Here’s the reason why your “POOR MEN!” comments on my “men don’t know how to do emotional labor and rely solely on their wives to do it for them,” post are GARBAGE. Like, shut upppppp.
Do we live in a society that socializes a lot of young men to not have the foundational tools they need for their personal and emotional wellbeing? YES. Does that suck? YES. Is everyone in society responsible for recreating, over and over again, toxic masculinity? YES.
But what all those comments completely ignore are the BENEFITS of men not being expected to do emotional labor. Men benefit GREATLY from this shit. ALL THE TIME.
They benefit from not having to do the incredibly exhausting legwork of emotionally caring for their children. Dad is the “fun one” and mom is who you go to talk through all your life shit with. Doing emotional labor for your children is beautiful work but it is honestly a 24/7 job and it is exhausting and intensive and requires a great deal of patience. I know a shit-ton of people my age (myself included) who had little to no emotional labor support growing up from their dads. That means their moms (and grandmas. And sisters. And aunts.) were doing the bulk of this labor.
(Also it’s pretty sad when a girl child in the family is expected to do the emotional labor of her siblings cause dad can’t get his head out of his ass to show up and listen for 5 minutes)
Men benefit from not having any expectations on them that they do any other kind of kinship work too. Like calling their moms on their mom’s birthday. Like writing christmas cards, inviting friends to dinner, scheduling healthcare visits for their kids (and sometimes even for themselves!), making sure dinner is on the table for a family dinner, getting presents for family birthdays, etc etc. Many men are completely oblivious of how their family actually functions, because they’ve never had to do kinship work like this in any real, substantive way.
When men are exempt from kinship work and emotional labor, they have a shitton of free time and energy on their hands to explore other activities, activities that their busy, emotionally taxed wives cannot explore. This is a huge benefit for men and it has a huge cost for women.
I honestly think that this is the cause of many straight relationship breakups/divorces, because men have all this time to pursue personal projects and women are fucking E X H A U S T E D and busy doing all the emotional labor, and men end up looking at their wives and being like “You’re boring now. All you think about/talk about is being a mom. I need a ~partner~. Someone with more interests.”
So before you’re like POOR MEN fucking recognize that POOR MEN benefit from not being expected to do emotional labor and that these POOR MEN are GROWNASS MEN who are capable of changing that up and learning but DON’T. They’re not children anymore. They can actually do this shit if they want to.
Abortion was not just legal—it was a safe, condoned, and practiced procedure in colonial America and common enough to appear in the legal and medical records of the period. Official abortion laws did not appear on the books in the United States until 1821, and abortion before quickening did not become illegal until the 1860s. If a woman living in New England in the 17th or 18th centuries wanted an abortion, no legal, social, or religious force would have stopped her.
Reminder that records of contraception and abortion exist all the way back to 1550 BCE in ancient Egypt!
This was a really fascinating read. Until the early 19th century, abortion was legal until “quickening,” or when the pregnant person first felt the baby kick – anywhere from 14 to 26 weeks into the pregnancy. Society only began to condemn it when people decided white, middle- to upperclass women weren’t having enough children soon enough in their lives, and when male doctors started taking over traditionally female health care fields, like midwifery.
Yep, shockingly enough, it’s never, ever been about the life of the fetus – only about misogyny, racism, and classism (ableism, too, though the article doesn’t discuss it).
The bolded is hella important.
From the first article: “Increased female independence was also perceived as a threat to male power and patriarchy, especially as Victorian women increasingly volunteered outside the home for religious and charitable causes.”
Quick reminder that the modern pro-life movement didn’t even begin until the 1970’s. Conservatives were angry about the birth control pill and Roe v. Wade, and so the pro-life movement was developed as a TARGETED response to women’s lib and reproductive rights. In a lot of non-Western countries, the idea that an embryo is assigned any value or rights at all is just mind-boggling.
i just thought of jack having the reflex to grab at his hip for the service radio to tell atlas where he is and what’s going on long after he leaves rapture and gets older and i wILL CRY
Jack kept the radio. He didn’t know why, really. It sat heavy on his waistband when he was around the house and sat even heavier on his nightstand. It was old now, its screws a bit rusty from where the seawater got into it back down below. Back in Rapture. He was certain it didn’t work now, outdated, obsolete, just like his memories. But he would push that button anyway, the solid click shooting through his hands like every other time he’s handled it. Sometimes Jack was speechless, opening his mouth as if to speak into it before releasing the button wordlessly. Occasionally he’d simply forget, start talking into it if he just couldn’t figure something out, or even reach out when it wasn’t there and find a moment to panic.
Even years later it haunted him when the girls were all in bed and he was alone with his thoughts. He’d palm it, fiddling with the dial and the lights that wouldn’t come to life anymore. After a few minutes of the button’s depress it’d tumble out, all of it, his thoughts and fears and he’d be back down there again, amongst the decay and the mold and the blood. It wouldn’t be until he was flat on his back, sweating through the matress that he’d come back to himself, a little less lost, a little more guidance in his veins.
A few nights before his daughter’s wedding, what he was sure would be the first of many he would sit through, Jack had one of these nights. The moon was bright and kept him from being consumed by darkness. He was surrounded by the same old bed, the same old sweaters, the same old radio and the same old hands. He looked at it and sighed, gathering himself up before nervous fingers made the telltale button resonate in the room.
“A-Atlas,” he muttered to it, before releasing the trigger again. His hands shook, lifting the reciever to his mouth to continue.
A crackle made him freeze as he went to speak again.
“Do you need somethin’, boyo…?”
So I’ve officially had my big toenails removed permanently… what do I do now?
Pic below the cut:
(The one on the right was removed 8 days ago, and the one on the left was removed yesterday)
Random Toughts 