You'll plant the moon in someone's eyes

[sovay]

I am also reminding myself that depression accompanies long respiratory illness, so I should not take it personally that on a springlike afternoon right out of a watercolor I feel like I'm waiting for the heat death of the universe. It is my other anniversary with spatch, the date when we became a couple. We will celebrate tonight when he gets off work. Have some really disparate links.

1. Courtesy of larryhammer: Postmodern Jukebox covers "Pinky and the Brain," with special guests Rob Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche. The Pippi Longstocking answer was the first one I ever heard and I still love it.

2. Courtesy of selkie: Wittgenstein Plays Scrabble.

3. I am fascinated by this 1980 pamphlet from the Janus Information Facility because it is doing its best to encourage both the healthy expression of masculinity by women and the healthy self-realization of trans men without sidelining one group into the other. It's not perfect, but it's unequivocally supportive, as when addressing the concerns of trans men about their sex lives: "You CAN satisfy your partner AND satisfy yourself . . . There are a lot of attractive desirable men who are A-1 lousy lovers. It is not unusual to discover that a man who seems to have everything to offer in actuality has nothing. Make a special point of observing other men. Especially look for stereotypical 'masculine' qualities in them and evaluate yourself in comparison. You may discover that, when it comes right down to it, YOU have more 'balls' than a lot of men!" Found via a comprehensive article about the much less charming misgendering of Dr. James Barry.

4. David Schraub on "How to Avoid the Trap of the House Antisemitism Resolution": "Or put differently, and with apologies to Max Rose, the House shouldn't write a chickenshit antisemitism resolution. The first step to changing the bad optics of the resolution is to change its bad reality, and that means holding the active forms of conservative antisemitism accountable too . . . The fact is, it is a trap to agree to the premise that the fight against antisemitism in America boils down to a fight against Ilhan Omar. It is a trap stemming from the right — which wishes to pretend as if their own antisemitism isn't real and doesn't matter; and it is equally a trap emanating from the left — which wishes to frame the fight against antisemitism as nothing more than the fight to silence politicians like Ilhan Omar." Well, that's an entire garbage fire I hadn't seen going up in a roar.

5. Courtesy of umadoshi: "The Concept Creep of 'Emotional Labor.'" I was especially struck by this point: "It seems like this is mostly becoming a popular term in feminist conversations. But 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.' It almost seems like we're saying that women do the work and women are emotional, so that must be emotional work. Like chores are just labor. Writing Christmas cards is just labor."

6. Whatever happened between Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, I am sorry it was not fully reciprocated, because imagine receiving love letters from Melville on the regular: "If the world was entirely made up of [magicians], I'll tell you what I should do. I should have a paper-mill established at one end of the house, and so have an endless riband of foolscap rolling in upon my desk; and upon that endless riband I should write a thousand—a million—billion thoughts, all under the form of a letter to you. The divine magnet is in you, and my magnet responds."

7. Steeling my stomach, I did go looking after all to see what the hell had happened with Mark Robson's Trial (1955). Lo and behold: Daniel J. Leab, "From Even-Handedness to Red-Baiting: The Transformation of the Novel 'Trial'." That's damning even without access to the full article. Now I have to decide if I want to track down the novel. I did similar research once with Girl of the Port (1930) and the results were illuminating, but I still really wanted to take a shower afterward. [edit] muccamukk says it's not worth it. Hurrah for bullets dodged.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

The Concept Creep of 'Emotional Labor'

I feel as though my interpretation of the term falls somewhere between the original and the expanded definitions. Housework in general is labour, no adjective required, and Hochschild’s classes to-do lists, reminding the other person to do chores, etc, with mental labour; I can agree with that, though I’d go with “cognitive load” maybe, to get across the idea that these task don’t get the recognition for effort that, say writing a book or doing something math-related does. However, she doesn’t seem to consider placating others as “emotional labour,” except in so far as it requires excessive managing of one’s own emotions (i.e. forcing oneself to remain calm and pleasant as part of dealing with someone else), and I feel as though the two things are pretty hard to untangle.

[sovay]

However, she doesn’t seem to consider placating others as "emotional labour," except in so far as it requires excessive managing of one's own emotions (i.e. forcing oneself to remain calm and pleasant as part of dealing with someone else), and I feel as though the two things are pretty hard to untangle.

I didn't think she was saying categorically that making nice for other people was not emotional labor; in fact I thought that was one of her original examples. "From the flight attendant whose job it is to be nicer than natural to the bill collector whose job it is to be, if necessary, harsher than natural, there are a variety of jobs that call for this. Teachers, nursing-home attendants, and child-care workers are examples. The point is that while you may also be doing physical labor and mental labor, you are crucially being hired and monitored for your capacity to manage and produce a feeling." I think where she disagreed was the idea of emotional labor as referring strictly to the management of other people's emotions as opposed to the heavy lifting of one's own. "You get in the cab, you ring the doorbell—that's not emotional labor. But if your mother-in-law is extremely disapproving of you, and in the first five minutes you become aware of that again, and you're having to defend your self-esteem against the perceived insult, that's emotional labor." People being emotionally stressful at you and you having to keep an even keel throughout is emotional labor. You doing something that makes them happy, if it takes no emotional toll on you, does not fit the definition. That made sense to me: I can think of plenty of examples where even going out of my way to do something nice for someone does not feel like an imposition or a weight; it doesn't tire me out. It is absolutely exhausting, however, having to look chipper when you actually want to feed the other person to a garbage disposal.

[moon_custafer]

That’s true – making someone you *like* happy is usually satisfying rather than exhausting.

I do still think that comforting a loved one can be exhausting if, say, they have chronic depression or anxiety and the work of keeping their head above water never ends, but that’s where their emotions and yours are apt to get entangled, I suppose.