Perhaps you’ve already had someone recommend that you read the lengthy Metafilter thread about emotional labor, and how often we gender it a “natural” gift that women allegedly enjoy and excel at performing, but which men claim to lack and/or need to learn how to do. On the contrary, it’s a learned skill for everyone — and this form of work should be respected and acknowledged. The thread does a great job of unpacking how deep our collective assumptions about emotional labor can extend, and how we all might go about undoing them and rethinking the value and cost of emotional labor.
Anyway, it’s a very long thread. You might not have time to read all of it! Good news: the most relevant posts from the thread — which was inspired by this piece by Jess Zimmerman on the Toast — can now be read in PDF form via this annotated Google doc, complete with a Table of Contents and relevant links, citations, etc.
It’s still a 70-page PDF … but it’s packed with interesting anecdotes and observations, and well worth a look if you’d like some contemporary reading material on the topic.
(via Twitter, image via Fishstick Theatre)
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