Notices by Katy Elphinstone (katyelphinstone@mas.to), page 2

Refs (3)

[4] Morgan, K. (2024). ‘The extra shift’: The unpaid emotional labour expected of women at work. [online] www.bbc.com. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20240313-invisible-emotional-labour-women-in-workplace.

[5] Oschatz, T., Piemonte, J.L. and Klein, V. (2024). The Intimate and Sexual Costs of Emotional Labor: The Development of the Women’s Sexual Emotional Labor Assessment. Archives of Sexual Behavior. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-024-03061-7.

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Refs (2):

[3] How society holds women accountable for their maternal performances & children’s outcomes (e.g. Ladd-Taylor and Umansky 1998, Garey and Arendell 2001, Malacrida 2003, Singh 2004, Craig and Scambler 2006, Blum 2007, Hays 1996). Tied with idealised notions of middle-class, heterosexual, nuclear families, & discourses of maternal 'deviance' (Arendell 2000), targeting mothers who are single, poor, non-White, immigrant, homeless, lesbian, whose children are disabled, etc.

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"Who should pay?"

CW: controversial.

Many men are poor. But women, as a group taken together, are poorer. And this is true in all countries in the world, not just those known for gendered oppression.

If you’re a man who’s interested in having more connection & understanding, I think it's important to consciously know this, “I am richer, in money terms, as a man, than most women are.”

(Refs at the end)

A thread 🧵

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#Poverty #Patriarchy #Women #Relationships #Money #Feminism

This is due to the (intentionally) unpaid and invisible nature of parenting, despite it being hard and time-consuming labor.

(More on this in my article, 'Should parents be paid:'
https://www.neurofabulous.org.uk/should-parents-be-paid.html)

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Mothers, who are expected to provide unconditional love and support, in our society either lack:

1. Freedom to do so, e.g. in your average traditional nuclear family, or

2. Time to do so, if they’re also working for money, or

3. Money to do so - money is important when it comes to love and support, as without it you’re homeless, foodless, comfortless.

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#Parenting #Mothers #Family #UnpaidCarers

There's a dilemma when it comes to male/female relationships.

Because of our cultural abandonment of children and our collective focus on power and competing (both cornerstones of our society, and yet oddly taboo as a conversational topic), most children grow up without the levels of love and support they need to thrive.

Including, of course, boys.

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#Relationships #Feminism #Parenting

In a similar way to how I must acknowledge, as a white person, that I’m richer than most Black and brown people are.

These dynamics help those who hold the most power to become richer, and they foster division among us.

In this thread, I’ll cover a bit of ground on the gender side of things...

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#Patriarchy #Money #BlackLivesMatter #Feminism #SocialJustice

Back to the children.

There's a deep feeling in most of us, I think, that a woman, a maternal figure, should have provided for us.

She should have made us feel loved, supported… been fully there for us.

If she wasn’t, we often feel pretty angry with her. Understandably.

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Or no.2, where they have no time for their kids and hire babysitters, or their own mother looks after the children. Note that this group of women are heavily criticized for their ‘choice’ of career/work over parenting activities.

Or no.3, where you have nothing to live on. Which is a problem when it comes to providing a healthy and secure home.

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#TradWives #Motherhood #Parenting #Family

Mothers are, in effect, forced into a corner.

They may end up with no.1 above, and then have no choice but to use coercive & unhealthy mechanisms on their children to sustain the situation (they’re heavily expected, even forced, to use power over their children to make them do things; such as go to school, tidy their rooms, study, be a well-greased cog in the ‘machine’… etc.).

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All of us can, of course, think of some examples of women being super-selfish. Indeed, sometimes I think one of those acts counts for about a dozen of men’s, given the amount that it gets commented on 😜

But to sum up: men, without being aware of it, often feel entitled to female consideration, while never having to acknowledge that it exists – let alone that they benefit from it.

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Think about how people behave – and then, whether they're women or men.

Which drivers pull over and let you pass, and who ploughs straight through.

Who tailgates you, angry because you’re slower than them.

Who moves out of the way for you on the sidewalk. Who smiles. Who makes your day a bit brighter as you go about your business, with some small act of care.

(Note: you ‘lose’ by doing these small selfless acts, esp. when the small acts are scaled up into weeks, months, years of it).

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Love, support, a listening ear. These things (we often feel) are owed to us, by the woman-figure.

Girls and women grow up with the knowledge they must provide this, and should enjoy doing so, and demand nothing in return. Not even acknowledgment.

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#Sexism #Patriarchy

Not so many of us blame our fathers, or the ‘village’, or indeed anyone else besides our mother.

Father-blaming isn’t usually a big thing – perhaps because it isn’t felt that he held the responsibility for making us feel happy & okay. Whereas our mother… she should have done.

#Motherhood #Children #Families

But let's get back to money. 💰

Which is, often, the crux of the matter. While rarely talked about, for some reason.

If your labor is unseen and unpaid – the emotional labor, the support work, the smiling, and moving aside, the physical affection & intimacy that, in many cases, you may provide for the other person (all things being rather unequal!), is never seen nor compensated, and yet it costs you a lot in time and energy…

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But there's a darker side. If she declines the gift (perhaps because she’s exhausted, or so), he may not react with, “Ah, let me try with a different gift – maybe she doesn’t like purple. I’ll ask her, so I know for next time.”

Instead he may feel hurt... even angry!

I wonder if this is perhaps the child part, and whether this may be where the unconditional mother-figure comes in. ‘That isn’t meant to happen, she’s meant to want to do what I want her to!’

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Then there’s affection, physical closeness, sexual intimacy.

These can all be wonderful things!

I wonder sometimes (and please correct me, men out there, if I’m wrong!) if men may think they’re *such* wonderful things, that they want to gift them to women. Specially to the women they love. After all, it’s often what they’d want!

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#Relationships #Intimacy

This is where it all comes together.

The expectation of the woman ‘provider’ (even when her cupboard is, by design, bare).

She's ‘in charge’ – she’s responsible. For my happiness. For my food. For… everything. And (in spite of the bare cupboard) is implicated when she fails to provide it.

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A lot of people seem to like the half-and-half option.... and then, hm, are amazed when the woman’s soul gradually dies as she becomes more and more exhausted and lonely 🤷♀️

(Note that in this whole thread I’d apply the ‘female’ side, or what I’ve termed as ‘women’, to whomever in the relationships plays that role more, whether trans woman, or gay, or so.)

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#Equality #Feminism #Sexism #GenderEquality #TransLivesMatter #LGBTQ+

When it comes to ‘who pays’…

For example, in a partnership. Or when dating. Who pays for the meal in the restaurant, the drinks, the trip? Who pays for the grocery shop, and for the electricity bill, and the rent?

The man, the woman?

Half and half?

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