melanie ensign (she/her) on Nostr: AI Can't Do A Lot of Things. But It Can Do the Emotional Labor We're Never Paid For. ...

AI Can't Do A Lot of Things. But It Can Do the Emotional Labor We're Never Paid For.

I run a communications consultancy, teaching security professionals how to say hard things clearly.

What I didn't sign up for was the auxiliary work — the invisible tax of regulating my own tone so that men who don't like what I said can still hear it. The internal negotiation before hitting send is exhausting, worrying whether I'm being too direct, he'll feel attacked, or I should soften my opening. Not because the content was wrong, but because the delivery might trigger a reaction that would cost me more time than the original message.

I was always doing this work. Every professional woman I know was always doing this work. We just did it manually — in our heads draining a little more bandwidth each time. I convinced myself it was thoughtfulness. It was unpaid labor with no opt-out.

I've started using AI in situations where I know the dynamic is fragile so that I'm not wasting time and absorbing the cost of someone else's ego. I write the version I actually want to send, then ask for help flagging anything that could be read as punishing. I'm not outsourcing the strategy for how I communicate, but I am outsourcing the audit.

Now I have more time to spend on clients who are actually paying me to think.