character analysis is my passion

me and @chebyshevptera were talking about transfem!Kai so I had to draw her :) Her name is still just Kai, she’s lazy like that lol

Took a very vibes based rendering approach to this #freeingmyself

tag list under the cut (asked to be added or removed) etc etc

marshmallows

hugs

tumblr

this sexy thing

music

bromances

and on top of all of that, life gave us the Once-ler :D

take these tags, on somebody else's post (condolences pip)

the thing is. this is what i would call an inside thought. nobody would have known you didn't get it if you didn't tell them that. if you recognised that it was important but didn't have the headspace to process it, you can reblog without commentary for others, or to come back to later. or you can save it somewhere and wait until you DO have the capacity to read it over a few more times, ponder it, consider what it might mean, figure out how to understand it, and THEN reblog it

but no. rushing to reblog while it is still opaque. rushing to admit to ignorance rather than spend the time to achieve understanding. perhaps hoping that somebody will break it down for you more simply, though to my mind it was quite simply phrased in the first place. never stopping to take the time first

comprehension is not always instant! sometimes it takes a bit of time for something to percolate after you read it; sometimes you need to read it a few times; sometimes you realise you don't have the context for it and either go and get the context or accept that it's not for you right now

"people have to hide their emotions to perform specific types of labour where their apparent emotions influence another person's. Eg. Flight attendants have to be cheerful all the time, so that passengers feel welcome and safe. This suppression and masking of emotion can cause a sense of disconnect within the individual where they dont know what their true feelings are. This is part of the Marxist idea of alienation from labour and from the self."

To

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild coined the term in 1983, specifically describing it as emotional performance required by a worker for a job. This alienates the worker from their own feelings. The expected emotion can be care, joy, etc. but it can also be harshness or simply the expectation to not show your real emotions in the workplace.

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild also coined the term 'the second shift' in 1989. describing how in families where a man and a woman both have a job, the woman is often still expected to do all the child raising and house cleaning, meaning she is carrying a double workload.

Already in 1983 (before coining the term 'second shift' but already developing the concept), Hochschild herself connected the two ideas, writing: "In a typical nuclear family unit, it is thought that women become responsible for much of the emotional labor by default, meaning they are responsible for shaping and managing the family’s feelings." So we have the person who coined the term, immediately after coining the term, also using emotional labor to describe unpaid household work! This is part of the term since its inception!

Around 2015 the term gained a lot of popularity and began to be more broadly applied. Some things that are, according to Hochschild, NOT emotional labor include:

Doing physical chores around the house

Doing mental chores like remembering birthdays

Hochschild: "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.” Like chores are just labor. Writing Christmas cards is just labor."

Also not emotional labour:

Expressing genuine emotions that you feel

Doing things that make other people feel better

Hochschild emphasizes that doing things to positively impact other people's emotions isn't 'emotional labor'. Managing and suppressing your own emotions is. That's where the alienation that is central to emotional labor comes in: it's alienation from your own feelings.

It's also essential that there must be an expectation on the person to do this. Hiding your real feelings by choice isn't emotional labor. As with emotional labor in the workplace, non-caring emotions and suppression of emotions typically expected of men are included. So when a wife expects her husband to suppress his pain and not cry in front of the children, that is an example of emotional labor. So to summarize, emotional labor according to Hochschild doesn't have to always be paid labor, but it does always involve:

The management of your own emotions

Alienation from your real emotions, as a result of being forced to perform other emotions.

Pressure/expectation, there are negative consequences if you don't do the performance.

There is a system, (the workplace, genderroles, etc) shaping these expectations, putting specific expectations on categories of people.