Before we go further, it’s perhaps worth pondering how the conceit of “emotional labour” is typically deployed by a certain type of woman. Say, the kind who complains, in print and at great length, about the “emotional labour” of hiring a servant to clean her multiple bathrooms. Or writing a shopping list. Or brushing her daughter’s hair.

The kind of woman who would moan about the chore of choosing a holiday that her husband is paying for. And for whom explaining to her husband the concept of “emotional labour” is itself bemoaned as “emotional labour.” The final indignity.

One of these.

It’s the facial theatre – the ‘eww’ face – the seeming incredulity that an obvious variable should be considered as an obvious variable. A thing one might need to address in order to solve the problem being discussed. As if considering such things – even suggesting that one might consider them – were beyond the pale, somehow scandalous or beneath rebuttal.

I’ve seen this same facial theatre many times, not least among left-leaning women who’ve been appointed to positions for which they are clearly ill-suited. An observation that would itself most likely result in the ‘eww’ face.

It seems very much related to niceness, or some desire for the appearance of niceness. As if niceness, so conceived, should be the sole measure of rightness. And so, any suggestion that one might have to consider a course of action at odds with that niceness is met with theatrical disbelief, as if one had belched very loudly during a wedding ceremony.

On facial theatre in a progressive age.

…there’s no way you really believe this woman should govern a city of 6 million people

We’re just living in it.

Commander Gray faces a charge of negligently permitting a ship to be lost by allegedly being absent from the bridge while within one nautical mile of a reef, with an alternative charge of failing to perform a duty for the same alleged conduct.

She faces a separate charge alleging she failed to ensure an appropriate plan was in place while the ship was in uncharted waters.

Lieutenant Commander Gajzago, who was command supervisor on the bridge, also faces a charge of negligently causing a ship to be lost by allegedly failing to supervise the third officer and prevent the ship from running aground.

The third officer, who was officer of the watch at the time of the crash, is facing the same charge for allegedly turning the vessel towards a reef half a nautical mile ahead while travelling at more than four knots, and failing to disengage autopilot and take manual control quickly enough to avoid the reef.[…]

Commander Gray, who moved to New Zealand with her “wife” in 2012, was lauded in a June 2023 New Zealand Department of Defence press release celebrating her and three other female commanders, in which one gushed about a culture change in the navy due to a “focus on diversity, equity and respect for personnel”.

Another of the female captains praised alongside Ms Gray, Fiona Jameson, crashed her own ship in May 2024.