Hermeneutic Labor

Hermeneutic Labor: The Gendered Burden of Interpretation in Intimate Relationships between Women and Men by Ellie Anderson (Open Access)

• The following are my (non-exhaustive) notes and thoughts about this article. I would highly encourage you to read the original article to draw your own conclusions!

What is hermeneutic labor?

Hermeneutics is “a method of interpretation for unpacking the latent levels of meaning in communication cues” which originated “as a theory of interpretation for religious texts”. With that, Anderson coins the term hermeneutic labor as:

a pervasive form of care labor that falls largely upon women in contemporary American society […] Related to emotional labor but distinct from it, hermeneutic labor is the burdensome activity of a) understanding one’s own feelings, desires, intentions, and motivations, and presenting them in an intelligible fashion to others when deemed appropriate; b) discerning others’ feelings, desires, intentions, and motivations by interpreting their verbal and nonverbal cues, including cases when these are minimally communicative or outright avoidant; and c) comparing and contrasting these multiple sets of feelings, desires, intentions, and motivations for the purposes of conflict resolution.

Anderson (among others) argue that emotional labor has had a bit of “concept creep” and that hermeneutic labor in particular is able to pinpoint a more exact gendered dynamic in care labor.

• She points out that in recent literature some have argued that men do perform emotional labor as well, it just looks very different than when women do it. Men’s emotional labor is more focused on emotional compression/suppression. Additionally, there are many jobs where the man may have to give off an intimidating air like as a solider or a debt collector, for example. After all, Arlie Hochschild, the initial creator of the term “emotional labor” initially defined it as “silent work, provoking and suppressing feeling in ourselves and others”.

What is the hermeneutic labor gap?

“hermeneutic labor disproportionately falls on women’s shoulders in heteropatriarchal societies, especially in intimate relationships between women and men.”

• This is in part due to gendered socialization and expectations of women as “relationship experts”.

This is an exploitative dynamic.

• “This dynamic is exploitative in the sense that a person or group is unfairly benefiting from using another to achieve some gains at the expense of the one used”
• “Both men and women are arguably harmed by gendered expectations of emotional labor, but men benefit from gendered expectations of hermeneutic labor whereas women suffer from them.”

Furthermore, it might even be net-negative.

• “Judith Farr Tormey describes women’s nurturing labor for men as a zero-sum game, because what the exploiter gains, the exploitee loses […] Bartky goes further to claim that it is worse than a zero-sum game, since women lose more than men gain”
• What do men gain?
  • Trickle down therapy
  • To not have to think about relationship maintenance
  • Relationship problems get solved by the woman going to therapy or to her friends
• What do women lose?
  • “while women are busy devoting a great deal of their emotional and cognitive resources to their romantic relationships, they are prevented from using these resources elsewhere.”
  • Emotional toil of rumination and feelings of rejection

Why does the hermeneutic labor gap occur?

This dynamic happens in large part because patriarchy strips men of their emotions. Cisheteropatriarchy is about domination, which is mostly through violence and emotions have to be suppressed in order to be able to administer such violence (whether reluctant or gleeful).

• Meaning that if you are dating a someone who was socialized as a man or has otherwise been assimilated to the ideals of cisheteropatriarchy, you will likely have to face it at some point, unless they’ve already started their work of unlearning the patriarchy.

In most heterosexual male friendships, emotions are not addressed, so an intimate relationship with a woman is the first time they are having to access these skills.

Men aren’t clueless inasmuch as they are not taught these skills.

• However there can definitely be weaponized incompetence and/or lack of curiosity
• It can be learned, but toxic masculinity has to be unlearned in order to be able to learn that expressing your emotions is okay
  • If they don’t how to process their own emotions, it should be learned from somewhere other then their partner (online, therapy, etc.)
• You can model and reward emotional expressivity in your relationship without explicit teaching
• It is okay to be bitter about your partner not having the skills, but it shouldn’t necessarily be targeted at them for not knowing

Social pressures cause women to settle.

• “because heteropatriarchal ideology attributes value to women inasmuch as they are valued romantically and/or sexually by men, women need men’s love in order to be considered persons, whereas men do not require this”
• “being “circumstantially ‘forced’” to love and be loved by men under nonideal conditions in order to receive the social recognition of being a member of a companionate couple”
• Selecting for emotional intelligence in a partner could help, but can be hard to suss out during courtship.

Can the hermeneutic labor gap be ameliorated in a relationship?

Hermeneutic labor distribution is uneven because normally the woman does everything, which means she:

• Interprets her own feelings
• Interprets her partner’s feelings
• Initiates (or chooses not to initiate) the conversation for resolution
• Creates a plan for resolution

Interpreting/processing feelings

Each person should try to interpret their own emotions and communicate to the other person either in the moment or in retrospect.

• You can process things on your own, but you shouldn’t come to any conclusions on your own.
• If your partner does something that makes you angry/sad/etc., you should be able to bring it up later without feeling like your window for addressing it has passed.

You want to know how the other person actually feels about you and not have to scry it from their actions.

• If you say the reason you do things or volunteer information, someone doesn’t have to be constantly guessing.

Initiating (or choosing not to initiate) the conversation for resolution

Someone should not have to choose to not initiate a conversation because they don’t know how their partner will take it.

• Neither person can write off bringing things up. If they give up then it has failed
• Can this be solved with regular relationship check ins? or is that just bringing a horse to water?

The burden of initiating conversations should be shared.

• It takes a lot of activation energy and overcoming fear of rejection
• The woman cannot be the one who is always bringing things up and the man cannot always be defensive.
• This is tied to the “female-demand/male-withdraw” communication pattern, which is the most common pattern of communication between heterosexual dating couples.

Creating a plan for resolution

You have to resist that urge to work in isolation/invisibility and instead work together.

• If you have no trust in your partner to solve things and do it yourself why are you with them?

Beyond the Article

Autism, ROCD, and CPTSD are all things that could accelerate the ruminating and distort hermeneutic efforts.

• Therapy focused on the demands of hermeneutic labor in particular could be effective.
• Fear of rejection definitely plays a part in bids for emotional dialogue/relationship repair

I think that the hermeneutic labor gap is highly tied to another phenomenon that Anderson doesn’t mention: “boyfriend training”. There is a lot of discourse about teaching your man how to be a “good boyfriend”. While some things listed go beyond the scope of the initial definition of hermeneutic labor, I think a lot of it can be related to the boyfriend understanding and addressing their girlfriend’s desires.

Love work is specific to relationships, but hermeneutic labor happens anytime of the oppressed to the oppressor.

• “comparing and contrasting these multiple sets of feelings, desires, intentions, and motivations for the purposes of conflict resolution”
  • like black people explaining racism to white people and having to deal with white fragility and teach them how to be antiracist
  • social justice like vegans or pro-Palestine have to wade through hate and bad arguments to try to plead their case with others this is emotional labor because they have to fake a smile or be nice in order to preserve “polite debate” in order to be taken seriously
• the oppressor doesn’t or hasn’t needed to understand or care how their actions have affected others and thus lack the tools to meaningfully engage in discourse