Thoughts on “Emotional labor”?

Ok, this topic is kinda complex, so I’ll try to be brief.

First of all, as emotional labor was originally defined, it means having to hide your emotions and always seem happy at work.

Over time, especially recently, this term has come to mean various things in casual feminist theory. there’s two main ones:

1. Having to explain concepts to people (especially men) that they could “easily google”

2. Having to support friends and listen to them vent

There are other “misinterpretations”, such as “women having to organize events is emotional labor” (this is literally just labor, and I’m kind of disappointed in the new york times for publishing an article saying this?) or “women having to ask their husband to do chores in a nice way is emotional labor” (this is just... basic decency)

Especially in the case of #1, people usually argue that this warrants compensation

(i just found this on google images, i dont think its real i think it was just made to prove a point or something)

But the second type has come to light recently after a woman tweeted this:

What do you all think about this? I personally think that while the concept of “sometimes im too busy to help/hear you vent” is fair, these messages are really impersonal and make friendship seem like a customer service interaction. I wouldn’t ever call listening to my friends express their worries labor, although it can get tiring sometimes. If someone sent me that second message when I asked for help I would probably never ask them for help again