There's been a lot of discussion in regards to emotional labor lately. I figured I would put in my two cents.
Emotional labor is a situation in which one person is regularly aware of and responsible for dealing with the mood and behavior patterns of another person. Now, in most cases, this ends up simply being aware of whether somebody is in a bad mood and probably needs to talk.
This is what happens when you have a relationship and the (usually) woman ends up dealing with most of the emotional burden in terms of communication. And more extreme situations this is a major confluence of both societal pressures and intersectionality.
Let me explain. Women tend to bear the burden of emotional labor. This is not because men are not capable of doing so. This is because women are socialized to this behavior. However, I believe that it is less likely that it was decided somehow that it is a woman's job to deal with emotions and more that it is a result of the power differential between women and men.
Extreme cases emotional labor is a is a form of hyper-vigilance. Hyper-vigilance is one of the most common results or symptoms of abusive situations. This isn't to say extremely abusive situations. Any abusive situation will result in hyper-vigilance. Things such as bullying, harassment at the workplace, any kind of hostile power differential situation will result in hyper-vigilance.
Hyper-vigilance in this case is when a person becomes focused on and extremely aware of another person's micro-expressions, body language, mood changes, behavior patterns, etc.
In the vast majority of the population, you have white hetero, cis-gendered people. Roughly half of this group has a significant historical and societal power differential over the other half; that is, men have had social power over women. Because of this, women in general are a huge, often suppressed or abused group. The level of suppression or abuse is, of course, widely variable.
It would make a lot of sense that the general power over women creates a general feel of being abused within women, which would lead to a general hyper-vigilance among women towards men. This is a really long way of saying women bear the burden of emotional work because of our minority status. We are trained by our historic suppression, oppression and abuse.
This is observable in other groups with major power differentials. You see it in LGBTQ+ when encountering heterosexual or unknown identifying people, and there is a period of feeling them out before they feel comfortable revealing any clues about their sexuality. Essentially they become hyper-vigilant unless and until the person that they have encountered shows themselves to be safe.
You also see this in terms of racial groups. Many people of color have tried to explain that they become extremely vigilant, extremely aware of the underlying moods and energy, when they're in white spaces.
In many ways, we see the same thing in terms of religious groups as well. Pagans and other minority religions are far less likely to discuss their religion, their religious practices, etc. in a public space and in front of Christians who have not shown themselves to be safe.
Christians on the other hand literally feel comfortable throwing religious language around to the point where, if somebody calls them on it, they consider that to be an attack on them. I can't tell you how often I've been told that someone will pray for me or that they hope that God blesses me etc. in a non-religious situation simply because the Christian and question was comfortable expressing their religion. In fact, they're so comfortable discussing their religion, they go door-to-door to actually do just that.
In a lot of ways. this explains why so many of these conversations about discrimination, prejudice, and other abuses are so difficult. One group tends to be so hyper-vigilant that they tend to immerse themselves in the situation. The other group never actually even has to think about it.
The major issue doesn't arise, however, until the group that doesn't have to think about it reacts with the topic even just being mentioned with denial, defensiveness, or "counter attacks." They become so blind to their own social power that they consider anything but superiority to be an attack.
What does this all mean for Pagans?
If you find yourself in a situation where you are the majority group, take a moment to evaluate the emotions and energy around you. What is it like? Can you feel the tensions around certain people? In relation to certain people?
Are you supporting minority groups when they have to do the extremely uncomfortable work of calling people on things or are you one of the defenders of the majority? Why have you aligned yourself with the group you are supporting?
Remember, we wouldn't attack a rabbit for being afraid of wolves. We wouldn't say, "but I'm a good wolf, not like the others." We wouldn't "#NotAllWolves". We acknowledge that there is a reason the rabbit is afraid. If we want the rabbit and the wolf to be friends, we support the rabbit in taking smalls steps of trust. We don't shout down the rabbit for being "racist" towards wolves. And we don't hold the rabbit responsible for the wolf's feelings.
So why do we do that for people?
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