totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

Portfolio Wrap Up

This is my last project in graduate school. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to explore something that not only speaks to an issue in society, but me personally. 

Through this exploration, I’ve been able to answer some of my own questions regarding why men treat me like their personal therapist. I now know that it isn’t just me, it is a product of the roles places in society. It enforces men to be masculine and dominant, womyn to be submissive and nurturing. Fear of seeming weak deters men from receiving emotional support from other men. Because to be seen as weak is to be seen as a womyn. To be seen as a womyn is to be seen as lesser. As inferior.

And so men seek comfort from womyn. It is an expectation that we provide it, for men and womyn. Men have no expectation to provide it themselves, and often don’t. This constructs an emotional inequity, a one-sided hourglass where men pour their emotional sand into womyn and don’t ever have to flip the hourglass over. 

And by it, I don’t meant just society. I mean us. I mean me. We continue to uphold these expectations for ourselves. I continue to uphold these expectations for myself. Through my experiment but not really experiment, I have learned to let go of these expectations of myself and to invest in relationships that provide me emotional support as well. 

And so, to all the boys who make me their therapist: I’m done. I hope you learn to flip the hourglass over. I hope you learn that to be emotive is to be human and to be emotionally supportive is also to be human. I hope you treat womyn better.

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

Twitter Poll Results

So it’s been over 24 hours, and the results of my Twitter Poll are in! This being my first Twitter Poll, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I did not just get the 10 responses I hypothesized, but my poll had 247 votes total. I was shook.

Thanks to my experience as a math teacher, I was able to calculate the individual votes based on the percentages. The results are: 

Yes= 79.04 votes

Hell yes= 113.62 votes

Nope= 17.29 votes

Maybe once or twice= 37.05 votes

8 other accounts retweeted the vote, spreading awareness to their followers, and 5 accounts saved it to the Like portion of their account.

Twitter also lets you view the activity surrounding your tweets:

2,758 Impressions refers to the number of times a tweet appears on an account’s timeline, either because they followed me, or someone they followed Liked or Retweeted the original tweet. This means of the 2,758 accounts that had the opportunity to vote, 247 accounts did.

The 110 engagement refers to the total number of times a user interacted with a Tweet. Clicks anywhere on the Tweet, including Retweets, replies, follows, likes, links, cards, hashtags, embedded media, username, profile photo, or Tweet expansion. That’s kind of confusing since it’s less than the number of votes I had, but I think maybe the group chat messages I sent had something to do with it. It’s possible individuals who do not follow my account clicked on the link and voted, which might make the Engagement less. But on that note, since I invited 3 groupchats of primarily womyn of color to participate, I think that is my primary demographic.

Soooo what do these results this mean?

The 93% of responses acknowledge that they have felt like a man’s therapist, either once or twice, yes or hell yes. That to me, indicates that contemporary society roles regarding emotional labor rings true. This is in line with my hypothesis that the majority of womyn have experienced being exploited by men for their emotional support, to some degree. 7% voted no, they never felt like a man’s therapist. Does this mean that to them, emotional labor as a form of exploitation isn’t a thing?

This degree of “Yes”, “Hell yes,” and “Maybe once or twice” notion made me think further about the existence of this. Is it exploitation if a women has felt like a man’s therapist? If a womyn has never felt that way, does it mean that it has never happened, or just that they never felt exploited for the emotional labor they carry? Does the feeling or acknowledgement of exploitation have to be present in order for exploitation to exist?

In my personal opinion, I don’t think that the acknowledgement of exploitation by the powerless has to occur in order for this dynamic to exist. In many -isms, individuals do not realize the inequitable distribution of power and resources because it’s so deeply embedded in society, that’s just the way life is. In cultural imperialism, for example, English is the dominant language spread across the Earth by colonizers, so much so that it is the official language in many underdeveloped countries. Here in the United States, there are millions of individuals for whom English is not their primary language, but in order to get anything, from food, to directions, to social services, they need to have at least some understanding of English in order to survive. This -ism is not directly seen as the power of one group being imposed on another, but it is. It exists wether people under this oppression realize it or not.

Seeing as how the primary participant pool I reached was womyn of color, the cultural dimension of these results is not lost on me. Speaking for myself and my identity as Latinx, machismo is saturated in my culture, something I touched on earlier. If the majority of participants do identify as womyn of color, it seems that their is a strong cultural dynamic tied to the roles assigned to men and womyn, womyn being soft, nurturing beings for their polar opposites.

This Twitter Poll is obviously not a true objective experiment. The wording of the question, the order of the options, and the wording of the options can all lead to error and biases. The participant pool of me reaching out to womyn of color in higher education asking them to participate also influences the results. I also don’t know if all the voters were womyn. I would like to believe that if individuals were not aware of this before, they are now, and that they would start to reflect on the emotional labor inflicted on womyn by men in their own life.

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

Twitter Poll Experiment

I wanted to look more into how emotional labor manifests in contemporary society, outside of academia. Because I saw past comments on this on Twitter, I decided to do a Twitter poll asking womyn to take a quick vote:

I set the poll to be active for 24 hours, during which anyone could vote “Yes”, “Hell yes”, “Nope”, or “Maybe once or twice”. Participants can only vote once from their account, and the responses are anonymous, meaning I cannot see which accounts voted and what they voted for. The voter cannot see the voting results unless they participate and vote themselves.

My hypothesis was that mostly womyn would participate given the directions.  with the majority of votes in the “yes” or “hell yes”, because past tweets I have sifted through regarding men placing emotional burden on womyn received a lot of Likes and Retweets. 

Since my Twitter account doesn’t have a TON of followers, I decided to reach out to womyn and ask them to participate. I am a member of a multicultural sorority, which is a sisterhood beginning in undergrad that provides academic and social support primarily to women of color. I am a part of a couple different sorority groupchats. I decided to send a message to one chat including members from my chapter, a chat with members my state, and one members across the United States.

I sent the following message in three groupchats:

Based on the number of “hearts” I received in the group chats, I also hypothesized that at least 10 womyn would participate. 

Now, I’ve never done a twitter poll before, so I don’t really know what’s gonna happen. Would anyone participate? Would it be just womyn or men as well?We’ll see what happens in 24 hours!

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

If I got paid for all my emotional labor, I’d have like a lot of money

Slam Poet Melissa Lozada-Oliva hit the nail right on the head with this piece. My favorite lines from this are:

If I had a nickel for every time I stayed up too late

For someone who would never wake up for me

A dollar for every minute I tried to make a sad man feel less sad

Melissa describes having enough money to buy extravagant things, such as a pony. She also describes using that profit to take care of her family, specifically other womyn. Melissa says she would buy her mom a home, make sure her little sister finishes school, her grandmother calling cards. She’s saying if she was given profit for nurturing men she would take it and invest it in other womyn. 

Melissa also specifies that the womyn she would invest in are in different stages in their life course. My interpretation of this is that the expectation for emotional labor begins early on, as I talked about with the 3 year old arguing with Linda. Not only would Melissa spend the fruits of her labor on things she would enjoy, but give other women a return on the emotional labor they put in as well. 

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

The History of Emotional Labor Pt. 2: Popularization

The term appears to have leapt out of the staid world of academia into the public square of pop culture just within the past few years. In 2015, Jess Zimmerman’s article “Where’s My Cut?” changed the game. Jess writes, 

“If we wanted to charge someone else money for [work] services, it would not be considered absurd. But emotional labor? Offering advice, listening to woes, dispensing care and attention? That’s not supposed to be transactional. People are disturbed by the very notion that someone would charge, or pay, for friendly support. It’s supposed to come free.”

I felt that. 

We are told frequently that women are more intuitive, more empathetic, more innately willing and able to offer succor and advice. How convenient that this cultural construct gives men an excuse to be emotionally lazy. How convenient that it casts feelings-based work as “an internal need, an aspiration, supposedly coming from the depths of our female character.”

This article sparked further discussion, which includes a 49 page summary all about emotional labor. 

Finding out about the sociology and history of emotional labor has really impacted me on a personal level. To see that my labor is not completely invisible was validating the emotional burnout I felt because of men. The privilege they hold to not be expected to support emotionally, and have the social freedom to seek it from those who are expected to provide it. 

While emotional labor has historically been infused in the economy, I also think there is another type of labor market, the emotional economy. In this economy, demand is high, as many are in need of nurture. Words of comfort are distributed like coins of gold, being grabbed out of the hands of womyn by men, leaving us with nothing in exchange.  We are exploited in these unequal distributions of power. 

But womyn have the resources. We are conditioned to build emotional intelligence and tolerance to bear a lot of emotional burden. Individuals have limited supply to provide for many men who demand we give. Our supply has value. And men have the audacity to want us to be their therapist for free. In this economy? Hell no.

References:

Zimmerman, J. (2015, July 13). "Where's My Cut?": On Unpaid Emotional Labor. Retrieved from http://the-toast.net/2015/07/13/emotional-labor/

Emotional Labor: The MetaFilter Thread Condensed

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

The History of Emotional Labor Pt. 1: Capitalism

The term emotional labor was coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in the 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. It was defined in an economic perspective, regarding the need for workers to regulate their emotions to satisfy their customers (and ultimately, their employers). Being engaging and happy and smiley all the time, putting the customer first, in hopes of getting their money in return. 

One article describes it as the following:

Across the labor market, from the medical field to the food industry to a kid in the corner selling lemonade, it became a societal norm to be emotionally expressive in order to connect to others. Sometimes it works and the customer gives something in exchange, sometimes not. Either way, the worker’s input is n additional burden to bear within the interaction.

Now let’s include gender. Womyn in the United States transitioned from solely performing domestic duties to entering the workforce. The jobs we were mostly allowed to have were playing second fiddle to men’s “superior” labor capabilities. We became secretaries, nurses, paralegals- assistants. We offered glasses of water and smiles and kept company until the man with the brain was ready to work. We had double the expectation to provide emotional support, because of both our jobs and our gender identity. On top of all this, we were still paid less. 

Hochschild also suggests that emotional labor can produce emotive dissonance.  This means that “workers who are required to display emotions regardless of whether these are congruent with their feelings may over time develop a sense of self-estrangement or distress” (Wharton, 2009). We are more susceptible to burn out, emotional exhaustion, and a reduced sense of personal accomplishment.

Guy and Newman (2004) observed it as an unspoken requisite. Caring, negotiating, empathizing, smoothing troubled relationships, and working behind the scenes to enable cooperation, are required components of many women’s jobs. Yet, because yet because these tasks are “excluded from job descriptions and performance evaluations, the work is invisible and uncompensated” (Guy and Newman, 2004).

It’s called emotional labor for a reason. It is work. It is a job. One that historically womyn get paid less for, but are expected to do it more. We have not only been exploited and oppressed for our emotional support in our homes, but in our work spaces as well.

References:

Fessler, L., & Fessler, L. (2018, May 24). An extremely clear definition of emotional labor for anyone who still doesn't get it. Retrieved from https://qz.com/work/1286996/an-extremely-clear-definition-of-emotional-labor-from-adam-grants-podcast/

Wharton, A. (2009). The Sociology of Emotional Labor. Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia. doi:10.4135/9781452276199.n88

Guy, M. E., & Newman, M. A. (2004). Womens Jobs, Mens Jobs: Sex Segregation and Emotional Labor. Public Administration Review, 64(3), 289-298. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6210.2004.00373.x

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

How do womyn perceive the emotional labor done by other womyn?

Holmstrom, Burleson, & Jones (2005) wrote a journal article titled Some Consequences for Helpers Who Deliver “Cold Comfort”: Why it’s Worse for Women than Men to be Inept When Providing Emotional Support. Through their experiments they sought to assess whether responses to helpers who used insensitive emotional support vary as a function of the interaction between sex of participant and helper.

Essentially, they wanted to see what men and womyn thought when emotional support was done poorly. 

They found that ”women are likely to evaluate female [low person centered, meaning low emotional support] helpers and their messages more negatively than they evaluate male LPC helpers and their messages”.

Womyn view other womyn who give bad emotional support more negatively than men who give bad emotional support. Womyn are expected to be providers of sensitive, effective emotional support. It’s part of what it means to be feminine, which we are expected to be. It it more bothersome to them than to men when another woman breaches the expectations of her gender role. 

I never thought of this before reading the journal article. It’s possible that part of the reason why womyn continue to take on emotional labor, specifically involving men, is not just because of role expectations. These can be reinforced by being judged as not feminine enough, not womynly enough. And this judgement can come from other womyn. 

I know there’s an existing stereotype that womyn compete with each other for the attention of men. Part of how to receive that attention is through adhering to acceptable standards. This includes providing emotional support to men, enduring the labor that is nurture. It can lead to bringing other womyn down in order to get ahead. Womyn should be thoughtful as to how they perceive womyn who refuse to play into exploiting of their ability to provide emotional support to men.

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

machismo: a strong or exaggerated sense of manliness; an assumptive attitude that virility, courage, strength, and entitlement to dominate are attributes or concomitants of masculinity. a strong or exaggerated sense of power or the right to dominate

According to Dictionary.com anyway. As a Latinx womyn myself, I want to explore this a little bit. To me machismo not only engraves roles on men, but on the other side of the coin carves out expectations for women.

Here is a video of three latinx men discussing machismo and the expectations they learned from the men in their life. 

One individual shared they could never cry, show vulnerability, or weakness. 

One individual said when they were being bulled as a child they had “no other men they could talk to”. That got me thinking- he specifically said he had no men in his life to share his emotional burden with. Did he have womyn? Did he give his emotional burden to another womyn?

The cultural expectation for Latinx men to not reveal their emotions to other men, to appear tough in order to be accepted, to demonstrate their ability to be dominant physically, economically, and sexually, also outlines instruction instructions for womyn. It’s like when you write instructions on a sheet of paper with a heavily ink pen. Meant to be viewed from one side, the ink also bleed to the other side, indenting the words backwards. 

This reflection adds another dimension that is not as focused on. While many say “down with machismo,” we don’t often acknowledge the ink that seeped through on the other side of the page. Women are expected to place men at the top, catering to their every need, from domestic duties to sex to nurturing. The natural needs for sex and emotion are met by women, who often do not see their needs met in return by men because society sees it as weak, and weak would mean inferior to other men and to womyn. 

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

50 Ways People Expect Constant Emotional Labor from Women and Femmes

According to this article. Here’s a couple that stood out to me:

25. We’re expected to constantly ask questions and make observations to keep conversations going, while men often get away with waiting for others to ask questions and giving one-word answers.

This occurs to me often. In person and in text conversations with men, if I don’t ask any questions or make observations, across the board the conversation will end. I have felt pressure to continue to ask open ended questions and be actively engaged, which calls for more investment. Which is exhausting. 

7. If we are in professions that involve interactions with people, those we serve expect us to act as their therapists.

In my internal reflections on the emotional labor inequities in my relationships with men, I have wondered if it’s due to my gender or my profession. Social Workers must communicate, provide active listening, and validation. These skills, both verbal and nonverbal, can apply to any conversation, be it professional or personal. Is it my chosen profession that has constructed me to take on more emotional burden in relationships?

Yeah, it’s a no from me. I have many relationships with men who are also in the social field and/or social services field. And in almost all of those relationships, although we have both learned the same tools to provide emotional support and therapy, I am taking on the emotional labor. It’s like these men want a break from their profession of listening and support giving. Knowingly or unknowingly, they are reinforcing societal gender roles even while having the knowledge of the oppression these roles create.

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

Informal interview group of women

I’ve been thinking about the intersectionality between womyn’s expected role of taking on emotional labor and the expected role of emotional labor in helping professions. My personal attribute as a social worker made me think about whether I am expected to be a therapist 24/7 given my field of choice. If that’s so, I kinda feel like it’s an extra punishment. Like, “you chose to do this, so why are you complaining about it? If you decided to listen to people’s trauma all day, shouldn’t you be used to it?

I hung out with two friends of mine, both womyn in the social work field. I asked them their opinion about the exploitation of womyn by men for emotional nurturing. They experienced it as well. Is part of our problem because of our professional choice?

“I think it doesn’t help,” Friend #1 said. “It’s a Catch-22. Because of the cultural and societal expectations, we are already kinda pushed into being more primed and more susceptible and wanting to pursue more female-dominated professions.”

Friend #2 didn’t 100% agree. She said she felt she wanted to listen to individuals in her personal life, however “if you’re telling me your thought process, and how it goes back to your childhood, I’m not here for that. It’s unfair that they expect that.”

Friend #1 agreed that it’s not fair and it’s important to have boundaries. She also noted that sometimes we will do that because we are trained, willing, and able. 

I then brought up how willing should be emphasized. Just because I’m trained in a something doesn’t mean I should be expected to do that thing all the time. I don’t go to men who are bankers, for example, and ask them all the time about banking and budgeting and money. 

Friend #2 said “it always goes to a womyn thing”. It doesn’t matter if we were a banker, a lawyer, a artist, whatever. 

Friend #1 said, “I agree that’s why there’s a Catch-22 though”. 

Because we are in this female-dominated field that employs emotional support as a requisite we have an added dimension of establishing boundaries in are personal life so people know we are not their personal therapists. It’s an additional outcome that we as womyn in social work need to be aware of, for our own self-care.

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

I got a bit stuck in this project. I feel like I’m just saying the same thing over and over again. After talking with my professor (shoutout to Elwin), I looked into poetry that speaks to this issue. It turned out that I already had this one saved.

Investing in the right people to me means giving to those who give back. There are so many people in the world (arguably everyone) that needs comfort, nurturing, emotional support. Far too many for me, one person, to provide for. I myself need the same, and deserve the same. I deserve what I give to others. Being more selective as to whom receives the emotional support I provide does not make me less of a womyn. It does not make me less of a social worker. It is resisting the exploitation of power. 

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

Just a quick update on my not so experimental experiment

Remember Exhibit A? Well I decided to cut him off. Partly to see what the reaction would be for this portfolio, but mostly because I no longer wish to be a receptacle for him to pour his emotional burden into.

I deleted all his messages, erasing every emotional burden placed upon me. I deleted his number and removed him from social media, disconnecting so I can’t give him free therapy even if I wanted to.

And while Exhibit A here is example #1, he is not the first nor the only person to have taken advantage of my kindness for his emotional needs. As I scrolled through my contacts and social media platforms, I saw many individuals with whom I have felt that my emotional labor was not reciprocated. A lot of them men. I disconnected their number and social media accounts from mine as well.

I’m not sure if anyone will react directly to me, but also I no longer choose to hold the capacity to care. I really don’t have anything left in me to care. This portfolio project has made me tired of being the Night to his Day, in any relationship. 

Like I mentioned before, Exhibit A and the others I removed from my life does not mean across the board, men don’t change. I have had many of my relationships with men change for the better after I shared with them the emotional burden I was carrying. These relationships are now more balanced, with equal distribution of emotional burden and providing emotional support. 

It’s not that I think Exhibits A through Infinity are bad men. I don’t carry resentment in my heart for the thankless labor I did for them either. If and when I run into them I’m not going to be confrontational, nor purposely avoiding them. This article said it best: 

Would the my other relationships have responded in the same way if I highlighted this issue to them in person, meaning I would experience further invalidation and denial? Or would they acknowledge the burden imposed on me and their unwillingness or inability to take on some of the emotional support?

Maybe. But again I don’t really care. I’m tired of having to continue to do the educating: in this class, in my work, in my life. Right now I feel that engaging in this critical discourse would be taking on additional emotional labor on my part, gambling on men to recognize what I’m saying and change. It’s not something I’m willing to do right now.

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

[totheboyswhomademetheirtherapist]

Linda part 2: Enter Steve Harvey

That was a weird title, right? Well this video was weird. Steve Harvey’s talk show has a segment called Ask Steve where his studio audience asks his opinion on things. One member has a cleaning service, and asked him what to do about finding personal sexual items in a customer’s home. Watch the question and his response here:

Steve starts joking about different sexual items, one of which being baby oil. He gives advice on how to hold and use the baby oil without spilling it. He then proceeds to demonstrate clapping his with the baby oil, and says “Listen, see that right there? Listen! Listen Linda, listen! Linda listen!” referring to the youtube video I wrote about earlier.

To me, it seemed like Steve was covertly sharing the male dominance the 3 year old boy had over the mother when she was trying to express her emotions. He cut her off, asking her to listen to him and his needs instead. In Steve’s context, he added a sexual dimension to the dominance, making it seem like he was asking “Linda” to listen to his sexual needs while interrupting hers sharing hers.

At the end of the video, Steve says “That little boy is just imitating his father. His father can’t get a word in edgewise. He watched his daddy, so now his mama is telling him what to do and now he’s, ‘Listen, Linda, listen!’”. This gets a laugh from the studio audience. 

Steve appears to uphold the stereotype that womyn talk too much, and that men do not listen to it. He also shares an assumption that women do not let men talk, therefore they have to interrupt in order to get a word in. Steve also says that the 3 year old boy learned how to interrupt because he had to, in order to be heard. That’s why the boy learned to cut a woman’s sentence off midway.

This perspective adds a unique potential reasoning for why men can seek emotional support from womyn. Maybe other stereotypes, such as men have to interject in order to be heard, sustains the behavior that invokes dominance over womyn in all forms, including emotional labor. If men believe that they need to compel dominance, they do so by reinforcing gender roles. Men need to talk and be heard, and Lindas need to listen and provide comfort.