Edit: Okay, wow. if the statement from a woman of “we owe you nothing” immediately sets you off emotionally, I would really encourage you to think through why that might be.
A more systemic phrasing could have been “we owe the patriarchy nothing”. I changed it to that for a second before realizing, again, that it was fine. A guy that has worked through internalized patriarchy around this will understand it’s not about them.
Patriarchy on the whole conditions men towards having a sense of entitlement towards women’s bodies, time, attention, labor, etc. It also conditions women that they should feel obligated to provide this without setting boundaries or expecting reciprocal solidarity.
Remember, we literally all have degrees of internalized bigotry, misogyny, racism, transphobia, etc because these are systemic issues. Our responsibility to ourselves and our comrades is to work through that. You are not a bad person for finding those brainworms in yourself, only if you refuse to do the work to address them.
Emotional labor by definition isn't really a thing outside of the workplace btw. Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. Stuff like not getting angry at the customer who is freaking out at you for no reason. If you consider people confiding their problems in you as "emotional labor" and a problem then you are just a horrible person.
Yes I consider the person who made this poster to be intentionally misusing the term to try and rationalize being a horrible person.
Sure, I can adapt phrasing if that really matters to you. I’d encourage you to read through the comments of other women in this thread about this if you want to understand.
If someone confides a bunch of problems with me without checking in about how I’m at capacity or mental health wise, that’s not cool and they can’t be surprised if I’m not able to offer much beyond “hey, that sucks”. Men can easily reply with that, women often get shamed if they do for “not being nuturing” or we’re called slurs like “heartless bitch”.