Wow

Stasi: Robin Williams’ $30M alimony to ex-wives contributed to his death

Robin Williams' paid more than $30M in alimony to his ex-wives, Valerie Velardi and Marsha Garces. Indie Chicks will be marching around New York with typical negative cover lines from women’s mags pinned to their clothes Monday.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Sunday, August 17, 2014, 1:52 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/stasi-robin-williams-30m-alimony-ex-wives-contributed-death-article-1.1906241#ixzz3AfQW3onM

Did alimony kill Robin Williams?

At least in part it sure did. Paying out over $30 million to ex-wives who were allowed to attach themselves to Williams’ bank account like comatose patients on feeding tubes would be enough to make Gandhi angry and depressed.

While states are finally, gradually catching up to the modern age in terms of alimony (now they call it “maintenance” — as in “high maintenance”) the practice of men paying women because they once were married is not just primitive but, yes, sexist.

Yeah, go ahead, call me anti-feminist, call me whatever you want, but the truth is alimony (which is different from child support and fair distribution of assets acquired during the marriage) doesn’t mean the non-working spouse is entitled to live as high as the Kardashians. It’s that concept that is fundamentally anti-feminist.

Differences in How Men and Women Deal with Divorce

It's amazing to me how differently the genders handle a variety of different things.  Here is another area where differences are noted.  Divorce is an ugly and messy thing, no question about it.  Apparently males handle it better at the beginning and females better at the end.  I would think child support might have something to do with that, at least where the fathers are the ones paying the mothers child support, which is the thing I seem to hear most commonly.  Also certainly there must be a difference based on who wanted the divorce in the first place.  You would have to account for that variable when looking at the differences that seem to be based on gender.

I know of situations where the female started the divorce (and in so presumably "handled it" better than the man did, since it was likely a situation the man did not want), and the reverse.  And I've seen situations where the woman ended up better, and some where the man did.  I have yet to notice any real significant gender difference, although I have not conducted any true study of this.

What has your experience been?  Have you noticed gender differences in how divorce is handled?  There is one thing I have always noticed.  It is always a horrible, messy, painful thing.  Sometimes people are able to come out of it okay and are able to be civil.  Sometimes they can't.  I'm not sure it's a factor of gender.  It's as if the gender factor has morphed into a nullified state, and the differences that exist are based on variables outside of the morphed entity.  Perhaps this is one situation where there are not so many differences in how men and women handle it at all.


http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J087v14n03_03#.U-9iGfldUlc

"Gender Differences in Divorce Adjustment"

Gender differences in divorce adjustment were inves- tigated. It was concluded that there is sufficient evidence to demon- strate that males report less stress prior to the decision to divorce than do females, and that females fare better after separation and divorce than do males. It is argued that measures of divorce adjust- ment are either direct or indirect measures of self-esteem, and that gender differences in self-esteem exist prior to divorce and therefore account for gender differences in adjustment after divorce. It is fur- ther suggested that gender differences in the moderators of divorce adjustment (i.e., in attachment, initiation of divorce, and degree of social support) are related to gender roles and serve to reinforce gender differences in adjustment to divorce.



http://www.divorce-lawyer-source.com/faq/emotional/who-initiates-divorce-men-or-women.html

Who initiates the divorce more often, the wife or the husband?

One might think that 50 percent of the time, a divorce action is filed by the husband, and the other 50 percent of the time it’s the wife who begins the proceedings — or that maybe there’s a small percentage to subtract for the divorces that are somehow filed jointly by spouses who agree that they should part.

It also seems plausible that since the wife’s standard of living often declines after a divorce, women would be less likely to file a divorce action. Conversely, because men more often engage in adultery, it may seem that wives would be more likely to seek a divorce based on their husbands’ conduct.

The reporting of divorce statistics isn’t as complete as, say, the census data collected in the U.S. every ten years. However, several sources have arrived at pretty much the same answer to the question, “who initiates a divorce more often, men or women?”

Two-Thirds of the Time
It’s the wife who files for divorce in about two-thirds of divorce cases, at least among couples who have children. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the proportion has changed slightly over the years; for example, in 1975, approximately 72 percent of the divorces in the U.S. were filed by women, whereas by 1988, only about 65 percent were filed by women.

...

Politeness in Men vs Women

Interesting concept . . . to define politeness as a social function, which essentially plays into what seems to be a huge motivation for women, should assure that women would be considered generally more polite than men.  Perhaps this should be considered in a different context so that a more level playing field is established.



http://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/janet-holmes-politeness-in-mens-and-womens-conversation/

Holmes bases her research on Brown and Levinson’s idea of positive and negative face. She says that women use more positively orientated politeness and that men use more negatively orientated politeness.

Holmes suggests the reason for this is that women and men have different perceptions of what language is used for;

• Men use language as a tool to give and obtain information ( also referred to as the referential function of language )
• Women use language as a means of keeping in touch ( also known as the social function )
•  

As Holmes includes politeness, which is defined as “an expression of concern for the feelings of others”, with the social function, it seems that women are more polite then men.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255

Given the recent focus on depression after the tragic death of Robin Williams, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about the differences between men and women in depression.  But however depression impacts behaviorally, it is always important to get help.  Please see below for more information.

If you're feeling suicidal...

When you’re feeling depressed or suicidal, problems don’t seem temporary—they seem overwhelming and permanent. But with time, you will feel better, especially if you reach out for help.

Read Helpguide’s Suicide Prevention articles or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

For help outside the U.S., visit Befrienders Worldwide.

Differences between male and female depression
Women tend to:	Men tend to:
Blame themselves	Blame others
Feel sad, apathetic, and worthless	Feel angry, irritable, and ego inflated
Feel anxious and scared	Feel suspicious and guarded
Avoid conflicts at all costs	Create conflicts
Feel slowed down and nervous	Feel restless and agitated
Have trouble setting boundaries	Need to feel in control at all costs
Find it easy to talk about self-doubt and despair	Find it “weak” to admit self-doubt or despair
Use food, friends, and "love" to self-medicate	Use alcohol, TV, sports, and sex to self-medicate
Adapted from: Male Menopause by Jed Diamond

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/depression_men_male.htm

Fight or Flight or Make Friends

I was reading this article tonight, and I was interested in the different reactions exhibited in a high-stress situation that was based on gender.  The article mentions the "fight-or-flight" reaction that we all know about.  Apparently men tend to exhibit this reaction.  And interestingly, when Walter Cannon developed the categorization of "flight-or-flight", and when others conducted studies about it, the research was conducted using primarily male test subjects.  So the researchers got their information from the male test subjects and then generalized it to the entire population.  They were using data found by studying men and telling both men and women that this is the way you react.  Then as it turns out, women do not tend to act that way in the face of stress.  They have a very different reaction.  So if those researchers back in Cannon's day and beyond had used a more representative sample of test subjects, certainly more than just the "fight-or-flight" reaction would have been studied and discussed.

Interestingly enough, but perhaps not surprising, women tend to react in a much different manner.  While men tend to either run or fight, women try to befriend you and possibly talk you out of the situation.  The article goes into more detail about that, so I would encourage you to check it out if you are interested.


http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201203/gender-differences-in-responses-stress-it-boils-down-single-gene

Gender Differences in Responses to Stress: It Boils Down to a Single Gene

Fight-or-Flight vs Tend-and-Befriend

Published on March 17, 2012 by Dario Maestripieri, Ph.D. in Games Primates Play

You are walking alone in a dark alley late at night when, all of a sudden, you feel the barrel of a gun pressed to the back of your neck and hear a voice saying: "Give me your wallet or I will kill you." What do you do? The answer is: it depends on whether you are a man or a woman. If you are a man, you either run away as quick as you can or you turn around and punch the guy in the face. If you are a woman, you try to talk yourself out of the situation: "Are you sure you want to do this?" you ask the robber, or "If you put the gun away, we can talk about the situation and I will see what I can do to help you."

According to some psychologists, there is basic difference in the way men and women respond to social stress: for men, it's either "fight or flight" while for women it's "tend and befriend." Physiologist Walter Cannon - a pioneer of research on stress - argued in the 1930s that "fight-or-flight" is a universal physiological response to stress shown not only by all humans, but by animals as well.  This response is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system - the part of our nervous system that deals with automatic functions such as breathing. Under stress, this system is activated, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, hastening breathing, and otherwise readying you to face down your enemy or to run. Thousands of studies inspired by Cannon described and documented this response in a variety of species and situations. The vast majority of these studies, however, were conducted with males.

...

Stressed? Women Talk, Men Shut Up

We all have stress in our lives.  It may all be relative, but it definitely has an impact on all of us.  As we have heard before, women tend to talk about the fact that they are stressed more than men do.  It isn't necessarily that they are more stressed.  They are just more willing to talk about it.  So it seems the main gender difference is the willingness (or unwillingness) to communicate about the fact that we're stressed.  I find it concerning that men are less willing to talk about their stress.  Certainly bottling that feeling up cannot be good for anyone, least of all the man enduring the stress.  The release one would get from actually expressing one's feelings about being stressed has to be in some way therapeutic.  Does this mean that women cope better with stress than men?  Well, it's hard to say with this data.  It could be that men do not need to express their feelings, but women do.  I'll have to see if I can find any studies on that.  I think that would be interesting.

How do you handle stress in your life?  Do you express it or bottle it up?  Does that correspond with this study, that women express and men keep it in?  Does it change for you based on the situation or company or even environment?  Please feel free to share!



http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2010/gender-stress.aspx

...

• Women are more likely than men (28 percent vs. 20 percent) to report having a great deal of stress (8, 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale).
• Almost half of all women (49 percent) surveyed said their stress has increased over the past five years, compared to four in 10 (39 percent) men.
• Women are more likely to report that money (79 percent compared with 73 percent of men) and the economy (68 percent compared with 61 percent of men) are sources of stress while men are far more likely to cite that work is a source of stress (76 percent compared with 65 percent of women).
• Women are more likely to report physical and emotional symptoms of stress than men, such as having had a headache (41 percent vs. 30 percent), having felt as though they could cry (44 percent vs. 15 percent), or having had an upset stomach or indigestion (32 percent vs. 21 percent) in the past month.

...

Male vs Female Sports Fans

I am frequently amazed by how female fans are ignored by the big sports organizations.  They cater to males so much.  It seems they often assume that women don't like sports.  They are so wrong.

I have to say that things are changing very slowly, but it is definitely a lot better than when I was a kid.  But it seems that there is quite a long way to go.  It's not news, people.  Women love sports, too.

I found this old commentary that addresses this in part.  A couple of things in it were of interest to me.  One, is that boys and men watch a lot of sports.  I guess that isn't truly surprising, but to see it quantified like this makes me realize how much more men watch than women.  The second item was about women not getting as upset when their team loses or as jubilant as when their team wins.  Wow, that is totally not my experience.  I know a lot of women who get just as worked up as the men.  Maybe they move on because they have other things to do besides watch sports, but seriously, I think they get just as worked up as the men do.

How do you react when your favorite team wins or loses?



http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/7379853/espn-tries-solve-equation-women-sports-fans

COMMENTARY

Letter of intent

With its 'W' initiative, ESPN tries to solve the equation of serving women sports fans

Originally Published: December 22, 2011

By Kelly McBride | Poynter Review Project

...

Forty years after the passage of Title IX, the federal law that required schools to create equal sports opportunities for girls, the worldwide leader in sports has discovered that women might be interested? Yet the fact that no obvious competitors are trying to beat ESPN to this market suggests the entire sports media world is just as far behind the times.

Women make up just under half of ESPN's overall viewers, but they spend much less time actually watching sports on TV, said Kelly Johnson, ESPN director of media and promotion research. For example, the average man age 35-49 spends 227 hours a year watching sports on television. The average woman the same age spends just 92 hours a year watching sports on TV.

Yet the No. 3 television show this past January for women ages 18-49 was NBC's "Sunday Night Football," according to Nielsen, behind "Dancing With the Stars" and "Grey's Anatomy." Clearly there is a great opportunity for the network to grow its audience.
...

Here's what ESPN's research shows:

• Women have a different relationship to sports than men do. For men, understanding and watching sports validates their status as men. For women, the reverse is true: In spite of how much they know, women must constantly prove they are real sports fans.

• Men and women differ in the sports information they like to consume. Men look for nitty-gritty statistics and past performance history. Women like basic statistics and personal narratives.

• Men are overjoyed when their teams win and devastated when they lose. Women are happy with wins and disappointed with losses, but move on quickly.

• Nearly half of all men between ages 18 and 34 consider themselves serious or super fans; yet only one in five women in that age range see themselves that way.

• Although women watch more TV, men watch three to four times the number of sports shows compared to women.

• Men and women are both big fans of the NFL. But women also really like figure skating and the Olympics. Men like NCAA football and the NBA more.

• Female fans don't necessarily want to watch women's sports. In fact, more men than women watch the WNBA and the women's college softball tournament.

This is merely a simplified sampling of facts gleaned from volumes of research ESPN has on the topic of fans and their habits.

...