Three Thoughts on Emotional Labour (Digital)

This is the digital file, sent as a pdf. For the print version click here.

A tiny zine version of my popular essay on emotional labour.

“Acknowledging the ways that emotional labour goes unseen and uncredited is important. We need to name the exploitation and devaluation of this important work. At the same time, the acknowledgement that emotional labour is frequently exploited has translated into a belief that emotional labour is inherently exploitative. As a femme who frequently performs emotional labour, both in my personal and professional life, I do not appreciate my important, needed, complex skill set being framed as something that is necessarily oppressive to me. I do not appreciate the suggestion that I am somehow being tricked into doing the hard and necessary work that is deeply important to me. This discourse devalues emotional labour.

So, instead of assuming that emotional labour is necessarily and inevitably exploitative, can we consider how we might accept emotional labour ethically?”