Love and Modern Slavery

Some years ago, there was a rather lousy article about emotional labor that posited that women get underpaid for a lot of "women's work" because it's something the author called "emotional labor." I don't remember the details and I'm not going to look it up, but I recall feeling like whatever they are trying to say, this isn't really a good framing because it included things like waitressing under emotional labor but not things like being a musician.

I'm quite confident musicians make a lot of their money based on their ability to evoke feelings and provide catharsis and help young fools fall in love with something they will forever call "our song." Waitressing is a kind of caring profession but it's primarily about physically taking care of people and if they have any positive feelings about that, it's because the food was tasty and they are well nourished, not because the waitress let you cry on her shoulder as free therapy or something.

Emotional manipulators engage with your feelings. Caring professions get emotional reactions because they address some underlying real world problem.

Feelings get treated by a lot of people like some emotional rollercoaster thrill ride. Like you watch a movie or hear a song and you FEEL something in reaction to that, but being angry about injustice is you not being nice enough or something.

Feelings don't get treated like meaningful information about life. They don't get treated like something of material value or relevance.

It's NICE if you FEEL good, not evidence things must be going well.

Homemaking was born a long, long time ago, well before money was reliably available. It was born at a time when both mom and dad were typically working to literally put food on the table.

Mom ended up doing tasks she could competently and reliably handle while pregnant, breastfeeding and tending to small children. Dad ended up with tasks that weren't child friendly.

We invented money, it became reliably available and men began working for money and women continued to work to literally take care of family members. Over time, male caretaking tasks got shifted onto mom via new household technology, such as vacuum cleaners.

Historically, men took up rugs and beat them and washed them. They still do in some countries with tile floors and rugs instead of wall to wall carpeting, like Iran.

Those tasks were moved off of male shoulders and onto female ones to free men up to earn more money.  Because that improved quality of life for the family.

In my father's day, a husband's income was viewed as family money, NOT his money. If he was an alcoholic, the American Army -- in other words a department of the US Federal government -- issued his pay in cash to his wife so she could pay rent and buy groceries.

This was facilitated by the fact that most soldiers got paid in cash. Money was reliably available, but the economy operated on a cash basis. Most people didn't have bank accounts.

So the decision could be made at the local level by his commander to give it to the wife to protect her interests, the interests of the children, the interests of the soldier and the interests of the US Federal government.

There's probably no written law covering this or federal policy on record somewhere. But members of the US Army felt fine about doing this and I never heard anything suggesting that it was covered up or handled QUIETLY. It was common knowledge that "Joe Bob is a drunk and his wife picks up his pay."

Then women began getting more so-called rights and we invented microwaves and fast food joints and etc. and now women technically can get jobs, but in practice most women get most income via their husband, even if she also "works."

Notice how that implicitly dismisses the value of women's work and of homemakers. Like being a homemaker is a winning lottery ticket and you spend all your time getting your nails done and watching soap operas.

And for some women it kind of is. We now do have microwave meals and fast food joints and birth control, so most women aren't having ten kids and if your husband makes enough money, it's possible to order delivery and not be chained to a stove even if you are a full-time wife.

This creates two problems:

1. Women who still do the old fashioned homemaker schtick and cook from scratch and help build their husband's career success get treated essentially like slave labor. 

2. Women who have no ethics have a loophole the size of Texas for intentionally arranging to be leeches and living well while bleeding some hardworking man and not actually earning her keep.

The way to bet is a very high percentage of marriages currently involve some hard working, decent person being shafted by a leech and the question is which one is the person providing the lion's share of the value and which one is the parasite?

And it won't be readily apparent based on gender or who has a big paycheck. Plenty of people can only do their job because someone is cooking and cleaning and packing their lunch and handling everything except the job.

In some cases, a man gets divorced and suddenly can't sustain his well-paid career because the wife was the underappreciated secret to his success.

My experience in life has been that I do wonderful things for people that adds material value to their lives and at best they thank me as if they imagine vacuous pats on the head and emotional manipulation makes us even.

It's like their logic is "She made me feel good because she cares. I'll make her feel good! Now we are even-steven!"

No, we aren't. If I took care of you in some manner, pretending you care and being emotionally manipulative isn't remotely an even trade.

And I consistently get this vibe that caring is supposed to be free because "money can't buy you love."

The reality is that in a healthy culture and healthy marriage, full-time homemakers get room and board and spending money for their interests and are entitled to the estate when he dies and 90 percent of the time, she outlives him.

Homemakers get material compensation for their labor based on an older model of "social contracts" for lack of a better word. For women the world over, being a good wife and helping your husband succeed in his career is the best bet for trying to get some reasonable level of material comfort.

And planet Earth has turned that into an expectation that full-time homemakers or moms or whatever OWE everyone CARING because they CARE and have no right to material compensation like money for their labor.

Especially if you can pretend they didn't really give you anything of material value because what they did for you is similar to what a therapist or similar professional would do, so they can't readily claim credit for something you can physically hold in your hand.

I don't think people are really that stupid. I think they just lack ethics and everyone buys this bullshit, so they expect to get away with this abusive shit where they expect you to CARE about them and if you are homeless or can't afford to eat, not their fucking problem.

When in reality if you were REALLY friends, you should respond to that by giving them money to pay their rent and buy groceries because you care. Just like they did.