Angelica Becerra
1-800-PAY-A-FEMME, 2019
Serigraph, Ed. of 52
30”x22”

The piece titled "1-800-PAY-A-FEMME" was inspired by a conversation on my podcast "Anzalduingit" where my cohost and I discussed ways in which femmes, within the queer community, experience a disparity in the types of labor they are expected to take on, not just out in the world, but in their close relationships, often without reciprocity. Emotional labor was a term I deeply connected with, because it gave language to the labor I doing in my own life. The term as I know it, was first mentioned on Twitter, where sex workers talked about the emotional labor they were expected to carry out, in addition to the sexual parts of their job. Things such as "listening, validating, pretending, to feel something for the sake of the other, which is assumed by the male clients to be given for free." In her piece for The Guardian, Rose Hackman asked: "What if, much like childcare and housekeeping, the sum of this ongoing emotional management [that women do] is yet another form of unpaid labor?" For this piece, I visually represented what my cohost Jack and I imaged: a hotline where femmes could get paid, what if we could be compensated for the work we're constantly expected to do for free? My hope is that this piece will begin a conversation about the disparity between gendered labor, how we are socialized as women and femmes to give without receiving the same. More importantly, I want fellow femmes to protect their energy, to begin demanding compensation for their labor, whether it be in the form of reciprocity, emotional intelligence or an actual Venmo.