My husband is a good man, and a good feminist ally. I could tell, as I walked him through it, that he was trying to grasp what I was getting at. But he didnât. He said heâd try to do more cleaning around the house to help me out. He restated that all I ever needed to do was ask him for help, but therein lies the problem. I donât want to micromanage housework. I want a partner with equal initiative. However, itâs not as easy as telling him that. My husband, despite his good nature and admirable intentions, still responds to criticism in a very patriarchal way. Forcing him to see emotional labor for the work it is feels like a personal attack on his character. If I were to point out random emotional labor duties I carry outâreminding him of his familyâs birthdays, carrying in my head the entire school handbook and dietary guidelines for lunches, updating the calendar to include everyoneâs schedules, asking his mother to babysit the kids when we go out, keeping track of what food and household items we are running low on, tidying everyoneâs strewn about belongings, the unending hell that is laundryâhe would take it as me saying, âLook at everything Iâm doing that youâre not. Youâre a bad person for ignoring me and not pulling your weight.â Bearing the brunt of all this emotional labor in a household is frustrating. Itâs the word I hear most commonly when talking to friends about the subject of all the behind-the-scenes work they do. Itâs frustrating to be saddled with all of these responsibilities, no one to acknowledge the work you are doing, and no way to change it without a major confrontation. âWhat bothers me the most about having any conversation around emotional labor is being seen as a nag,â says Kelly Burch, a freelance journalist who works primarily from home. âMy partner feels irritated and defensive by the fact that Iâm always pointing out what heâs not doing. It shuts him down. I understand why it would be frustrating from his perspective, but I havenât figured out another way to make him aware of all the emotional and mental energy Iâm spending to keep the house running.â
Stop Calling Women Nags â How Emotional Labor is Dragging Down Gender Equality (via thatdiabolicalfeminist)
Men, if these ideas are new to you, hereâs a whole thread to introduce you to some of the work thatâs been invisibly done for you when youâve lived with women, and the way it affects women to have to do it alone. I recommend working through it at your own pace and challenging the defensiveness as it crops up to block your view.
If you make a genuine effort to learn from this and to start taking back some of this work, youâre going to see a slow but drastic improvement in your understanding of and relationships with the women in your life.
(via organicgold)
whoooof. yikes. I didnât really know emotional labor was a thing, but it definitely is.
(via hannaoliviaway)
