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The very brief reconciliation of these competing definitions is that some people are professional emotional laborers, including but not limited to customer-facing roles, certain aspects of the service industry in particular, and some types of entertainer, while others do it free of charge and without professional accountability (roughly, emotional labor is some superset of "thinking about and dealing with XYZ, including its emotional valence, so you don't have to or to facilitate your own interaction").

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What is the correct definition?

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I, too am a prescriptivist. Thus I condemn you and wikipedia for lying about the meaning of the term.

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Hmm, interesting thesis, but I think it's overcomplicating a bit.

I don't think it's an (untrue) stereotype that men love women "directly" while women love the feeling of being loved.

While male and female love are equally transactional and self-interested, men really do tend to like women for primarily their looks and the personality. These are direct in the sense that the woman has to expand no energy on maintaining those things: she is either lucky enough to have the requisite qualities or she doesn't.

Also, you might be projecting a bit? I think the mating strategy of liking direct qualities maps roughly onto r (low investment) strategies and the strategy of liking being liked maps roughly onto k (high investment) strategies. Most intellectual-type people have more k-type strategies, so I find it's my nerdier guy friends who worry more about how much their partner likes them while my less nerdy guy friends don't really seem to care what the woman thinks of them as long as they get to sleep with them.

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Wikipedia defines it as being part of a job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... I suppose I'm enough of a prescriptivist to think the people using it outside that context are doing so incorrectly and thereby making language worse, like with the figurative use of "literally" :)

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The phrase "emotional labor" is also used to describe work within relationships.

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My understanding had been that "emotional labor" is actual labor, not the mere experience of emotion. Men aren't hired to objectify women, as it is not labor. A customer service rep who has to deal with angry customers would be an example of emotional labor.

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A little feedback. I had to reread the main argument several times. I found it a little confusingly worded.

"One of the strongest things we all want from our mates is to be wanted and loved for our direct features, like our looks, personality, smarts, kindness, etc. But two people who have this as their main mating motive are poorly matched. If the other person mainly loves you for the fact that you love them, then they aren’t loving you so much for your direct features, which is what you wanted them to love you for. So you aren’t getting what you wanted."

I read the linked post about wanting to be wanted

A. we say we want a partner having direct features X,Y,Zbut actually we desireB. 'to be wanted'

I think you're argument is that somehow both partners wanting to be wanted is unstable?

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