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About the author:
Descended from old English money, Vidicon was raised by spiny echidnas in the mountainous rainforests of the North American Southeast. Lured back to society by time-traveling gray/reptiloid alien hybrids posing as renegade Jesuits, he has managed to maintain his outsider's perspective and an appetite for crunchy insects. Today, Vidicon is a world-class synchronicity surfer and an unlicensed quantum mechanic. He has a fourth-degree black belt in weird.
About his bi-weekly column:
Tales from the Third Lobe are the unfocused meanderings of the World's Smartest Moron. Topics range widely over the sciences, religion, philosophy, technology, modern culture, mysticism, Vidicon's personal history and viewpoints, and whatever pissed him off in the media last week.
View all articles by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. "Vidicon" Xalieri, 2HC Columnist...
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The Silverback TransformationI'm enough of a pro-feminist to start worrying beforehand about the gender-inequity in the subject I'm addressing, but that in itself is a kind of salvation. Feminism is a kind of celebration of the things that make women women—things to be held up and acknowledged rather than hidden away and snickered at. Feminism, as I see it, includes the concept that society has a built-in masculine bias that needs countering by raising up the mysteries of women and ensuring that those mysteries go side-by-side with their masculine counterparts, and that whatever advantages women have over men be acknowledged as such.
Sometimes I stay out of the gender tar-pit by being a neutrist. (This has nothing to do with advancing the rights of nutria, which, by the way, make a mighty fine sausage. Try it.) By neutrist I mean one who acknowledges that gender differences are pretty damned irrelevant with respect to most details of society, especially the ones I write about most: politics, religion, career choices, human rights, etc. I also try, by staying neutral in my language, to acknowledge my belief that gender identity is also a matter of choice. You can choose to be a male, or a female, or both, or neither, in any combination and according to whatever contingencies appeal to you. Biology dictates only a few of those choices, and many of those are arbitratable by modern medicine—at least for the wealthy. I consider gender-choice a fundamental freedom, not biologically dictated package deal.
Some of those choices are dependent upon society, depending on your society. Stages of development are accompanied by various and sundry rituals that strip away from one one's juvenility and make one a Woman or a Man or sometimes an Other, frequently by slow degrees. The First Day of School, bar/bat mitzvah, the onset of puberty, the bestowal of a set of car keys, graduation, marriage, the birth of a child.... These are the kind of things we get in the USA. Ours aren't so formal as, say, killing a lion solo or running three times across the backs of a herd of cattle or whipping contests or sticking hands in gloves filled with stinging ants or anything else which pretty accurately warns and describes what adult life is going to be like from here on out, and sometimes that's a distinct disadvantage. We get age-freedom in exchange for an occasionally crippling kind of ambiguity. We can continue to act like children for as long as we like—until it gets us killed or thrown in jail. But freedom is freedom. I'll take it.
However, biology still curtails that freedom a bit. The onset of menstruation and menopause, while somewhat controllable with drugs, still keeps a pretty firm grip on when women can choose to bear children. But since I am not a woman, pardon me if I shy away from addressing the female mysteries. It's outside my field of specialty. I should—and will—stick to the male mysteries.
There is a particular male transformation that is hardly ever addressed. It is strictly biological in nature, although it is triggered by sociological (possibly pheromonal?) phenomena. Some males never go through it, no matter how long they live. Genetic makeup may dictate to what degree a male is susceptible to the transformation. Other candidates for factors might be one's internal psychology, one's standing in the various pecking orders, even one's diet or one's love life. I would love to see any studies that have been conducted on humans concerning this transformation. Up to now, all I've seen are treatments dealing with "lesser" primates—baboons, gibbons, chimpanzees and gorillas. But it certainly happens to humans. It's happening to me.
When it was first observed in chimpanzees, for instance, naturalists were thinking that they were possibly looking at different species. Chimps of the same age were quite physically different. One form was still juvenile-looking: slender and smallish and gracile. The other form was thick and bulky and jowly and had different coloration and hair-growth patterns. A couple of swift darts in the tush, a few blood samples later—nope, same animal. With a few more patient years of watching, they could even observe the former changing into the latter.
Of course, it had been happening to human males for as long as we can remember, but for some reason we were still surprised to find it in chimps and gorillas. Go figure.
See, at some point a biologically adult human male may undergo a further physiological transformation. This can happen anywhere between the ages of twenty and seventy, as rough benchmarks. Modern western males tend to fight this transformation, disguise its effects, do whatever they can to continue to look young and gracile, but in the end it's futile. The hair leaves the top of one's head and thickens around the back of one's head, around one's neck, and down one's back and shoulders and chest like a lion's mane. Muscle density increases somewhat, the chest thickens, the voice deepens a bit more, and overall bulk increases along with general body hair. All over, the hair turns gray or silver in individually unique patterning. Eyebrows turn into tufted crests and hair grows from the points of the ears. Aggression increases, patience decreases, and there is a nearly completely chemical boost in confidence.
It sounds positively lycanthropic, doesn't it?
Some of these things happen to women, too, after menopause. Probably the same "male" hormones are involved. Or perhaps the counterbalancing "female" hormones retreat. From having lived with my mother when she went through her "change of life", I believe I'll let the lycanthropy comment stand.
The true mystery is why it happens to some men and not to others. The theory goes that the transformation is less likely if you live in an environment with other "silverbacks" around—thus the potential social and/or pheromonal factors. But another just-as-important mystery is why most men fight the transformation and refuse to embrace it. Is it happening to more men that we think it is due to the success of hair dyes/replacement treatments and diet and exercise plans?
Hollywood and Madison Avenue scream, "Stay younger longer!" But where exactly would they like us to arrest our development? Before we turn into territorial, aggressive, monstrous, powerful, confident, and virile beasts? Are we supposed to buy that women (or, should our tastes run in that direction, men) don't find that sexually attractive? Or is it just that power scares people, ourselves included, and we'd prefer to have less of it waved in our faces? Is it that visible signs of aging means we're just that much closer to death? That a visible transformation means we'll have to start acting our age? That the transformation signals yet one more thing that is outside of our capacity to control?
Choose your poison. That's what freedom means.
Perhaps it's easier for me because my self-image has never depended on looking young and sleek and classically attractive. Maybe I'm looking forward to silver stripes at my temples and in my beard, lynx-tufts on my ears, and Thufir Hawat eyebrows as marks of age and distinction. Maybe these things will prepare me better for a seat on some corporate board or a rest-of-my-life-long career in politics or professordom.
Regardless, I'd— Hey, you! Either come pick fleas outta my eyebrows or get offa my lawn!
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Vidicon needs a tranquilizer dart in the tush.>/i> |
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Pages: 1 of 1 The Silverback Transformation
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