One important thing to remember in life: Do not coddle men.

• Do not do their work for them.
• Do not perform uncredited labor for them, including intellectual labor.
• Do not bend over backwards to help them.
• Do not tell them they are good at things they are bad at.
• Do not smile at them when you don’t want to.
• Do not laugh at their terrible jokes or stroke their egos or let them think they are better than you when odds are good that they are almost definitely not.
• Do not even deal with men whose presence bothers you when you can get away from them/when you aren’t regularly forced to be near them for things like work.
• Do not include men in your life who don’t deserve to be in it any time that you can avoid it at all.

This is good advice, and it’s advice I follow, but what I kind of wish I’d known a long time ago is what it will do to your relationships with other people.

The women who react like you’re not pulling your weight with the emotional labour of looking after the men’s feelings (or the physical labour of cleaning up after them, or doing their healthwork or being their unpaid admin) because if you don’t hold up your end of managing his emotions, he’s not going to start doing it himself, there will be a woman who will, and she’ll resent you for the extra work, not him. And it’ll affect how much she and her female friends will go out of their way for you, because that’s how emotional labour works, it is the labour of maintaining social connections, of maintaining a society.

When your mother and your father are both sad that you aren’t that close to him because you won’t do all the work of maintaining a connection with him, you expect him to do his share too, and because you expect him to be as careful of your emotions and sensitivities as he would expect you to be of his, which since no other female-perceived person in his life holds him to that standard, feels to him like he has to “walk on eggshells” around you and you’re “always offended”.

When a lot of your friends’ partners dislike you, and you them, and your friends have no idea why, or possibly don’t even notice that’s the case, and it’s hurting your relationships with those friends.

When you’re talking with a friend about her relationship, and you say “wow, that was really mean. He shouldn’t have said that to you. I’m sorry he treated you like that, you deserve better,” and you know she’s taking that less seriously coming from you because you’re That Man-Hating Feminist Who Thinks All Men Are Abusive, and won’t really believe what he said was mean until she hears it from a woman who does centre men in her life. And if she did believe it was mean, the fact that you thought so too makes her wonder if she’s being too much of a man-hating feminist herself.

And that this is not about being male, it is about being privileged, and there are probably situations where you’re that man who expects women to coddle you, but split down some other axis, not male/female. Or situations where some woman is doing it to you, and you think you owe it to her and don’t see the dynamic at play because she isn’t a man.

And that emotional labour is important, necessary labour, the problem isn’t that it exists at all but that it falls disproportionately on some people instead of being shared equally.But mainly that this isn’t a problem you can solve or opt out of individually. It’s a group problem and requires a group solution. Which isn’t to say “go forth and coddle men”, just… if you follow this advice, understand why it feels like you’re swimming against the tide a lot of the time. Because you are. And maybe it’s worth it – it is for me – but it’s better to know.