes again, Bridget. I know when
Speaker 1: are we gonna get to read your was it thirty pages?
Speaker 1: Thirty pages on the dishes? You're the Martin Luther of
Speaker 1: dishes who just mail it on the podcast studio door
Speaker 1: um And despite what it may sound like, kind of
Speaker 1: going off while you were saying, Bridget, this is definitely
Speaker 1: a case of the patriarchy hurts everyone. Studies have found
Speaker 1: that not only do men have less meaningful relationships, but
Speaker 1: that widowers face a far tougher time adjusting to their
Speaker 1: new single status and have higher rates of mental disorders
Speaker 1: and suicides. Divorce men cope more poorly than divorced women
Speaker 1: as well, and both have been attributed to the fact
Speaker 1: that they don't have meaningful contact with their family and friends.
Speaker 1: Harvard study found an eighty two higher risk of heart
Speaker 1: disease and isolated men when compared to those that stronger
Speaker 1: meaningful relationships, and another study from the New England Research
Speaker 1: Institute found that for six or six percent of the
Speaker 1: men surveyed their wives were their main source of social support,
Speaker 1: and the study concluded, quote, clearly, subtracting a wife greatly
Speaker 1: increases a man's risk of isolation. And it's fair to
Speaker 1: say there are a lot of things that factor factors
Speaker 1: that play there. But UM, I would love to see
Speaker 1: what the numbers are for women. How many women rely
Speaker 1: almost entirely on their spouse for their primary social support? UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of examples people gave. They are talking about
Speaker 1: the kind of the emotional labor that they do for
Speaker 1: the their husband or significant other. Was, um, having to
Speaker 1: keep up with that person's family. Now, like not just
Speaker 1: your own your own family's birthdays and anniversaries or whatever,
Speaker 1: but having to keep up with your husbands or significant
Speaker 1: other their family. Now, Yeah, I remember someone telling me
Speaker 1: that they were. It was a man married couple of
Speaker 1: I'm friends with. They're gonna hear this and think, thank
Speaker 1: you for airing my dirty laundry on the podcast. But
Speaker 1: it was her husband's mother's birthday and her husband didn't
Speaker 1: do jacket, didn't get a gift, didn't do anything, and
Speaker 1: somehow it fell on her that because the mother had
Speaker 1: not been given a gift, rather than thinking, oh, my
Speaker 1: son dropped the ball, it was you didn't. You didn't
Speaker 1: remind him, You didn't you know, buy a gift. You
Speaker 1: didn't do this. And the way that I think that's
Speaker 1: probably true for a lot of a lot of families
Speaker 1: where when do you become someone and in a you know,
Speaker 1: partnership like that, you now have double responsibility. You know, um,
Speaker 1: I know that's my mom is usually calling my dad's family. UM.
Speaker 1: So if you, if you do go off of like, well,
Speaker 1: women are biologically better at this, because that's what science says, right,
Speaker 1: So wary should man even try? There is no science
Speaker 1: to bear this. Our research has found that emotion related
Speaker 1: work is tied to gender construction rather than sex. Um
Speaker 1: And here's another quote from the MetaFilter that I loved.
Speaker 1: It's in all caps, so just put that emphasis on
Speaker 1: my reading of it. Being soft and comforting and nursing
Speaker 1: is really hard work. It is not something that comes
Speaker 1: naturally just because I identify as female. It takes effort
Speaker 1: and time, and it is exhausting and draining. Yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: yes yes. And also outside of the context of a
Speaker 1: romantic relationship, if you were doing the work of being
Speaker 1: comforting and soft and a good listener blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And in a workplace, we should acknowledge that is extra
Speaker 1: work that you're doing. Whether it's compensated or not, or
Speaker 1: valued or not, it is work. It's work. We're not
Speaker 1: just good at being you know. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know how many dumb jokes I've had to laugh at
Speaker 1: in meetings and I didn't think it was funny. But
Speaker 1: you do that because you're That's what we're socialized to do,
Speaker 1: and it is work. One thing I kept coming across
Speaker 1: two is that since women who we've been trained to
Speaker 1: not make men feel inferior, and since a lot of
Speaker 1: these dudes are good dudes, um and we don't want
Speaker 1: to make them feel like we're attacking them, we are
Speaker 1: having trouble finding a good way to approach it, which
Speaker 1: may lead to women blowing up um, are becoming overly
Speaker 1: critical or continuing in silence UM. And women who do
Speaker 1: try to broach the topic with the men in their
Speaker 1: life find that they become defensive or avoidant, or even
Speaker 1: make fun of the women for their desire to have
Speaker 1: the conversation at all. Well, kind of going off of that,
Speaker 1: I think if men don't see emotional labor, if they
Speaker 1: think they live in a house with the magic birds
Speaker 1: from Cinderella, where this stuff, all this gets done by
Speaker 1: pixie dust and and like angel wings, and like no
Speaker 1: one's actually doing it. If this labor is invisible to them,
Speaker 1: how do you broach the subject? You know, if if
Speaker 1: someone that you live with does it just thinks that
Speaker 1: his doctor's appointments get made by magic, he doesn't know
Speaker 1: what person does it, how can you even sit down
Speaker 1: and broke the conversation of why you don't think it's fair. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to have like a starting place for the
Speaker 1: conversation to happen. Um And I did find that this
Speaker 1: whole thing extends to the bedroom, to sex um or
Speaker 1: whenever wherever you having your sex. It's not in the bedroom.
Speaker 1: So like take faking orgasms. It speaks to the fact
Speaker 1: that we're still perceiving sex in a male centric way
Speaker 1: and in a way that most um uh, we don't
Speaker 1: want to upset the mail ego. And so ladies be facing,
Speaker 1: ladies be facing, be facing. How many women out there
Speaker 1: are faking orgasm? Sandy two thousand eleven study found that
Speaker 1: sevent of respondents faked in orgasm during penetrative vaginal sex
Speaker 1: more than half the time. Wow, that's a lot of
Speaker 1: moaning and grown hanging. Oh and I should all be
Speaker 1: getting Academy Awards streps out there. Really faked it more
Speaker 1: than nine of the time, and one of the main
Speaker 1: reasons given for faking it seven percent was to boost
Speaker 1: the man's self esteem. I would love to see the
Speaker 1: numbers on this one for um same sex couples, two
Speaker 1: for men. Are men who are having sex with women?
Speaker 1: Are they faking orgasms? I bet they're not. I would
Speaker 1: love to see the data. I'm at I would as well.
Speaker 1: And also um A listeners sent as an article about
Speaker 1: how um we describe bad sex and how it's completely
Speaker 1: different for men and women. For men it means like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I didn't orgasm as quickly as I thought.
Speaker 1: But for women it means it wasn't painful. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I definitely want to come back to that topic
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. I've had some that's in situations where
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that was bad and my bad.
Speaker 1: I mean it was active, it was he was doing
Speaker 1: an active discomfort right, and when it was over, I
Speaker 1: was relieved right, Yes, it's a little different, um. And
Speaker 1: I would like to say about the study about the
Speaker 1: faking orgasms. It was seventy one straight women, so limited
Speaker 1: in that way, but I do think that it probably
Speaker 1: speaks to we can probably extrapolate a bit, I think so,
Speaker 1: I think. So all right, well we have a little
Speaker 1: bit more to say, but we're gonna take one last
Speaker 1: quick break for from our sponsor and we're back. Thank
Speaker 1: you sponsor. So we're all riled up about this emotional
Speaker 1: labor thing. What can we do? Okay? So, relationships are
Speaker 1: hard work, for sure. It takes two people working at
Speaker 1: it um and to have a truly egalitarian relationship or
Speaker 1: as close as we can get to one, we need
Speaker 1: to find a way to split up the emotional labor
Speaker 1: aspect of it. Some things I read suggested identifying the
Speaker 1: emotional labor um that your partner or whoever it is
Speaker 1: in your life has done over the past week and
Speaker 1: call of call all of those things out, or think
Speaker 1: of ways to express your appreciation, um, think of ways
Speaker 1: that you can contribute more to achieve more equitable situation.
Speaker 1: And it does go back to the conversations the many
Speaker 1: we've had about dishes and the point that some people
Speaker 1: are more okay with leaving things around for a bit
Speaker 1: and others aren't, and this can lead to an imbalanced inshore.
Speaker 1: So you you might have to learn to work with that.
Speaker 1: If your partner is on the opposite side of the spectrum,
Speaker 1: then you are. And there is this other quote I
Speaker 1: want to mention from the meta filter threat um. Women
Speaker 1: consider emotional labor to be the backbone of relationships, not
Speaker 1: the entry fee. So a lot of women in this
Speaker 1: thread pointed out that when they first started dating someone,
Speaker 1: he did do all of these things. He did remember
Speaker 1: the birthday or do something special just because, or go
Speaker 1: out of his way to make to do this emotional work.
Speaker 1: But then once they got married or just were more
Speaker 1: settled into the relationship, that went away because they had,
Speaker 1: you know, gotten what they The emotional labor was just
Speaker 1: the means to an end. Oh that's I know you
Speaker 1: didn't mean it that way, but that's a that's such
Speaker 1: a gross way to think about it. It is Oh,
Speaker 1: I was a functional human and did all the tasks
Speaker 1: that functional humans need to complete just to win your affection.
Speaker 1: Now that I got it, yep, I'm done. Yep. That
Speaker 1: makes me, sad, it is it is sad. I do
Speaker 1: think that that is a different If we can change
Speaker 1: the the way we look at relationships, I think that
Speaker 1: that has a very beneficial conversation to have, because I
Speaker 1: do I see men and women looking at relationships in
Speaker 1: different ways. And I've kind of gotten that you're saying
Speaker 1: women are from Venus, meta from Mars Annie, you know,
Speaker 1: bridget Maybe that is what I'm saying, Maybe that is
Speaker 1: maybe I need to revisit that. Another tip, another chip.
Speaker 1: The probably shouldn't need to be said, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: say it is listening, actually listening. Yeah, listen to your
Speaker 1: partner or listen to their needs. You know. I think
Speaker 1: kind of like what you were saying about how when
Speaker 1: women blow up of them, men sometimes say, oh, came
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, blah blah blah. But actually it seems
Speaker 1: like she probably might have been saying the same thing
Speaker 1: over and over and go again in different ways and
Speaker 1: then got very frustrated that she was not being heard. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is something that starts at a really young age.
Speaker 1: Studies showed that by three years old, kids recognize gender.
Speaker 1: So by modeling different behavior, we can change things for
Speaker 1: younger generations um A quote from Dr Michelle Ramsay, the
Speaker 1: Associate Professor of Communications and Sciences at Penn State burghs
Speaker 1: um quote. For parents, this means making sure that one
Speaker 1: spouse does not do more of that type of labor
Speaker 1: than the other. Speaking in terms of how emotional labor
Speaker 1: is currently divided, girls will hopefully learn not to expect
Speaker 1: to have to do that labor, and boys will hopefully
Speaker 1: learn not to expect females to do that labor for them.
Speaker 1: Children watching parents share that emotional labor will be more
Speaker 1: likely to be children who expect that labor to be
Speaker 1: shared in their own lives. So we need to start
Speaker 1: early and redivine some gender roles. To me, some of
Speaker 1: this sounds so basic, but maybe people don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know. Another tip I have if you
Speaker 1: are in a workplace, uh and you find that, you know,
Speaker 1: women are doing a lot more of the emotional labor
Speaker 1: in a professional setting, things like office birthday parties, you know,
Speaker 1: getting that birthday card, any of of little things that
Speaker 1: aren't someone's job that they end up doing. Try to
Speaker 1: find a more equitable, equitable way to do that, you know,
Speaker 1: a chore wheel, something like that. You know, if one
Speaker 1: person is always washing everyone's mug in the kitchen and
Speaker 1: it's not their job trying to figure out why that is.
Speaker 1: You know, if if you're someone who is a decision
Speaker 1: maker in a workplace, you have the power to make
Speaker 1: a change and and have that not be the case.
Speaker 1: Absolutely yuh So I hope that, um, this episode is
Speaker 1: useful to to you listeners. It was certainly useful for
Speaker 1: me because I hadn't really been able to express that.
Speaker 1: Like I knew that this was happening, I just didn't
Speaker 1: really have the words to express it. So um, it
Speaker 1: was really eye opening episode did do the research on
Speaker 1: for me. SAME's it's an impact Again, this is sort
Speaker 1: of like our gas lighting episode. It's empowering to have
Speaker 1: a language, a shared language, to understand a lot of
Speaker 1: the crap we're all dealing with and have been dealing with,
Speaker 1: maybe without a way to describe it. So I think
Speaker 1: adding it sounds so dumb and so basic and so surface.
Speaker 1: But being able to have a word to describe something
Speaker 1: that so many of us are dealing with and sometimes
Speaker 1: dealing with alone and silently and in a frustrated way,
Speaker 1: I think it's empowering. I do too. And as someone
Speaker 1: who I've seen so many of my friends, moms get
Speaker 1: kind of stuck in divorces where they can't leave because
Speaker 1: they don't have any money. Um, and just to hear
Speaker 1: them say like I wish I had gone to work,
Speaker 1: or I would say something away, and I always feel
Speaker 1: so frustrated because you were working, like you were raising children,
Speaker 1: and you just weren't getting compensated for That's I don't
Speaker 1: even get me started. That's a whole other episode. But
Speaker 1: times A D yes, like, we do not value the
Speaker 1: labor of women. Would you not value labor that is
Speaker 1: associated with women? Do not value domestic labor, labor within
Speaker 1: the household, the work that you just described that woman doing.
Speaker 1: If you if her husband paid for that work outside
Speaker 1: of the home, do you know how much she would
Speaker 1: be making a lot of money. So it is work,
Speaker 1: very clearly, and we don't value it, and it's we should.
Speaker 1: And if she was charging her husband in an itemized
Speaker 1: fashion for all the stuff she did, cooking, cleaning, raising kids,
Speaker 1: shuggling people, places, appointments, she would have so much money
Speaker 1: if it was compensated. It just happens to not be compensated. Yep,
Speaker 1: all right, no, I so agree, and I I like
Speaker 1: wrote out, I tried to like show show a woman
Speaker 1: in my life this where I like wrote out, this
Speaker 1: is how much you would have made per year you
Speaker 1: would make so Nick Bank, Yeah, if you like, if
Speaker 1: if someone had to hire someone to do this all
Speaker 1: the things. Yeah, So definitely we've given ourselves more homework.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, it's time for listener mail. Oh
Speaker 1: Dylan at that, I mean, producer, Dylan, I got you handled.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about that blizzer male sound effect. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do them from now on. Bridget does all the sound
Speaker 1: effects from here on out. Okay, so this first one
Speaker 1: is from patrese Um. I just listened to your episode
Speaker 1: from at KIMK and Appetite Supressants. This one really hit
Speaker 1: me hard because about a year ago, one of my
Speaker 1: coworkers started using Isogenics, which is essentially a pyramid scam.
Speaker 1: One person starts using this meal replacement shake and doing
Speaker 1: cleanses and they lose a bunch of weight and feel great,
Speaker 1: and then they start selling it to their friends and
Speaker 1: so on. So last year my co worker got me
Speaker 1: on it, and you replaced two meals a day with
Speaker 1: these shakes and then only have one hundred calorie snacks
Speaker 1: in between. You did this for five days, and then
Speaker 1: you did two days of cleanses where you drink this
Speaker 1: nutrient supplement and are only allowed one apple or one
Speaker 1: one of their way snacks to eat throughout the day.
Speaker 1: After the first day I tried this, I felt a
Speaker 1: little off and lightheaded, but I was committed to finishing
Speaker 1: because one I wanted to lose the weight and see results,
Speaker 1: and too, I had already spent the money on these products.
Speaker 1: So after the first two months of this crazy schedule,
Speaker 1: I was starting to see results. I lost weight and
Speaker 1: inches around my waist, so naturally I ordered more shake
Speaker 1: powder and cleansing kits. Now I'm the type of person
Speaker 1: that gets bored with food very easily, and after about
Speaker 1: another month of this, I was starting to miss food.
Speaker 1: I felt constantly hungry because I had lowered my calorie
Speaker 1: intake and I just straight up miss chewing food and
Speaker 1: all the different flavors that come with it. So I
Speaker 1: gave up this crazy shake fad, and guess what, I
Speaker 1: gained all the weight back and then some. Being a
Speaker 1: person who has been referred to as skinny for most
Speaker 1: of their life. It was really difficult for me to
Speaker 1: realize how much weight I had gained over the past
Speaker 1: eight months. I had gotten a new job where I
Speaker 1: set a desk for eight hours a day, and I
Speaker 1: hadn't been going to the gym with this new schedule.
Speaker 1: Looking back, I can understand where all this weight came from.
Speaker 1: But at first it seemed like I game ten pounds overnight.
Speaker 1: None of my clothes fit, and then I made the
Speaker 1: mistake of stepping on the scale. Being an avid Instagram user,
Speaker 1: it was difficult to scroll through my feet and see
Speaker 1: all of these get Skinny Quick solutions being advertised everywhere.
Speaker 1: I even spiraled into a period of depression because I
Speaker 1: was so upset to how big I had gotten and
Speaker 1: not having a flat stomach like all of the quote
Speaker 1: pretty girls on Instagram. Thankfully, I have the amazing support
Speaker 1: of my boyfriend, who reminds me how silly it is
Speaker 1: to lose my mind over a little bit of weight.
Speaker 1: He also motivates me to work out and eat better,
Speaker 1: and it goes to show I'm important it is to
Speaker 1: have a good supportive network around you. I also quit
Speaker 1: following many of the people on Instagram that made me
Speaker 1: wish I looked like them and started following more body
Speaker 1: positive accounts. Seriously, just look up hashtag body positivity and
Speaker 1: you'll find so many more real accounts and people who
Speaker 1: are truly trying to make a difference in the way
Speaker 1: we look at ourselves. Over the last four months, I
Speaker 1: had become a vegetarian and have been going to the
Speaker 1: gym and playing tennis and just enjoying life. I don't
Speaker 1: worry about the number on the scale. We don't even
Speaker 1: have a scale in my house, and I eat to
Speaker 1: feel good and full, and becoming vegetarians made me start
Speaker 1: cooking in the kitchen and using real foods, and it's
Speaker 1: honestly the best decision I've made in a while. I
Speaker 1: truly wish for all the young women out there to
Speaker 1: not fall into the chap of these fat diets and
Speaker 1: meal suppressants or supplements, because once you stop, you just
Speaker 1: feel worse than before you started. Yeah. Um, I'm someone
Speaker 1: who at one time would have definitely tried this, have
Speaker 1: definitely tried something like this, and it is I mean,
Speaker 1: when you think about it, when you step away, it's
Speaker 1: it's so almost disturbing. Not necessarily this story, but I
Speaker 1: remember reading back in the worst days for me, I
Speaker 1: remember reading this tip and it was watch yourself eat
Speaker 1: in the mirror, because you were supposed to be disgusted
Speaker 1: with how you like perceived yourself and the fact that
Speaker 1: you're eating. And it's it's just so upsetting that these
Speaker 1: messages are so powerful and they're like everywhere and prevalent.
Speaker 1: So I do hope that um, we we move away
Speaker 1: from that and we learned to enjoy life. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: I wanted to point out in this in this letter
Speaker 1: was that I'm so happy that it sounds like she's
Speaker 1: gotten to a place where she has a positive and
Speaker 1: a healthy relationship with food, where she's cooking at home
Speaker 1: and using healthy ingredients and eating too, eating it because
Speaker 1: food tastes good and it's it's fun to eat, and
Speaker 1: you know, eating to feel good. Uh, you should not
Speaker 1: be repulsed by the idea of you consuming food, which
Speaker 1: we all need to do to live. Eating. I mean,
Speaker 1: at least for me, it's it's it's and I think
Speaker 1: for you as the host of a food podcast, you know,
Speaker 1: it should be something that can bring joy. And I'm
Speaker 1: happy that she's found a place where it sounds like
Speaker 1: cooking a big vegetarian meal in her kitchen full of healthy,
Speaker 1: fresh ingredients makes her feel good. It makes me happy,
Speaker 1: and please, please, We'll be there. Our next letter is
Speaker 1: from Marin beautiful name Marion M E H E R
Speaker 1: I N. Gorgeous name. I'm a little behind on episodes
Speaker 1: and I just listened to the episode on stalking. First
Speaker 1: of all, I want to thank you guys for doing
Speaker 1: an episode on this topic, as it's important and scary.
Speaker 1: I agree that the media, both fiction and journalism, are
Speaker 1: complicit and normalizing stalking behaviors. I did, however, want to
Speaker 1: share my perspective on one of my favorite movies, Love. Actually,
Speaker 1: this movie is about different types of love and how
Speaker 1: that plays out in our lives. Bridget You said that
Speaker 1: the woman who chooses to take care of her brother
Speaker 1: is vilified, but by whom her new suitor seems to understand.
Speaker 1: Is an example of how her love for her brother
Speaker 1: outweighs other loves in her life. With Alan Rickman and
Speaker 1: Emma Thompson's characters, Alan Rickman cheats on her, whether emotionally
Speaker 1: or physically, we do not know, and it breaks her heart.
Speaker 1: That as an example of how love can hurt just
Speaker 1: because someone betrays you, doesn't negate your love for them,
Speaker 1: and in the end we see that she stays with him,
Speaker 1: but their relationship is strained. The movie does not teach
Speaker 1: us that cheating is okay. It just shows that, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: cheating happens. And the most controversial character the guy with
Speaker 1: an undercredit crush. I'm Kira Knightley's character one. He thinks
Speaker 1: he's quote in love with his best friend's partner. He
Speaker 1: keeps that to himself. He doesn't pursue her. He actively
Speaker 1: tries to act cold and distant toward her so they
Speaker 1: don't become close. Too. He takes that creepy video of
Speaker 1: her at her wedding. This is definitely stockery. It is
Speaker 1: not okay and shouldn't be romanticized. However, he wasn't the
Speaker 1: official videography. His videography was creepy, but he didn't ruin
Speaker 1: their wedding. Three. In the end, he gives that speech
Speaker 1: on the note cards in order to quote explain himself
Speaker 1: to Juliet after she watches the creepy video that he
Speaker 1: didn't intend for her to watch and allow him to
Speaker 1: quote get it out of his system so he can
Speaker 1: move on. I always viewed it as Hey, I've always
Speaker 1: liked you, I think you're special, and then he left.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's childish or stock rish at all.
Speaker 1: Should Juliet tell her husband about the situation. That's her
Speaker 1: ethical call, not that guy's any who. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to share because I feel like our interpretations of the
Speaker 1: same movie were so different. Keep up the good work, y'all. Maren,
Speaker 1: thank you for writing in It's Funny. I actually got
Speaker 1: a lot of push back on my strong stances on love. Actually, Maren,
Speaker 1: I gotta say she makes the case very very well
Speaker 1: for the movie, showcasing different ways that love can play out.
Speaker 1: I will say that I do so no one in
Speaker 1: the movie shames Laura Lenny's character who was taking care
Speaker 1: of her sick brother. But I feel so like there's
Speaker 1: there's not a character who was like, oh, how dare you?
Speaker 1: I feel like we as the viewer are meant to
Speaker 1: see her choice as sad or or bad, like like
Speaker 1: Maren is corrector is not a character in the movie
Speaker 1: that says, Laura, Linny, what are you doing? But I
Speaker 1: believe that we as the audience are supposed to say, Laura, Lenna,
Speaker 1: you've got this hot guy that makes you jump up
Speaker 1: and down when he's in your apartment because he's so
Speaker 1: hot and you're gonna choose your ailing brother. I don't know,
Speaker 1: that's just my interpretation. Actually, Mary is making me want
Speaker 1: to go back and watch it again. Um we had
Speaker 1: it to her ever growing I know, kind of invite Marin,
Speaker 1: we do, I did. I really appreciated how m several
Speaker 1: several listeners wrote in and like kind of defending of
Speaker 1: like a favorite movie of theirs. And it is interesting
Speaker 1: to have like such different takes on on movies. I've
Speaker 1: been really fascinated reading kind of these really different viewpoints. Um,
Speaker 1: we Bridget and I love we love media movies. If
Speaker 1: it's not clear, so we could we could probably have
Speaker 1: a whole like many side podcasts. You know what we
Speaker 1: should do. I would just think it would be so
Speaker 1: interesting get to listeners who have drastically different takes on
Speaker 1: the same movie. So somebody who thinks love actually is
Speaker 1: the greatest love story of our time and someone who
Speaker 1: thinks it's garbage, and have them both make their case.
Speaker 1: That'd be hilarious. And then we like, would we get
Speaker 1: to vote at the end anything where I get to
Speaker 1: judge the opinion of others. I'm so in sign me
Speaker 1: up perfect. We'll we'll get We'll get to the drawing
Speaker 1: board on that one. Um. In the meantime, please keep
Speaker 1: those emails coming. Our email is mom Stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. You can also find us all
Speaker 1: over the social means. We're on Instagram at stuff but
Speaker 1: I've Never Told You and on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast.
Speaker 1: And thanks as always to our producer Dylan Fagan and
Speaker 1: Kathleen Killian as well. Another time y'all listen to this.
Speaker 1: Annie will be at Italyanta road Race champion so early.
Speaker 1: Congrats to her. All right, oh guy,