The Emotional Labor used to Understand Men
A philosophy paper is showing how much labor is done by others just to get to the deep meaning behind what men say
This picture above is a remix of another picture called “What’s on a Man’s Mind” , the original is little more risque so that’s why I’m not using it, but it’s a pretty popular picture. It shows an optical illusion of a woman’s naked body in the forehead of a man. Below it are the words “Sigmund Freud.” I don’t know who did this (if you do know, hit me up). I don’t think it was Freud, and if it was Freud, the naked woman in the front is probably his mother.
Nevertheless, this is an example of one of the bigger stereotypes for men. That we are very simple, that what goes on in a man’s mind can be pretty evident just based on what they do and what they say. Some combination of video games, sex, alcohol, and some relatively minor athlete who played for his favorite team when he was 15.
This is obviously not the case. Men (just like every human being that ever lived) are complex people with past lives, genetics, and experiences that shape who they are and how they interact with the world.
The issue is that once you’re in a relationship with a man (any type of strong relationship), there’s a bit of work that needs to be done to unpack the years and years of stoic communication that men have learned is the way to communicate. And if we’re talking about hetero relationships, that work is usually done by women.
This dilemma within relationships was very apparent when it was labelled by one of my favorite podcast hosts from the philosophy 101 show Overthink, Dr. Ellie Anderson, as Hermeneutic Labor. There was a whole article about it in the Washington Post
Ellie Anderson published a research paper about that exact type of work which she labelled as Hermeneutic Labor: The Gendered Burden of Interpretation in Intimate Relationships between Women and Men
Hermeneutics means (via Wikipedia): “is the interpretation and understanding of social events through analysis of their meanings for the human participants in the events.”
In Dr. Anderson’s paper it shows that women put in a lot of work to truly understand the deeper meaning of their partners. Dr. Anderson basically lays this all out with this quote:
“The widespread expectation that women are relationship-maintenance experts, as well as the prevalence of a gendered demand-withdraw pattern of communication, leads an exploitative situation to appear natural or even desirable, even as it leads to women's dissatisfaction. This situation may be considered misogynistic in Kate Manne's sense, where misogyny is a property of social environments rather than a worldview.”
This is Dr. Anderson explaining this in an Instagram reel:
I think all of this stuff is fascinating, not only because it’s studied, but it’s very relevant to my life as a dude.
Dr. Anderson lays the type of labour this way:
“Hermeneutic labor involves:
a) understanding and coherently presenting one's own feelings, desires, intentions, and motivations when deemed appropriate;
b) discerning others’ feelings, desires, intentions, and motivations based on interpreting their behaviors; and
c) weighing these multiple sets of feelings, desires, intentions, and motivations for the purposes of conflict resolution.
Men receive the fruits of hermeneutic labor in conversations in which women offer up to them their interpretations of women's own feelings, those of the men, and provide concrete plans for action; they also benefit when women keep silent about their interpretations and decide for themselves which actions will most benefit the relationship.”
I definitely see this dynamic pop up with my romantic relationships, even now, as someone who has been with the same person for almost 10 years. However when I posted the Washington Post article in the subreddit r/MensLib it got a bunch of upvotes but there was a lot of comments insisting that this is wrong.
That for the most part, it’s best to take men at face value:
Or at least saying that labout doesn’t really happen at all. For example:
I understand this feeling, truly I do, the expectations of men to suppress their emotions comes from many generations of society telling men their emotions don’t really matter. And when we do express those emotions, people are turned off by them. At the same time though, doesn’t that mean we’ve never had the practice to express those emotions in a way that makes sense to people?
And again, a plea to take men at face value.
And again, I understand where this poster is coming from, but man oh man do I disagree with this. Anyone who has spent any time with any man can understand how frustrating it can be to take a man at their word. You know that aI “It’s fine” has much more behind it.
In fact, I wouldn’t even limit this to men, I think that ANYONE who’s spent time with ANY PERSON knows that there’s always something behind what people are saying. I think we want to believe that we say what we mean, but let’s be real here. That’s rarely the case. And wouldn’t a person who loves you and cares about would want to know more abotu what you’re saying? Absolutely. Would they find it frustrating that they are guiding men emotionally? Of course.
I also think this is important to recognize that these men are not wrong.
It’s a common refrain from a lot of men, and from the people that dig into Men’s Rights Activists or more mysogynists circles that this is something that “drives them towards it.” (now to be absolutely clear, I also think those people find that as an excuse to be outwardly sexist, instead of inwardly sexist. I also don’t believe them when they say it’s the ONLY reason why they “turn” misoginist).
But there’s some truth in that.
However, there’s also a lot of truth in what Dr Anderson said too.
“A key feature of these roles is that women are the “emotional experts” of the relationship. As dating progresses into intimate relationships, women's emotional needs frequently go unmet by men”
That even by our own metric, women are the emotional experts, and I can say it at least in my own relationship that I do lean in to my wife’s expertness.
So we can do both right? Understand when we’re being misunderstoof and also try our best to be emotional intelligent, not only for our partners, but for ourselves.