Stoicism (as Emotional Compression) Is Emotional Labor | Feminist Philosophy Quarterly

Stoicism (as Emotional Compression) Is Emotional Labor Authors Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò Georgetown University .st0{fill:#A6CE39;} .st1{fill:#FFFFFF;} https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0936-8680 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5206/fpq/2020.2.8217 Keywords: stoicism, emotional labor, work, masculinity, feminism Abstract The criticism of “traditional,” “toxic,” or “patriarchal” masculinity in both academic and popular venues recognizes that there is some sense in which the character traits and tendencies that are associated with masculinity are structurally connected to oppressive, gendered social practices and patriarchal social structures. One important theme of criticism centers on the gender distribution of emotional labor, generally speaking, but this criticism is also particularly meaningful in the context of heterosexual romantic relationships. I begin with the premise that there is a gendered and asymmetrical distribution in how much emotional labor is performed, but I also consider that there might be meaningful and informative distinctions in what kind of emotional labor is characteristically performed by different genders. Specifically, I argue that the social norms around stoicism and restricted emotional expression are masculine-coded forms of emotional labor, and that they are potentially prosocial. Responding to structural and interpersonal asymmetries of emotional labor could well involve supplementing or better cultivating this aspect of male socialization rather than discarding it. Downloads Download data is not yet available. Downloads PDF Published 2020-06-15 How to Cite Táíwò Olúfẹ́mi O. 2020. “Stoicism (as Emotional Compression) Is Emotional Labor”. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 6 (2). https://doi.org/10.5206/fpq/2020.2.8217. More Citation Formats ACM ACS APA ABNT Chicago Harvard IEEE MLA Turabian Vancouver Download Citation Endnote/Zotero/Mendeley (RIS) BibTeX Issue Vol. 6 No. 2 (2020) Section Articles, peer-reviewed License Copyright (c) 2020 Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . The authors of work published in FPQ under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 License retain copyright to their work without restrictions and publication rights without restrictions. However, we request that authors include some sort of acknowledgement that the work was previously published in FPQ if part or all of a paper published in FPQ is used elsewhere.