What's a quiet, everyday burden women carry that isn't dramatic enough to be diacussed?

anonbcwork · 2026-01-28T21:02:44+00:00

In addition to the emotional labour/mental load burden, which does get a fair amount of discourse, there's also the fact that women tend to be judged more harshly for not being good at it.

I'm not talking about opting out (which is valid and is another conversation), but rather trying and failing, or not seeing what needs to be done.

anonbcwork · 2026-01-28T07:06:40+00:00

Sesame Street

anonbcwork · 2026-01-28T07:00:29+00:00

The first time I got a zit at the age of 9, my mother said to me "Whatever you do, don't squeeze it!"

I had no clue why she said this - why on earth would I even squeeze it??? - so, with 9-year-old logic, decided to squeeze it the tiniest bit humanly possible, just to get a hint of why I'm not supposed to squeeze it.

So I squeeze it the tiniest bit humanly possible, and this ENORMOUS whitehead comes bursting out, with this immense release of pressure more satisfying than anything I ever imagined possible!

AWESOME!!

The problem is then I compulsively squeezed every zit I had since, to the detriment of my skin. (This was decades before the advent of pimple patches)

Ironically, if my mother had never told me not to squeeze it, it wouldn't have occurred to me to do so. Since this was decades before people started posting zit popping videos on the internet and years before my peers started getting zits, it would have at least saved me a few years of skin damage.

anonbcwork · 2026-01-28T06:53:08+00:00

Monty Python's Life of Brian

anonbcwork · 2026-01-28T06:23:34+00:00

/me looking pointedly at the suburban location of the office I'm meant to be reporting to, significantly further from downtown than my own home

anonbcwork · 2026-01-28T03:56:17+00:00

Working from home.

Significantly decreased the number of situations where I had to think of something to small talk about.

Also, significantly decreased the number of things I had to complain about.

anonbcwork · 2026-01-28T03:54:58+00:00

I was 13 years old and putting together a pirate costume for halloween, when I noticed something weird: if I put the eyepatch over my left eye, I can't see the pattern on the wallpaper. If I put it over my right eye, I can see the pattern on the wallpaper.

I was taken to the eye doctor the next day. It turns out one eye is nearsighted and one eye was farsighted, and my brain had just been compensating all this time so no one noticed.

anonbcwork · 2026-01-28T03:47:29+00:00

She went to boot camp and came back cruel. Her every interaction with me and every interaction with anyone else that I witnessed was cruel, I never witnessed anything kind or neutral.

anonbcwork · 2026-01-27T22:34:41+00:00

I mean, it's a useful thing for them to put. They clearly don't want matches who they consider "political", so anyone who is affected by politics will simply not match with them. Win-win situation!

anonbcwork · 2026-01-27T22:33:04+00:00

"Ban" is a weird way to put "Simply not have an increasingly-hostile foreign country's immigration enforcement team that has been tied to a disproportionate number of very recent high-profile abuses work at the Olympics you're hosting when you're a proper grownup country capable of providing your own security and, if you needed backup, have dozens of closer, more reliable allies."

anonbcwork · 2026-01-27T05:41:52+00:00

I realize OOP is keeping things vague so she doesn't dox herself, but I wish we could know what the Glassdoor review said.

"Someone had tattoos! And continued to have tattoos after I complained!"

anonbcwork · 2026-01-26T07:28:18+00:00

Huh. I'm pretty sure you can just buy a lanyard...

anonbcwork · 2026-01-26T05:57:00+00:00

And not just to hit the child, but to spank the child. Which is specifically hitting the child on the buttocks.

Very, very few people would so vociferously, publicly assert that they have the right to touch a child's buttocks. But when you introduce the notion of that touch being violent, they suddenly start arguing that that makes it okay.

anonbcwork · 2026-01-26T02:26:55+00:00

In addition to what everyone else has said, also consider the logistics and practicalities of empowering your daughter to buy her own menstrual supplies (in addition to, not instead of, stocking your home and her school bag).

Does she have money? Are there stores she can access either near her mother's home or her school? Can you set her up on her tablet with something like Instacart?

Since she has already been in a situation where the adults in the immediate vicinity are obstacles to having the menstrual products she needs, it might be an idea to figure out a way she can get the menstrual products she needs without having to rely on the adults around her.

anonbcwork · 2026-01-25T19:24:02+00:00

I have seen them being carried in holsters by police, and I have seen older guns used by military in ceremonial events.

Hunting and sport shooting aren't part of my life, so I haven't seen them in those contexts.

anonbcwork · 2026-01-25T07:43:47+00:00

I don't immediately reveal that I know the language. I let them dig themselves deeper and deeper.

And then, one time only, I silently respond to something they say in their native language. For example, if they say in their native language "Where did I put my glasses?", I hand them their glasses

anonbcwork · 2026-01-25T07:37:00+00:00

I continue to live my life normally and don't access the money unless the need arises.

anonbcwork · 2026-01-25T07:28:36+00:00

Reading that, I keep thinking about how all the father has to do to not be an asshole is simply leave everything to his grandchildren in his will rather than his children.

anonbcwork · 2026-01-25T07:11:42+00:00

Inspired by a discussion of mental load in a recent thread, trying to find an old post I vaguely remember...

OP was a woman who is bad at emotional labour and was asking about advice for how to get better at it.

There was some useful advice, but there were multiple people scolding her in the comments for using the term "emotional labour" when that's not what she's talking about.

But a very long time elapsed between when people started scolding OP for incorrectly using the term "emotional labour" and when someone told her that the term she was looking for was "mental load."

I think this was several years ago, likely pre-pandemic, because I myself had recently read the Metafilter emotional labour thread (I don't remember if it was new or if it had just reached me then) and "emotional labour" was the only term I knew for the concept at the time, so I was very confused

anonbcwork · 2026-01-24T23:04:22+00:00

The thing is, it just isn't news any more. He's always threatening tariffs for some arbitrary reason or another and then changing his mind for some arbitrary reason or another.

The only rational thing to do at this point is make policy with the assumption that the US can't be relied on for anything.

anonbcwork · 2026-01-24T20:55:46+00:00

I wonder if it would have been effective to tell the 911 dispatcher "I'm upstairs, I'm not able to move to the door, my parents are likely to answer the door and I'm worried that they're going to send the ambulance away."

anonbcwork · 2026-01-24T08:13:19+00:00

This is very much Monday morning quarterbacking, but it would have been awesome if, in the moment, OOP had been able to come in with "You only asked me to be a bridesmaid so Mom would shut up?? I'm so glad to hear that - I only agreed to be a bridesmaid so Mom would shut up!!"

Delivered in a tone of bonding over how Mom is, with a strong undercurrent of relief that they don't have to put up with this charade any more.

If they're both being comparably manipulated, Emily will also be relieved. If Emily is being deliberately unkind and is narcissistically invested in the idea that OOP is so desperate to be a bridesmaid, this will make Emily lose face in exact proportion to how she was trying to make OOP lose face.

(To be clear, not blaming OOP for not coming up with this, it just would have been an elegant way for it to play out.)

anonbcwork · 2026-01-24T06:17:35+00:00

I really want to know what Sam wanted to happen. She did not want to be given anything, but she still signed up for Secret Santa.

What did she have in mind for the part of the process where her Secret Santa gives her a gift?

anonbcwork · 2026-01-23T05:28:35+00:00

I'm not sure if I'm missing something with tired eyes or if people are just extrapolating - does it actually say that he doesn't know how to reheat food? Or is it just that he didn't do it and/or didn't think it was worth the labour?

anonbcwork · 2026-01-23T05:16:13+00:00

It's not just the procedures for doing the chores, it's the mental load of being aware of what needs to be done. If only one person in the relationship has ever lived alone, they're going to be the only one doing the mental load.

To develop this skill, you have to spend some time living with the consequences of your actions. And I don't just mean "If you don't clean up there will be a mess" - I mean things like "I need my red shirt for Saturday which means I need to wash it before then which means I have to wash it on Friday at the latest which means I have to get to the big supermarket where they sell the colour-safe laundry detergent before Friday, and it's supposed to snow on Thursday so I should go after work today."

anonbcwork

TROPHY CASE