Monday, October 27, 2008

Teh Stupid It Burns



This is a terrible article about divorce and its possible correlation with recessions. It pulls out every single old stereotype, sweeps together the dust off the floor and pretends that all this makes an article. Thus, women mostly divorce to clean out the husband's bank account, men to get more pussy. Women are homebodies (not working out there as the majority of women actually are). Men are into Internet porn and infidelity when stressed, women into talking things out and eating too much. Nobody has any deep regrets or sadness over a pending divorce, nobody thinks that the death of love is not that different from the death of a loved one. Nope. Everything is trivial, breezy, cobbled together from various pop-science sources.

For example:

Apart from the ready access to high-speed online porn, what makes this recession different from others is that it's centered on real estate and thus on people's homes, which may explain why women are feeling more anxious about it than men are. In a survey released in October by the American Psychological Association (APA), more women than men reported feeling stress about money (83% vs. 78%) and the economy (84% vs. 75%). And women were more likely than men to say they had symptoms of stress--including irritability and weariness. Plus, their stress levels had risen more sharply over the past six months than men's. So it's harder for women to take up their traditional role as household comforter and easier for the wheels to fall off the whole enterprise.

Nothing in that piece about women earning less, on average, which is reason enough for more of them to be worried.