“Emotional labor” is a phrase that maybe makes sense in about 5% of the contexts in which it is used. The rest of the time it’s pretentious nonsense.
guest
Katisha. You hold that I am not beautiful because my face is plain. But you know nothing; you are still unenlightened. Learn, then, that it is not in the face alone that beauty is to be sought. My face is unattractive!
Pooh-Bah. It is.
Katisha. But I have a left shoulder-blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist.
Pooh-Bah. Allow me!
Katisha. It is on view Tuesdays and Fridays, on presentation of visiting card. As for my circulation, it is the largest in the world.
Ko-Ko. And yet he fled!
latsot
How do these people ever get anything done?
I’m exhausted just by reading it, imagine actually being like that.
Seth
“Emotional labour” saw its initial utility in class analysis, and specifically in the (heavily female-dominated) service industry. And it is still useful as a way of thinking about the aspects of all work which require managing other people’s emotional states; even managers and executives, at least the good ones, will take managing others’ emotions into account in the course of their duties.
Of course, people of my and younger generations (including me myself at times) have adopted this analysis for general social interactions. That seems…suboptimal.
Holms
Wow, that mansplaining bit takes the cake for narcissism. He says being mansplained at is “confusing and awful”, but that it also “validates” him. Presumably because mansplanations are things done by men to women, or at least to not-men, and this affirms that Mr. Tenacity is a not-man. Yet further down, he says that mansplaining is still an instance of misgendering, indicating that he does not want this treatment because he is not a woman. Not because the treatment is patronising and insulting, no, it is only bad because he does not identify as a woman. He reveals that he has no objection to mansplanations per se, his objection is that they are being misdirected to some not-women such as himself.
And that also accounts for the “confusion” from earlier: he is being treated as a not-man, yay, but the wrong not-man, booo hiss. Doncha know mansplaining is only appropriate when addressing a woman?? /s
This is like objecting to being called say, a jew-nose cockroach, by saying “hey! I’m not a jew, you’re insulting the wrong person!” rather than objecting to ethnicity insults altogether.
I bet he yet considers himself an ally to women.
Sackbut
Holms, thanks for that; I was terribly confused, and thought he was talking about engaging in mansplaining, rather than having other people mansplain to him.
I still find it confusing. “Mansplaining” is explaining something to someone who is assumed to be less knowledgeable but interested in an explanation. If you ignore the sex basis of the assumption, it’s something that men do all the time to each other; a sort of jockeying for position in a hierarchy. I don’t immediately see how this person can distinguish the male “showing off” to other men from mansplaining due to being perceived as female. (Of course it is the assumption that women lack knowledge that is the point, but I don’t understand how he tells.)
Your point about rejecting an insult because one is not a part of the targeted group, rather than because such insults are intrinsically wrong, is a great one. I know I’ve seen many people responding to gay insults with “I’m not gay” instead of “that’s a terrible thing to say about gay people”. The reverse is also true; people think it’s OK to make disparaging remarks or crude jokes about (say) ethnic or racial groups if no member of that group is in the room, and a response is often “You know I’m [a member of that group], right?” I admit to doing that myself; it’s an easier path than just criticizing the joke as crude.
Papito
Holms, I believe Sackbut is right that mansplaining doesn’t have to be directed to a woman. I don’t know whether this Tenacity person is actually a man or a woman (adequate display of androgyny there), but it’s not like a man won’t mansplain to a man who looks like a woman, aka a sissy. I agree that Tenacity wants to have his or her cake and eat it too: hee hee, you think I’m a woman; hey, I’m not a woman, don’t mansplain to me. This is entirely consistent with TRA ideology: use male privilege when it suits you, and steal female rights when you want them.
Screechy Monkey
Am I right in inferring that this “nonbinary” person actually alternates between male and female presentations on a set semi-weekly schedule? (Sundays and Wednesdays!) I thought that was the sort of thing (“I’m a woman on Tuesdays, but a man on Wednesdays”) that was a caricature of nonbinary people, not something that one of them would actually say proudly.
Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve never encountered him her them squim berm toom hoom before.
tigger_the_wing
Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve never encountered him her them squim berm toom hoom before.
I am so glad I had just swallowed the last mouthful of my hot milk before I got to that comment.
As The Smoke Rises Upward
@Sackbut:
> “Mansplaining” is explaining something to someone who is assumed to be less knowledgeable but interested in an explanation.
I believe mansplaining in sensu stricto occurs when a man with no particular credentials or experience in a field takes it upon himself to explain something about that field to a far more credentialed woman. The classic example of this is some Twitter-using dude who once went to space camp attempting to explain space to Jessica Meir, a literal astronaut.
I agree that there exists a certain subset of people—who may skew male but are not exclusively so—who will seize any pretext to display any knowledge they have (or think they have) to anyone of either sex. But there are also some men who will respond very differently to the statement “I work in [field]” from a man and from a woman; coming from a man, it’s a cue to express interest and ask questions, but coming from a woman, it somehow gets interpreted as “I am interested in [field] and I would like you to tell me about it.”
Catwhisperer
Screechy #8 – Oh, alternating between male and female… I thought Wednesday and Sunday were the allocated days for non-binary people to post selfies of a new outfit / hairstyle / whatever. Or maybe they’re the days for everyone to post their latest selfies but because this person is non-binary they are too special to stick to that schedule, hence the “more or less”. Gotta rebel against that oppressive “post / don’t post” binary.
Acolyte of Sagan
I’m not a woman, but I largely pass as one,
Only in your own imagination, though.
[A]nd mansplaining is fun. And by fun I mean mildly validating[…]
Why? Why would being mansplained to validate a person who claims to be neither man nor woman? What exactly is being validated? More to the point, why does Tenacity (really? Still, I suppose Tenalady would sound too binary) suspect that a person is actually mansplaining rather than merely explaining unless heshethey is/are assuming the gender of that person?
[…]but mostly confusing<[…]
I tend to ask for clarification if an explaination has left me confused. Maybe heshethey could try that rather than going straight for the childish complaint that something heshethey does not or cannot understand is ‘awful’.
iknklast
AoS, I think we should just make a rule that everyone’s pronouns, regardless of sex, gender, delusion of sex, delusion of gender should just be heshethey. Or maybe heshetheyit. (It’s hard to type heshethey; my fingers protest.)
Sackbut
Re #14, apparently that doesn’t work out, because the trans people wouldn’t get that all-important “validation” from people referring to them with their preferred opposite-sex pronouns.
Catwhisperer
Iknklast, I’m on board, as long it’s pronounced “hesh-et-hey”
Mike Kuebler
After much chemically influenced thought I like “itshehethem” for its phonetic-ish “it-she” (shit in pig-latin-ish) and “he-them” for “heathen”. I assume at some future event I will be required to “state my pronouns” and I want to have an appropriate response.
Comments
17 responses to “and mansplaining is fun”
“Emotional labor” is a phrase that maybe makes sense in about 5% of the contexts in which it is used. The rest of the time it’s pretentious nonsense.
Katisha. You hold that I am not beautiful because my face is plain. But you know nothing; you are still unenlightened. Learn, then, that it is not in the face alone that beauty is to be sought. My face is unattractive!
Pooh-Bah. It is.
Katisha. But I have a left shoulder-blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist.
Pooh-Bah. Allow me!
Katisha. It is on view Tuesdays and Fridays, on presentation of visiting card. As for my circulation, it is the largest in the world.
Ko-Ko. And yet he fled!
How do these people ever get anything done?
I’m exhausted just by reading it, imagine actually being like that.
“Emotional labour” saw its initial utility in class analysis, and specifically in the (heavily female-dominated) service industry. And it is still useful as a way of thinking about the aspects of all work which require managing other people’s emotional states; even managers and executives, at least the good ones, will take managing others’ emotions into account in the course of their duties.
Of course, people of my and younger generations (including me myself at times) have adopted this analysis for general social interactions. That seems…suboptimal.
Wow, that mansplaining bit takes the cake for narcissism. He says being mansplained at is “confusing and awful”, but that it also “validates” him. Presumably because mansplanations are things done by men to women, or at least to not-men, and this affirms that Mr. Tenacity is a not-man. Yet further down, he says that mansplaining is still an instance of misgendering, indicating that he does not want this treatment because he is not a woman. Not because the treatment is patronising and insulting, no, it is only bad because he does not identify as a woman. He reveals that he has no objection to mansplanations per se, his objection is that they are being misdirected to some not-women such as himself.
And that also accounts for the “confusion” from earlier: he is being treated as a not-man, yay, but the wrong not-man, booo hiss. Doncha know mansplaining is only appropriate when addressing a woman?? /s
This is like objecting to being called say, a jew-nose cockroach, by saying “hey! I’m not a jew, you’re insulting the wrong person!” rather than objecting to ethnicity insults altogether.
I bet he yet considers himself an ally to women.
Holms, thanks for that; I was terribly confused, and thought he was talking about engaging in mansplaining, rather than having other people mansplain to him.
I still find it confusing. “Mansplaining” is explaining something to someone who is assumed to be less knowledgeable but interested in an explanation. If you ignore the sex basis of the assumption, it’s something that men do all the time to each other; a sort of jockeying for position in a hierarchy. I don’t immediately see how this person can distinguish the male “showing off” to other men from mansplaining due to being perceived as female. (Of course it is the assumption that women lack knowledge that is the point, but I don’t understand how he tells.)
Your point about rejecting an insult because one is not a part of the targeted group, rather than because such insults are intrinsically wrong, is a great one. I know I’ve seen many people responding to gay insults with “I’m not gay” instead of “that’s a terrible thing to say about gay people”. The reverse is also true; people think it’s OK to make disparaging remarks or crude jokes about (say) ethnic or racial groups if no member of that group is in the room, and a response is often “You know I’m [a member of that group], right?” I admit to doing that myself; it’s an easier path than just criticizing the joke as crude.
Holms, I believe Sackbut is right that mansplaining doesn’t have to be directed to a woman. I don’t know whether this Tenacity person is actually a man or a woman (adequate display of androgyny there), but it’s not like a man won’t mansplain to a man who looks like a woman, aka a sissy. I agree that Tenacity wants to have his or her cake and eat it too: hee hee, you think I’m a woman; hey, I’m not a woman, don’t mansplain to me. This is entirely consistent with TRA ideology: use male privilege when it suits you, and steal female rights when you want them.
Am I right in inferring that this “nonbinary” person actually alternates between male and female presentations on a set semi-weekly schedule? (Sundays and Wednesdays!) I thought that was the sort of thing (“I’m a woman on Tuesdays, but a man on Wednesdays”) that was a caricature of nonbinary people, not something that one of them would actually say proudly.
Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve never encountered him her them squim berm toom hoom before.
I am so glad I had just swallowed the last mouthful of my hot milk before I got to that comment.
@Sackbut:
> “Mansplaining” is explaining something to someone who is assumed to be less knowledgeable but interested in an explanation.
I believe mansplaining in sensu stricto occurs when a man with no particular credentials or experience in a field takes it upon himself to explain something about that field to a far more credentialed woman. The classic example of this is some Twitter-using dude who once went to space camp attempting to explain space to Jessica Meir, a literal astronaut.
I agree that there exists a certain subset of people—who may skew male but are not exclusively so—who will seize any pretext to display any knowledge they have (or think they have) to anyone of either sex. But there are also some men who will respond very differently to the statement “I work in [field]” from a man and from a woman; coming from a man, it’s a cue to express interest and ask questions, but coming from a woman, it somehow gets interpreted as “I am interested in [field] and I would like you to tell me about it.”
Screechy #8 – Oh, alternating between male and female… I thought Wednesday and Sunday were the allocated days for non-binary people to post selfies of a new outfit / hairstyle / whatever. Or maybe they’re the days for everyone to post their latest selfies but because this person is non-binary they are too special to stick to that schedule, hence the “more or less”. Gotta rebel against that oppressive “post / don’t post” binary.
Only in your own imagination, though.
Why? Why would being mansplained to validate a person who claims to be neither man nor woman? What exactly is being validated? More to the point, why does Tenacity (really? Still, I suppose Tenalady would sound too binary) suspect that a person is actually mansplaining rather than merely explaining unless heshethey is/are assuming the gender of that person?
I tend to ask for clarification if an explaination has left me confused. Maybe heshethey could try that rather than going straight for the childish complaint that something heshethey does not or cannot understand is ‘awful’.
AoS, I think we should just make a rule that everyone’s pronouns, regardless of sex, gender, delusion of sex, delusion of gender should just be heshethey. Or maybe heshetheyit. (It’s hard to type heshethey; my fingers protest.)
Re #14, apparently that doesn’t work out, because the trans people wouldn’t get that all-important “validation” from people referring to them with their preferred opposite-sex pronouns.
Iknklast, I’m on board, as long it’s pronounced “hesh-et-hey”
After much chemically influenced thought I like “itshehethem” for its phonetic-ish “it-she” (shit in pig-latin-ish) and “he-them” for “heathen”. I assume at some future event I will be required to “state my pronouns” and I want to have an appropriate response.