My working hypothesis, based on observation of men I know well, is that men get weirder as they get older. Weirder than women do, anyway. Women lose their looks, men lose their minds.
Your working assumption is no doubt scientific as all get out, with a turbo-charged statistical analysis behind it.
Perhaps you have had the singular experience of observing a lot of men get "weirder," whatever that means, as they get older. Perhaps your observations are colored by the fact that you may gravitate to "weird" old men or "weird" younger men, both of which get "weirder" as they age.
The word "weird" is one I avoid because it is so lacking in meaning. I recognize it as an all-purpose passive/aggressive term of opprobrium whenever I see it used. By this measure, the word is a poor choice where use of a more straightforward insult would do. Accordingly, if you want to insult a whole gender, do so properly by saying something like "men become assholes [demented, dickheads, sexist, jackasses, simply fill in the blank with the intended insult] as they age" instead of hiding behind a weasel word like "weird."
The other problem with the word is the lack of tolerance associated with its vague message, i.e., the connotation that they user is in some "approved" mainstream while its object is somehow eccentric, uncool, not part of the "in crowd." Many geniuses, curmudgeons, and cranks are in this way minimized, their value and charms cheapened. In this sense, the word borders on fascism as it suggests that its user is an intolerant authoritarian who has no problem classifying individuals in some very rough pigeonholes that in no way account for individual differences. |
