Share the wealth: emotional labor and the essential confidant

Last week, I started my third year of law school, and the shock of returning to academia for the semester felt like a tempestuous sea on which I was a small rowboat. This particular week was more chaotic that those in the past, however, because my partner Benjamin was also beginning school. We were both lost on the tides of schedule upheaval with no sheltering port in sight.

Ben hasn’t been in school for many years, so this is a particularly difficult transition for him. “Ben’s transition is much more difficult than mine,” I told myself. This is my third year and I should be OK: he is the one that needs the extra support. I tried to give him that 'extra support,' but I struggled because of time obligations and my own state of emotional turmoil. Suddenly, I felt punishingly guilty.

Ben wasn’t wounded by this ‘egregious’ lack of support on my end – he just told me about school, and we talked things through, trying to sort his new priorities as best we could with little time. When I complained about my own transition, he listened patiently, and the listening didn’t seem to disturb him either. Nonetheless, I berated myself for not listening more and for not talking less.

By Wednesday, I was exhausted by my guilt. I mentioned the feelings to my carpool-confidant, Lily. Lily is a brilliant woman with a passion for gender studies, and she had a simple answer. It was a phrase that I’d never heard, but it rolled off her tongue like music to my ears: emotional labor. She said that, as a woman, I was used to doing the greater share of emotional work in my heterosexual relationship, and when I couldn’t live up to the labor I’d become accustomed to doing, I got overwhelmed.

The concept of emotional labor has been around for half a century, but recently came back to the forefront due to sex workers’ online discussion of it as an uncompensated but ubiquitous portion of their jobs. In her Guardian article, Rose Hackman describes emotional labor as encompassing the aspects of life that women appear “to better at:”

[W]e know where the spare set of keys is. We multi-task. We know when we’re almost out of Q-tips, and plan on buying more. We are just better at remembering birthdays. We love catering to loved ones, and we make note of what they like to eat . . .

These aspects of “remembering” and doting, Hackman argues, are not necessarily natural talents. Women have been socialized to see the underpinnings of our relationships and to work harder at maintaining them with support and intimacy. This socialization comes with a cost. As scholar Rebecca Erickson observes,

[o]ffering encouragement, showing your appreciation, listening closely to what someone has to say, and expressing empathy with another person's feelings (even when they are not shared)-day after day, year after year-represent emotion work of the highest order.

As I listened to Lily and later read these articles, I felt so validated! I had never even heard of emotional labor and yet I was living it every day. I had been living it from a very young age, and recall a mantra my mother (an exceptional emotional laborer) taught me in my tween years. When I didn’t feel like being cheery but had to be, Mama taught me to sarcastically think “showtime!” in my head and brace myself. She often used this tactic in her professional life in customer-service (another aspect of the fallout of this phenomenon is that low-wage ‘service with a smile’ jobs are predominantly performed by women).

We recently screened portions of Ken Burns’ documentary Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. In it, I saw both women steeling themselves for emotional labor. I watched Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s joie de vivre become feigned cheerfulness when she was under the stress of emotional labor, just as my mother’s would during the tail-end of a long shift. I saw Susan B. Anthony become reserved and withdrawn, the same way I do when under the same burden. These were powerful women who worked tirelessly for women’s rights, and yet they were bound by the same incognito emotional obligations that I am today.

However, I also saw these two female powerhouses help each other bear their emotional labor with respect and empathy, and this heartened me. Though I had been planning to denounce my emotional labor, as I watched Anthony and Stanton, I realized that I like many of the aspects of emotional work I do each day. It suits me.

Instead of pushing it away, perhaps the answer is to remember to share the workload. Women may be programmed to do more emotional labor, but we don’t have to go it alone. Try this today: tell a confidant something you’ve been mentally chewing on, something you wouldn't usually disclose. It can be as small as your shopping list. See if talking it through lifts your burden a bit. 

If you’re feeling really adventurous, go further than sharing emotional labor with those who already know it’s weight. If you identify as female, try sharing your emotional burden with a man.

Benjamin is a great example of a cis-gendered man who is already in solidarity with my revolution of emotional equity. He may not “naturally” take on as much emotional labor as I, but he has his ways of helping with the load. I don’t think I’d ever leave the house with breakfast or inflated bicycle tires if it weren’t for that man. Ben is unique, however. He was socialized as a middle child, taking on great emotional burdens for his family in his youth. 

Ben has also worked in customer service for two decades. Perhaps the next step in the emotional-labor revolution is this: enlist the emotional light-weights in our lives to work front-of-house in busy restaurants. That will give them a high-velocity dose of the meaning of “showtime!”

How do I prevent my pen from being sexist?

Gender-based marketing is a pervasive phenomenon on which a number of studies have been conducted. Some goods like cosmetics or hygiene products are advertised, designed and priced differently based on the gender they target. Several examples of studies and striking differences between products are collected in the following blog post : The woman tax: gendered products and gendered pricing. 

Products that aim to please women are often made pricier and tinier. Companies using this strategy are thus able to sell more products and charge more for them. Thankfully, more people have become aware of this phenomenon. For instance, the Bic pens "For her" started a controversy on the Internet (see for example the hilarious comment section on Amazon) and on TV (on The Ellen Show). 

Nevertheless, women generally pay more for their products, while usually earning less money. This situation is referred to as "the pink tax" and has been comparatively analyzed with the masculine gendering of products in an interesting previous post. 

The angle of this post however is to identify ways to reverse the tendency and to look at what has already been done to that effect. Which specific legal tools are in place ? How can we as consumers impact this discriminatory phenomenon? What should we keep in mind while making the decision to buy such goods?

From a legal point of view, State Senator Ben Hueso of California has proposed to 

prohibit business establishments from charging customers different prices for similar or like goods on the basis of gender (Equal gender pricing Bill, SB 899).

The California Senate approved the bill in May 2016, but the project was then withdrawn by Sen. Hueso on June 28th, apparently due to

strong industry opposition from retailers and manufacturers who argued its conditions were ambiguous and would open the way to a wave of frivolous lawsuits (Los Angeles Times, article by Jazime Ulloa, June 29th, 2016).

One might choose to see this withdrawal as a positive sign. Indeed, the California legislature and its congressmen and congresswomen are now undoubtedly informed of the issue and the possible solutions. It will just take more time to accommodate all the stakeholders.

On a related topic, California Assemblymember Cristina Garcia introduced a measure last January to exempt feminine hygiene products from sales tax (AB 1561). That is, to abolish the so-called "tampon tax". The bill is now on the Governor's desk, waiting for his signature. A few states do not tax these products while others, such as New York, are passing similar bills. Actual legal change could very well happen in the near future, so we should keep an eye on it.

From an individual and every-day life point of view, the first step is to be aware of gender marketing. Carefully comparing products made for men or women before buying them or identifying and purchasing gender-neutral products are good ways to save money and take a silent but economically potent stand. Raising awareness and making people think of these unjustified inequalities by simply pointing out the price difference is another idea.

What really matters in the end is choosing to buy whatever one needs while being conscious of the marketing strategies. If one prefers to buy the pink Bic pen, so be it. Yet it would be more desirable to be aware of these matters and not be manipulated into buying it to affirm some sort of femininity rather than just by mere personal preference.

Hillary’s Trump Card: The Woman’s Card

This was a few weeks ago, but it still makes me laugh. The presumptive Republican candidate for President (*shudders*), Donald Trump, recently made headlines when he stated that the only reason Hillary was succeeding was because she was playing the “woman’s card” and that if she were not a woman she would only be getting 5% of the vote.

The complete nonsense of the premise behind his statement has been broken down in many places, but I’d like to focus this piece on the power of humor.

One of my favorite WaPo bloggers, Alexandra Petri, won the internet in my opinion with her excellent piece Play the ‘woman card’ and reap these ‘rewards’!. I don’t even feel like I can quote from the article because every single line is so good. I’ll wait here while you go read it before continuing.

Within hours (minutes?) of Trump’s statement, #womancard was trending on Twitter:

And it still is, weeks later:

Women across the country have united against Trump’s outright sexism and misogyny and have proudly proclaimed their support for Hillary (see also #imwithher). A Kickstarter campaign for a deck of cards with famous women has raised almost $120,000. Hillary’s campaign is selling an “Official Woman Card.”

While the Bernie Bros’ #HillaryDropOut and #NeverHillary campaigns are a frustrating distraction (see here for an excellent take-down of the privilege inherent in the #NeverHillary camp), the overall tone on Twitter and elsewhere has made me proud and happy to be a part of the Internet generation. For once, a social media campaign by women, on behalf of women, has succeeded. The key, I think, has been humor. I hope that the success of the #womancard campaign inspires Hillary and Democrats to continue working the meme-scape into November. Because the only way to fight Trump (and win the youth vote) might just be to point and laugh at the absurdity.

Rural Oregon, Part III: Rape, DV, and Meth

In the final installment of my series on rural Oregon, I’d like to shift focus to an issue that is much harder to discuss in numbers: crime. The crimes to which rural women so often fall victim, like domestic violence and acquaintance rape, are the most difficult to gather statistics on because of pervasive underreporting. And in many rural areas, young women, especially poor young women, sometimes find themselves caught up in the manufacture and sale of street drugs. These themes are true in many rural communities across America, and they are no less true in big, blue, pine-tree laden, hippy infested Oregon.

As a general note, in my research for this post I found an interesting, though not surprising, correlation between the economic recession of the last decade and an increase in rural crime. This same pattern seems to be true in Oregon, as well as other states. When you think about it, it really makes sense: rural communities are often hit hardest by economic downturns, and the lack of public funds can result in reduced resources for law enforcement and general community policing. More specifically, in the context of intimate partner violence, studies have shown that a leading cause of violence in the home is financial stress.

Economic disadvantage is not the only risk factor that threatens rural women with violent crime. As discussed in Part I, rural communities, including many rural parts of Oregon, are appropriately characterized as “conservative.” Conservative and rural usually means “traditional,” especially when we’re talking about gender norms. Outdated stereotypes concerning gendered hierarchies are extremely dangerous, especially in communities that regard family issues as private (see Professor Pruitt’s pertinent article on this very topic). And though hard numbers are scarce on this topic, these are the very reasons why Oregon researchers presume that domestic violence and other forms of intimate assault are occurring in rural settings far more often than anyone knows.

Finally, when talking about women and crime in rural Oregon, I cannot conclude the conversation without mentioning the drug crisis in my home state. What I have to say is mostly anecdotal, but the numbers back it up. Oregon is in the midst of a serious methamphetamine and heroin epidemic. In a survey last summer, 62% of police departments around the state said that meth was their number one problem, and another 24% said that heroin was the number one threat. Not their number one drug problem, but their number one PROBLEM. Period.

I certainly can’t say that the drug crisis has affected rural women at a greater rate than rural men, but I can tell you from experience that I’ve seen way more women from my community struggle with addiction, and get caught up in the sale and manufacture of street drugs, than I ever expected. Just a few weeks ago, news broke of a major drug bust in Toledo, OR, the town that neighbors my small hometown on the Oregon Coast. This wasn’t particularly shocking; drug busts like this happen all the time in my county. But when I opened the link to the article, the first photo I saw was of a women that I went to elementary school with. I haven’t seen her in years, and I hardly recognized her (presumably from the heavy meth use), but when I read her name, I just shook my head in pity and continued to read on.

From time to time I will check the roster at the county jail, just to see which of my childhood friends are in on drug charges. There are always at least a handful of women that I know who are behind bars, their faces warped into unrecognizable mug shots, and all I can think is, “Thank god that’s not me.”

Steak or salad: food is just another tool of the patriarchy

Growing up, whenever something delicious touched my mouth, my grandma would look at me and say “a minute on your lips, forever on your hips.”

Her message was clear: don’t get fat. Her words exemplified the message I internalized every time I fueled my body. Girls and women in America are subliminally, and sometimes openly encouraged to eat fewer calories, be dainty, and indulge sparingly (because life is hard).

A few weeks ago, while campaigning in New York, Hillary Clinton stopped for some ice cream. While chowing down on her sundae (Pictures seem to indicate she ordered both chocolate and vanilla. Undoubtedly, a politically calculated move), a male reporter asked her how many calories were in her ice cream. Clinton, along with the crowd, erupted in a chorus of boos. The Internet properly responded posing the question: If it had been a male candidate, would he have been asked that same question? Almost certainly not.

Marketing manipulates our eating habits, and our eating expectations. Foods marketed towards women generally have low-calorie or low-fat labels (which are usually pink or purple). Advertisements encourage the female consumers to “indulge.” Where marketing suggests that men loveburgers and steak, it tells us women favor yogurt and quiche. 

In a recent episode of Modern Family,  a female character, Claire, struggled to adjust to her new business position as a company executive. In an effort to prove she was just as powerful as her manly predecessor, she ordered steak and scotch at lunch. After a summer of associate lunches, and then this episode of Modern Family, I started wondering if “manly” food is associated with power?

Men can fire up the grill and indulge in steak anytime they want. Yet women have strict societal limits on when it’s okay to indulge. Women can indulge when they need to. And even when women are permitted to indulge, we must indulge in certain foods: most notably chocolate. Chocolate is society’s treat of choice for women.

Women are expected to eat chocolate and pints of ice cream as a coping mechanism formenstruation, stress and break ups. And even women indulging, we must be careful not to overindulge. Cadbury recently released a new chocolate bar for women, Crispello. The chocolate comes packaged in three re-sealable sections so women can eat part of the bar in one sitting, and save the rest for later. 

Women eat less in the company of men. Studies tell us this isn’t just about our physiques, but also how we are perceived when we indulge.

Women worry about that they eat, how much they eat, and what people think of them while they’re eating. When Hillary Clinton defiantly stuck her spoon in that sundae, she was defying billions of marketing dollars telling her she should resist.

Rural Oregon, Part II: Abortion Access

In Part I of this series, I made a sincere attempt to illustrate the true political makeup of Oregon. That is, the rural, redneck, conservative, tractor-driving Oregon that exists beyond the boutique coffee roasters of Portland. Now I want to shift to rural women in Oregon. Growing up in rural Oregon, I want to talk about the lived experience of Oregon natives. Those who live two, or three, or seven hours from a metropolitan center. And specifically, in Part II of this discussion, I want to talk about abortion access.

Oregon is the only state in the country with no major abortion restriction on the books: There are no mandatory waiting periods, no minor consent requirements, and no limits on public funding for abortion services. In fact, the only restriction listed under the Public Health and Safety code, is a clause allowing individual physicians or private hospitals to refuse providing abortion services. Additionally, Oregon passed a law last year allowing pharmacists to prescribe and distribute contraceptives.

Of course, these extremely liberal policies do not please the many anti-choice organizations in Oregon. Just take a look at this cheeky, if not offensively sarcastic, article from a pro-life publication, titled, “Oregon ‘best state to have sex in’ because of easy abortions.” Further, Oregon Right to Life strategically smears Oregon’s abortion laws by stating that, “Oregon is the only state in America with NO protective pro-life laws.” [Emphasis added]

Yes, Oregon has exceptional protection for reproductive rights. And yes, Oregonians have virtually no legal barriers to abortion access. So at this point you’re probably thinking: what’s the problem? Well, let me tell you what the problem is…spatial privilege! The most pro-choice abortion laws in America do little to nothing for you if you can’t get to a clinic. And thus access can’t just mean legal accessibility; it has to mean physical accessibility as well.

There are currently twelve abortion clinics in the state of Oregon. Of these twelve, half are located in the Portland Metro Area. Five of the remaining six clinics are in smaller cities up and down Interstate-5, along the western portion of the state, leaving just one clinic east of the Cascades. According to the latest report from Pro-Choice America, 78% of Oregon counties have no abortion clinics. It is certainly true that many (if not most) Oregonians live near one of these cities with an abortion clinic, but not all Oregonians. Oregon is a large state. So for those women who reside on the coast or in the far eastern portion of the state, the road to an abortion clinic is likely long.

These facts and figures are probably quite abstract for anyone who is not intimately familiar with Oregon geography, so I will give you a couple hypotheticals. First, let’s consider a young woman who needs an abortion, but lives in my coastal hometown of Newport, OR. The closest clinic is located in Corvallis, about an hour and fifteen minutes away, but they only offer abortions up to nine weeks. If this woman were farther along, she’d have to get to Eugene, about two hours away, where there are two clinics that provide abortions up to 14 weeks. If she needed an abortion at any time after 14 weeks, she would have to travel all the way to Portland, nearly three hours away. And if she doesn’t have a car? There are only two buses that leave Newport each day to get to Corvallis. To Portland, she’d have to transfer to a train, and then do it all over again to get home. This is all under the assumption that she has the money and time to make this trip.

For a woman in an even more distant and rural area of Oregon, the logistics of obtaining an abortion are further complicated. If a woman in Baker City, a town in eastern Oregon, needs an abortion she’ll have to travel nearly five hours to Bend (services up to 9 weeks), or about the same distance to Portland (up to 24 weeks). And if she doesn’t have a car, a round-trip Greyhound ticket to either location will run her anywhere from $120-$180.

In sum, my point is this: when it comes to reproductive rights generally, and abortion access in particular, place matters. You can live in a state with NO major restrictions on abortion services, and still be extremely limited in your options because of spatial disadvantage. The right to family planning and to have an abortion should be unqualified. “Access” cannot simply mean legality. Women should not be limited in their reproductive choices simply because they live in a rural area.