We Love in a Society

Hi, Sam.

Hi, Hannah. How are you doing today?

I'm okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks to you. I'm good.

How are you?

Well, that's me also,
you might be a little stressed.

No. You're good.

Okay, You know, I was not expecting us
to record a podcast today.

Or at least not about this topic,
which we’ll reveal in a second.

Yeah,
because I didn't fully pitch it to you.

I said something in passing
and then got confused as to

why you weren't like, “That's an amazing
idea, let's do it immediately.”

But then once you explained it to me,
I was like, “That's an amazing idea.

Let's do it immediately.”

Yeah.

And so today we're going to be talking
about emotional labor.

We're going

yeah, we're gonna be talking about
emotional labor and linguistic creep.

Which you..

so did you study this stuff in college?

I would imagine you did.

I read the book
that this isn't a book episode.

Okay?

Because the bigger conversation
is not going to be about the book.

But I did read the book in question
in college.

Shout out to Laura Hirschfield,
my thesis advisor

who loved this book
and probably continues to love it.

I don't know.

We're going to talk today

about the phrase that was coined
in this book, emotional labor,

and how the meaning of this phrase
has grown and evolved over time.

And what are our thoughts on that
evolution?

Is it a good thing?
Is it a bad thing? How is it gendered?

And what can we learn,
I guess, from each of the concepts

that the phrase
emotional labor encapsulates and the fact

that emotional labor has grown in, in this
direction in terms of its meaning, Yay.

Yeah. Okay.

I'm going to start by telling you
about “The Managed Heart:

Commercialization of Human Feeling”
by Arlie Hochschild.

this is a book
that came out in the early 80s.

And it was ethnography
of three different groups.

Flight attendants, servers
and bill collectors.

So these are people,
mostly women with a profession

that means that
as part of their livelihood,

they need to cause

other people to feel a certain way.

They need to interface with clients
or customers and get them to feel

a certain way, usually by projecting
a certain emotion within themselves.

And the book talks
about how this emotional labor

that these workers perform is, gendered.

This is something that we most
generally expect

out of women in the workplace,
and that jobs that necessitate

this emotional labor
tend to mostly employ women.

Hochschild identified
three strategies that

that workers use
when they're performing emotional labor.

And these are cognitive,
bodily and expressive strategies.

So cognitive strategies involve

invoking ideas and images
inside your own head

that bring the sort of emotions
that you want to perform.

So like go to your happy place,
think happy thoughts

and in doing so,
you will be able to project

an image of serenity that will cause
your customer or stakeholder to be calm.

Bodily would be like the kinds
of emotional regulation

strategies that you and
I have been talking about a lot lately.

You know, deep breaths,
having something tactile available to you,

just anything
that, like, calms your body down.

Because when you can calm your body down,
your emotions will follow suit.

And expressive, which is like,
I don't know if you ever seen clips

of people like in workshops,
like biting a pencil to cause a smile

or like standing in a circle and going,
ha ha ha ha ha.

Like if you take on the
the physical expression of the emotion

that you're trying to project, that
it will bring up that emotion within you.

I wanted to ask
because you have a job where you are

interfacing with very stressed out people
a lot of the time.

Well, for those
who are just tuning in now, which

I mean, at this point we got to have
like millions of followers already.

So I'm sure you already know
but by this point,

if you don't already know,
I am a pharmacist and I work in retail,

so I get to be both the person who,

You're seeing people sometimes at their
most vulnerable times in their life.

And also then it being retail,
you are in a customer-employee

interaction, which itself brings a similar
but slightly different dynamic.

So you're getting an intersection
of two arguably

highly emotionally labor intensive.

Jobs.

And like I guess the thing
that is feeling salient to me right now

is that like being a retail pharmacist
you're having to communicate something

to people that is bad news for them
and you can't do anything about it.

Yeah, usually insurance.

Yeah.

As I was like
going through these strategies

I mean, do you use cognitive, expressive,

or bodily strategies when you are doing
emotional labor on the job?

You know, I don't really think about it

in that way, but I guess
giving words and language to it,

it maybe will start to make me think
about the ways that I may be doing that.

I think you have anyone working in

retail can tell you about their customer
service voice.

Yep. Mine was about an octave
higher than my normal speaking voice.

It's higher.

There's typically you end it in more of a
question mark, question mark,

or a suggestion rather than a command or,
declarative statement.

so I guess that would be kind of
like the expressive in a way.

Yeah, I think so Cognitively

I you mentioned happy place
and I don't think about that prior to,

but I will tell you that something I do
notice

is how much tension and stress

that I hold in my body,
both before and after work.

That it's taken me years to realize

how much of an impact it has on me
and how like tired I am.

So tell me about how you dealt
with that fatigue on the job

and in transitioning back
to your personal life

when you first started versus
how you handle it now?

Like what skills
have you developed over these years

to perform and manage the emotional labor?

So when I first started,
and especially within the first month

of starting to work,
as anyone who gets a college degree

and then goes on to work in
that field can tell you

there's so much that you don't learn
until you're actually on the job.

So there was that bit of it
going on where not only and most of

it has to do
with the logistical components,

not so much
the medicine or health components

like you learn all that in school,
but I mean, we learn kind

of how insurance works,
but it's not really until you see it

and how it affects people's day to day
that you really begin to understand, okay,

this is like this is how our American
health care system works.

You get expensive medications
that are prescribed that the doctors

don't know are expensive
and they send it in and it's not covered.

So then you send a fax
which it's incredible that in the year

2026 that fax is still the primary method

of communication between doctor's office
and pharmacies and insurance companies.

But alas, faxes are the primary source
of communication

between doctor's offices, insurance
companies and pharmacies.

And so obviously, half the time,

either
the doctors don't receive the fax or..

We're talking about things
where people get a medication

that they should maybe start
taking that day, ideally.

And if it's not something
that's going to be covered

right away by their insurance
and the doctor's got to complete

more paperwork, it's going to be
at least a five day turnaround.

Oh my God, that sucks. At least.

And honestly, it's
more likely to be a week or more.

And so, you know,
I'm learning all this stuff on the job

in my first month of working
and obviously then having to learn

how am I going to communicate this
to someone and also realize that, like,

I have to do it in a way
that is somewhat expedient

because right behind them is someone else
who's waiting on their medication

and who has questions about it,
and who I have to be able to shift and,

you know, I can't linger on
any one person for too long.

So I think part of what I've learned over

these past five years is how to,

number one, just having the knowledge
of how these things work to be able

to communicate them quickly, efficiently,
while also giving enough time

with any single person for them to be able

to kind of address their concerns
as best as I can.

Basically, just having the language
like already worked out

because I've said it hundreds
or thousands of times.

Yeah. Okay. So like scripting.

Yes. scripting
I think would be very appropriate for me.

Like I have things

that I'm sure I don't even realize
that I'm saying over and over again,

but I'm sure if, if you were a little fly
on the wall in the pharmacy as I work,

you would hear things that I say just

over and over again
that are just, yeah, a cognitive shorthand

for communicating information
in a as caring a way as possible.

I think anyone who works in health care
or just in Care work.

Care, any kind of care work
where you're trying to assist

someone like even as a lawyer
you're going to

have this tug between becoming
emotionally invested

in the people you're caring for
and the weight

that that emotional investment

can place on your daily life.

In 1983,

Hochschild argued that service workers

who have to perform emotional labor
as part of their jobs

become estranged from their own feelings
when they're in the workplace.

Do you think that's true?

Do you think that there's

like kind of a dissociation happening
where you're separating yourself

from your own feelings
and just getting through the interaction?

Yeah, I for me personally
yeah I feel that.

And I think that's really what drains me
the most is, is I'm a people pleaser. So..

Oh yeah.

I can put my own current comfort

on pause to make someone else feel better
without even realizing that I'm doing it.

Yeah.

And so after doing that for 9 or 12 hours

I then am exhausted, spent,

ready to go home, lay down,
probably scroll through my phone

for a little bit, go to sleep So I guess
that's kind of my method of coping, which,

I think at this point
I would say I would consider it healthy.

I think I've come to a healthy work life
balance with my job.

Well, I think it also helps
that you're able to work part time. Yes.

I think if you were
if you were doing this full time,

it would be a lot more taxing.

Yes. And I have done

the full time and I will say that

at least for me,
I don't know that I could work

40 hours a week And, do it for,

you know, the rest of my working career.

It would take too much of a toll on me,
I wouldn't have enough time to recuperate

from the stress that even now, as a more
experienced pharmacist, I still feel.

Yeah. Although it's less intense.

Oh, yeah. Definitely less intense.

I think if I were as probably many

of the people that Hochschild
studied in this ethnography,

they probably didn't
really have the option

of whether they wanted to work
part time or not.

They probably were working full time,
and that was just to make ends meet.

I don't know,
I don't know what it was like to be

a flight attendant
in the late 70s and early 80s.

Yeah.

Do you think that the fact that you are

a man and a white cis masculine

presenting man at that affects

how easy or difficult
it is for you to perform emotional labor?

By which I mean how not
how easy or difficult it comes to you,

but how easy or difficult it is
for you to get the emotional response

out of the person that you're talking to,
that you want because of that authority,

that these immutable attributes about you
lend you?

Most definitely.

I generally, when I'm working,
just wear scrubs

like I don't even wear a white coat.

So that's part of the reason
that people are sometimes surprised

that I'm a pharmacist, because I'm

not usually presenting as a pharmacist
just in attire.

Yeah,
because you're just allergic to hierarchy.

Yeah, that and I just the, the white coat
just adds an extra layer

of, of heat that I don't often
like when I'm moving around.

Yeah.

It's definitely more comfortable
just to wear scrubs, but anyways.

Scrubs have always looked
incredibly comfortable to me.

Yeah, they definitely are.

But my point there is that, or
the reason I bring that up is because if,

say, a older female technician

were to come over, who in attire really
looks exactly like me,

I think that in their case,
they would probably have

to put on more of an air of authority.

To be able to convey the same information

and have the same messages,
being understood.

Because of how they appear.

So in regards..

Because the way that they appear,
which is to say as a woman

and perhaps as a person of color,
that the customer doesn't,

assign as much automatic authority
to the facts that they're conveying.

Right.

So they have to like compensate..

And we're talking generally here.

Not in every case, of course, but but yes,
I think that if I think what you're

trying to get at is that emotional labor
requires more effort

the more you deviate from the white male
cis like..

Oh, I don't think
I'm trying to get at anything.

I, I.. The point that I'm, I'm hearing.

Yeah, I guess maybe not what you're trying
to say. I'm trying to ask questions.

Yeah. Yeah.

I don’t have an agenda.

I've never been a feminist in my life.

Well, I'll be the feminist for you.

I work at a large bureaucratic nonprofit
where I handle communications

for a lot of different departments,
and I have to communicate.

“No, our policy is that we need
at least five days notice.”

“No, we can't send out your event to that
big of an audience.

We are sending out
too many other communications

for too many other departments.

Here is what I can do for you instead.”
And what I've what I've noticed

talking to my colleagues
who are men and in particular,

I talked to a colleague who is a trans
woman who transitioned on the job

and like she was able to tell me how

this was very validating
this conversation with her, how much like

after she started presenting as a woman
and being perceived as a woman,

how distrustful people became
and how much they did not respect her

no, pushed back against her,
appealed to her boss.

And that was very validating because I was
like, “I struggle with this so much.

I have to, like, borrow
my boss's authority so much.

Is it something I'm doing?”
And some of the tactics that I've used

to address this have been sometimes

I will just say very authoritatively, “No,
I can't do that for you.

Our policy is x, y, z.” Other times

I pick up the phone
and I find that like talking to somebody

in real time with your tone of voice
helps a lot.

And I get a little informal,
and I get a little friendly.

And I say, you know,

I convey in my tone and the words
that I use, “I'm on your side.

I wish I could do this for you,
but unfortunately I can't.

Here's what I can do instead.

I know it sucks.

How's this work for ya?” or or it's just
genuine information gathering.

“What what outcome
are you trying to make happen?”

And then I listen to what they have to say
and propose a solution based on that.

But yeah, I'm definitely, like, mediating

the fact that my gender lends me
a lack of authority.

Yeah. By endearing myself.

Yeah. To the people on the job.

And I'm just curious to what degree
you observed that among your colleagues,

to what degree you do that yourself,
and if your gender affects, like,

what kind of tactics are effective
for getting the emotional reaction

out of your customer that you want?

Yeah, it's
hard for me to to answer that question

because as you just said, I pre-load

any negative news
with a, at the end of it,

“I can't do this for you,
but I can do this.”

Whereas with some of my other colleagues,

they may not know
exactly what they can do.

They just know that
we can't do the one thing.

So because part of this is just because
I'm have more experience

and also as a pharmacist,
maybe know broader scope of the situation,

I can offer more of what can be done,
whereas they just know what can't be done.

And therefore there's a difference there

in how effective
my communication might be versus theirs.

So it's hard for me

to answer that question
and how gender comes into play with that.

Right.

I was very interested to hear stuff
about your personal experience

with emotional labor.

But yeah, let's get into the
linguistic creep part of the conversation.

What is linguistic creep?

Linguistic creep
is when the meaning of a word or phrase

slowly changes over time,
usually becoming broader and broader.

So an example of this.

If you are a very online person

who's like kind of left leaning,
you probably are familiar

with how gaslighting has come to mean
so much more than what it initially meant,

like so much so that it is one of my go to
like first examples of linguistic creep.

Originally stemmed from this classic movie
where this abusive husband

messed with the gaslights in the home,
causing the lights to constantly flicker.

And when his wife told him so,
he said, you're you're seeing things.

And it referred to an abuse tactic
where the abuser straight up denied

objective reality in order to make the

their partner question

their own perception of reality
and start to think that they can't

trust The evidence in front of their eyes
and into their ears.

Typical patriarchy stuff.

Yeah. Typical abuser. Toxic masculinity.

Toxic masculinity is another
I feel like phrase

that has been subject to linguistic creep.

But yeah.

So now people use the word gaslighting
to refer to somebody saying

something that kind of invalidates
their feelings, right?

Whereas like originally you would only
call something gaslighting, it's an abuser

who is straight up
denying objective reality in order to make

you think that you're insane and yeah,
toxic masculinity.

Let's go with that.
That's another example.

Toxic masculinity meant

a form of masculinity defined by violence
or the potential for violence.

Right?

And now it means any masculinity
that maybe we find distasteful.

Any form of masculinity
that, like, is characterized

by attributes that are also bad
but not violence, right?

Would you
in the classic definition of toxic

masculinity, would you consider

the classic definition of gaslighting
as classic toxic masculinity?

No. Okay. No, I wouldn't..

I do think that gaslighting
is a form of violence.

But when I think of toxic masculinity,
based on its initial definition,

I'm thinking “I
derive my sense of my own manhood

from the fact that I could punch you out,
that I could beat somebody

up.” Not necessarily a woman,
just another person that I wield

the potential for violence
and that I am willing to do violence.

I think of gaslighting as an abusive

and manipulative tactic that abusers use.

So like it's related.

Another example,
the euphemism treadmill is

a phenomenon by which a clinical
or just definitional word

that is not really negative
in the first place becomes a slur.

So we come up with a different euphemism.

So the example is the R-word that we use

to talk about people
with, cognitive disabilities.

That was like just a diagnosis.

And then it became a slur.

And then the preferred term became slow.

And then that became an insult,
and then the preferred term became

developmentally disabled.
And then that became an insult.

And the euphemism treadmill
will just keep on flowing

as long as the stigma remains
on this group of people.

When I talk about linguistic creep
in the context of emotional labor,

I'm thinking of a term that referred

to a specific thing and then became
broader and broader and broader.

Intersectionality
initially referred to the intersection

of blackness and womanhood in U.S.

culture.

I think actually, I'm
not sure about the US part,

but the the intersection of blackness
and womanhood,

how those two specific identities
intersected

to create a unique experience

of a cultural hierarchy
that includes racism and sexism.

Yeah, but now people will kind of use it
to talk about “How does my disability

intersect with my gender?” or “How

does my sexual orientation intersect

with my religion?”

It's getting at something
that the original term

was coined to get at,
but it's broadening it.

Yeah.

And in that case,
I think that's a great example

because it also kind of plagiarize
is the work of black feminists,

which is something that happens a lot
on the internet and off the internet.

Yeah.

Which I think is like a big part of the
conversation about linguistic creep.

And in that regard, I have a question
for you about linguistic creep.

In terms of the word woke.

Oh yeah. That's a great one.

That, that one kind of creeped off
in two different directions.

Yeah. Yeah. What's the question.

Well I mean it just is it
an example of linguistic creep?

Totally, I think so, because I
yeah, I was thinking that it was too.

And it's also interesting how it, like you
said, in two different directions

in the sense that people on the left began
using it to mean,

like in the original sense.

And please correct me
if you know more than I do,

but it's my understanding
that the original sense of the word woke

was referring to in the black community

for people to stay somewhat hyper
aware of their surroundings

and how their themselves being black,

could interact with their environment
to cause

certain negative social outcomes.

Maybe..

Yeah, like getting stopped by the cops
or whatever? Right.

I think it was like “stay woke”
was it came from a song.

I think it was Stay Woke,
as in, be aware of what you do

and how much risk that you are under based
on the way that you present to the world

because of your race, but also stay woke,

as in be aware of the conditions

that underlie that material reality

and the fact that they are not
because you did something wrong.

Stay woke to the to the history of racism
and the way that it surrounds us.

In order to avoid internalizing
the idea that this negative treatment

is because of your own inferiority. Right.

The other example that I, I had thought of

but then forgot about was the male gaze.

Now it talks about
males who are gay right.

I feel like that's the only

time I hear that nowadays is
whenever someone's like, “Oh yes.

The male gays.” No.

Like the male gaze
referred to film making.

It was, it was a,
it was a term only about filmmaking

and about how films are shot in such a way
as to, like, cater to what the filmmaker

imagines that the heterosexual male
would like to see.

So much of that going on an anime.

Oh, yeah. Unfortunately. But yeah.

But then people talk about the male gaze

as like a sense that women have,

even when we're alone of what
we would look like, imagined observer.

And now people have started
saying the female gaze,

which I don't even know what that's
supposed to mean, because

As you can hear from my tone, like,
I feel like a lot of the time

when this linguistic creep happens,
it's completely natural.

And I completely understand

not just why it happens, but the efficacy
of broadening these definitions.

And then other times
it makes me roll my eyes.

And I think in losing the original
definition, we are like moving toward

such a vague definition of this term
that it doesn't mean anything

and it's not useful anymore. Right.

Like woke. Yeah.

And it just becomes like something
that you lob at people

as a cultural identifier or to be like,
“I think that you're bad.” Yeah.

And I think in some sense
you could talk about how woke was

used on the right as more
and more of an insult and thus became

less of a legitimate way
of orienting oneself.

As in the world as compared
to what it originally the, the,

the situations in communities
in which it was used originally.

Critical race theory,
which referred to like a subset of law.

It was a study within
the academic field of law

to understand how racial

inequities affected law.

And now there's
a whole federal moral panic

about critical race theory
that stigmatizes as unpatriotic,

un-American, and necessary to censor

any speech that acknowledges
the reality that racial inequity

shaped American history
that is so much broader.

Neither.

I think definition is inherently
objectionable.

Yeah.

But it's so much broader.

And in broadening that definition,
I think that the right wing

has been able to kick up a moral panic
about insufficient patriotism.

And, you know, fragile white feelings.

So I've heard people use emotional labor
to refer to everything

from talking to a friend
when they're sad, to keeping track

of what groceries
you're running out of in the house,

and whether we need to pick up
more toilet paper and which kid has soccer

practice tonight. Right.

So specifically in regards
to like, a household

where two adults
are coordinating with each other.

Usually. Yeah, I think..

I mean, you wouldn't, would I guess
my question here would be you wouldn't

I wouldn't think you would hear
emotional labor in like for someone

who lives on their own being like, “Oh,
I gotta go get groceries today.

Gotta go do some emotional labor
for myself.” That's not a situation

where I would feel
I have heard emotional labor used.

I'm just trying to clarify,
emotional labor still retains

the original definition’s sense of a..

An imbalance between the genders.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah,
that's what I was about to get at. Yeah.

That, like, because the original
definition of emotional labor was from a,

you know,

a sociology book, but like a gender theory
book, right?

Like a sociology of gender book.

And it was about this feminized labor.

Labor that was, like, most strongly
associated with women that like,

people started to think more broadly
about what Arlie Hochschild

referred to as emotional work,
like the emotional work that you do

in your personal life,

the degree to which women are expected
to soothe men's feelings.

The degree to which women are willing to

effortfully build community
and relationships with each other,

that men aren't so that we are
well supported and men aren't.

And so that when men and women
are in relation to each other, men

rely emotionally
much more on women than vice versa.

This is the commentary
that I'm summarizing, right?

I'm not necessarily signing off on it.

And then I think from there it expanded
to like the division of household labor.

What in sociology,
we would call invisible labor,

the labor that goes into keeping a home
running and functional.

And that includes doing the dishes,
planning the meals,

making sure that all the supplies
are stocked, making medical appointments,

keeping track of extracurriculars,
and especially people talk about this

not just in terms of the literal tasks,
but in terms of the mental work,

that there's a dynamic that is commented
upon a great deal where husbands say, “I,

I want to help,
just tell me what to do,” and wives say,

“But then that leaves to me
the task of keeping

track of everything that needs to be done
and subsequently allocating it.

And I think all of these things
are important to comment upon.

And we've
I think we've seen like improvement

in people's awareness of them
and willingness to discuss them.

Right. Like you hear about couples
using that card game.

Fair Play
to like divvy up the household tasks.

And then you hear sillier sounding things
about, like, you know, your friend,

your friend texts you and says, “My
boyfriend dumped me and I'm sad.

Can we can we watch a movie
and eat ice cream?” And you say, “Hi.

I'm at emotional capacity
today.” You know.

Did you see that post?

I've seen like multiple examples of posts
like this but..

Can i pull it up? Sure. Okay.

Okay, so this is a 2019

Twitter thread that everybody made fun of
for a week.

And it suggested that if a friend reaches
out and asks for emotional support,

that you should reply saying, “Hey, I'm
so glad you reached out.

I'm actually at capacity/helping
someone else who's in crisis/dealing

with some personal stuff right now,

and I don't think I could hold
appropriate space for you.

Could we connect [later date or

time] instead/Do you have someone else
you could reach out to?”

And did you hear actually
how like, unintentionally,

my voice went up into the customer
service register when I read that.

Yeah. It almost.

It sounds kind of transactional.

Yes. Like,
it sounds like an out of office message.

Yeah.

And it's turning something
as quote unquote simple

as just saying,
“Hey, I'm not available right now.

Can we talk later?” into trying to tread

lightly around a friend's feelings.

And I think, like, I don't see how that
could have not happened by bringing in a

concept from the workspace
into our personal lives.

And maybe people find that
a little bit comforting, you know,

like if I can, if I can get things
to be structured and organized

and transactional and neat and clean,
the way they, the way that I'm able

to do with them at work
in my personal relationships,

then I could, you know, pencil
in my friend's breakup for, for Friday.

And it's not that,
that's a bad thing to do.

I hung out with a friend last night
who went through a breakup a week ago.

Last night was the soonest
I was available to hang out,

but I think that
if I had responded to them by

saying, “Hi, I'm at capacity right
now.” It's the tone.

Yeah.

You know.

It's the tone and the formality. Yeah.

That people find, so makeable
when we apply it

to our intimate relationships
and the, the inherently messy give

and take of emotional support
that I think anyone

with a modicum of mental health expertise
or even common sense will tell you that,

like keeping score of that kind of shit
will not work out well for anybody.

Right?

Like you hugged me
when I was anxious last week three times.

And so if I have four
anxiety attacks this week then

we are uneven and we must, right
the ledger.

That's not how relationships work. Right.

And yet there is this very real

and very gendered imbalance

where women are doing

more of the emotional work

of supporting men through their feelings
than is being reciprocated,

that men are turning more to women
than they are two other men.

Like I think that's a lot of what

people are talking about when they talk
about the male loneliness epidemic.

A lot of what you're talking about is,
you know, men

don't have friends as often,
and if they do,

they don't confide in their friends
as often.

They they turn their softness
only toward their romantic partner because

it's not masculine to be vulnerable.

And that does create undue burdens
for women en masse.

Right.

It's not like an individual problem.

It's like a it's like a systemic problem.

So yeah, how do you square
those two conflicting things, the fact

that, like, it's very silly to apply this
professionalized lens of emotional labor

to these intimate relationships
and the fact that there is a gender

balance here of emotional work
in our intimate relationships.

Yeah.

And so I think maybe

we've come to the point of like,
so what does this all mean?

What is this?

What does this tell us
about loving each other better..

Awwww. In a society.

Yeah.

What do you think?

I think I want you to go first, because
I'm still trying to figure out exactly..

Not fair.

Because I feel like I just posed
a question, and I don't have the answer.

Yeah. Well, and I dont think..

I don't think the point with
this is to have an answer,

but more so to say,
Why did we talk about this?

Yeah.

What have we learned today, like I think
I don't know, maybe I will go first.

okay.

So when I think of the term
emotional labor and I don't have

the more academic history with it
that you do.

Well now you do.

Yeah.

I’m beginning to
I would say, but I'm still..

that's
still all swirling around in my brain.

But just generally
when if I hear the word emotional labor,

I'm thinking of it as something
that is maybe unique..

not unique, but something
that is a product of a capitalist society.

Because especially the labor part,

because it's like the way
that you provide value

or the way that you're expected
to return value to society

is via your emotions.

And I think that it follows
in a capitalist society

that that would be something
that would inevitably develop.

That when you have this Marxist

superstructure of capitalism
that is kind of at the foundation

of society, that then emotions
are themselves going to become labor.

Yeah.

And I think what you just said dovetails
with Hochschild’s argument in the book,

actually,
she talks about like emotional alienation

that happens when you have to
do emotional labor in the workspace,

that when you are at work,
you are alienated from your emotions.

And how does that affect
your mental health?

Like that's a very Marxist..

Oh yeah alienation
from the product of your labor.

In the sense that the..

In this case the product of your labor
is feelings! Yes.

You're having to alienate yourself

from your feelings
in order to provide for someone else.

And that's I think so different from like

when I'm providing emotional support
for a friend.

And I hope that when my loved ones
are providing emotional support to me,

like I'm thinking of last night
talking to my friend

who recently went through the breakup,
they were saying, “Oh,

it was so helpful to
to share this with you and get it off

my chest.” And I was like,
you know, “No problem, dude.

I was so excited
for you to spill this tea.

I was so invested.
It was like my favorite soap opera.

I hope that's okay with you.” You know,
all I was doing was organically reacting.

Yeah.

Getting outraged on their behalf,
empathizing with them,

telling them the good things about them
that I want them to know.

None of that is effortful to me.

It is the opposite of alienating myself
from my emotions.

It is being in touch with my emotions
and being in the moment

and connected with my friend.

And and there could be nothing more,
you know, nourishing..

Yeah. ..than that.

It is the opposite of draining.

I'm thinking also of this one neat

hack that you and I found recently of,

I'm joking because it's like a very common
strategy, but co regulation.

Right.

We realized that we were talking
we were trying to talk through my anxiety.

And what we needed
was to calm my body down.

And the strategy that we found for
that is something

that I hope is actually just straight up
pleasant for you to do.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think so, maybe I think the reason
that we're talking about this today,

or maybe the larger point
that people should take away from this,

is that is, first of all, to understand
kind of the origins of emotional labor

and where it came from..

And just to be mindful of that.

To be mindful of it and to..

Because I think
when we divorce feminist concepts

from anti-capitalist critiques,
we're losing something pretty meaningful.

And that I would even go so far as to say

that is where feminism has often
gone wrong in the past 20 or so years.

Is divorcing feminist concepts from
anti-capitalist and anti-racist critiques.

Yeah.

People don't connect to feminist concepts
when you divorce them

from those things
that they're rooted in.. Right.

Because it's only part of the story.

Right.

for someone listening

to this going forward, I think not that
we need to police our language,

but that we should be mindful of the ways
we talk about

our specifically emotional labor
with our loved ones.

And it's important that we distinguish
at least at this point in history,

the inevitable emotional labor
that some jobs

require from the emotional..

I wouldn't call it labor,
but the emotional..

Hochschild calls it emotional work.

Emotional work in our personal lives,
in our personal lives.

So, yeah, so I think, at least for me,
that's probably going

to be my biggest takeaway.

And what I would probably say is
I would urge others

to take away
if they connect with that point.

But what about you?

I think my biggest takeaway
is like being mindful of buzzwords.

Because I think a lot of the time this is

something that I've done, and I
definitely hear other people do it too.

You can
you can lean on buzzwords that have like

taken on a kind of more vague
meaning through overuse as a way

to avoid having to get really specific
about what you're talking about.

And that is not an effective
communication technique.

It's maybe an effective sounding
kind of smart technique,

but it's not an effective
communication technique.

And I think that that is really different
from language policing.

I think language policing is
can be a moral purity thing.

“I'm not going to try to listen
to the overarching point you made, because

you use the wrong word in making it,”
whereas being mindful of how

we use terms that have become buzzwords

and speaking carefully and checking in
with who we're speaking with,

to make sure that our points
are getting across clearly is a good way

to to be heard and to connect,

which is different, I think, from finding
just the right language, finding

just the right, I should say, terminology
in order to avoid offending.

And I think that if you are having trouble
with this in your life

and you want to

maybe a quick piece of advice
because I think I also have trouble

with this, I feel that sometimes

my vocabulary immediately
that comes to mind is too limited.

I think the best thing you can do
is just read more.

Yeah.

Read from a variety of authors, read
from a variety of different perspectives,

and listen
and think about the words that they use.

And I think, as you were just saying,
it's not about finding the right word.

It's about finding what connects with
who you're speaking to to make sure that

because you're never going to understand
exactly what is in someone else's head.

But the whole point of language
is to try to bridge that gap.

And that's what makes buzzwords dangerous.

They become so vague.

And because you don't know
what's in somebody's head, they become

a shortcut to avoid getting

to whatever the specific thing is
that you're actually trying to get at.

it pains me when I have interactions
like the one that I had this morning

where you were making your post
about our ParaCliffHangers fundraiser,

and you were kind of hung up on

whether to say, people with disabilities
or disabled people.

And I was kind of thinking like, “Oh
my God, that's so beside the point.

You know, the..

Who cares which term you use?

The point is that you're raising money

for this programing that is so beneficial,
right, to disabled people

and I think that anybody
who would fault you for using the wrong

terminology is really missing
the forest for the trees.

And like it is also true that

the words that we use are meaningful
and tell a story and reflect our values.

And it is true
that, that terminology can be really load

bearing and can signal like identity

markers and, and can be a substitute
for actually thinking deeply

engaging in good faith
and wrestling with difficult ideas.

And so I think that's, that's something
that I've learned from this conversation

today is like to interrogate
my relationship with these buzzwords.

And when I use one, think like, “Why
am I using it right now?

What do I mean by it?”

And then say that instead.

Yeah.

Well I am looking forward to of course
by the time this episode comes out,

I think it will actually be the day before
Owl Night.

So I'm looking forward to
as the first people,

as the first of our millions
of listeners, begin to

hear these

words, I'm looking forward to soon
be climbing for 12 hours.

I can't wait to climb for 12 hours.

We're going to suffer so much,
and we're gonna, we’re gonna perform

that emotional work
that will strengthen our relationship.

I love you.

I love you too. Bye bye. Bye bye.