The work of love is a feminist problem, and it demands feminist solutions

They Call It Love investigates the work that makes a haven in a heartless world, examining who performs this labour, how it is organised, and how it might change. Drawing on the thought of the feminist movement Wages for Housework, Gotby demonstrates that emotion is a key element in the reproduction of society and its norms. Addressing the problem of love's labour requires nothing less than a radical restructuring of society.

"Intellectually nourished my thinking and language on gender." - Granta

"A fascinating and exhaustive explanation as to why emotions are a political issue." - AnOther Magazine

"They Call It Love shines a light on the invisible labour involved in love, examining who is responsible for performing it, how it can blossom, and why we do it." - Dazed

"Gotby makes clear our emotional lives are inherently political. Her analysis of the politics of reproductive labour is a cogent criticism of the bourgeois capitalist logics of feeling, of the free labour of intimacy and of normative femininity." - Mai

"Gotby's narrative masterfully outlines how emotions, feelings and their manifestations tend to be portrayed, and understood, as a feminine domain of expertise ... Gotby brilliantly dismantles the silences and abuses surrounding this invisible work by naming it and showing its societal (and capital) worth" - Sociological Review