SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the does-the-pensioner-want-to-repay-his-benefits-and-go-back-to-work,-too? dept.
In the quixotic battle against old age, some people use skin care and spin class.
That’s not enough for Emile Ratelband, a 69-year-old who feels like he’s in his 40s. The Dutch pensioner is asking a court in his hometown of Arnhem, southeast of Amsterdam, to change his birth certificate so that it says he took his first breath on March 11, 1969, rather than on March 11, 1949. The judges heard his case Monday and promised they would render a verdict in the next several weeks.
Ratelband sees his request as no different from a petition to change his name or the gender he was assigned at birth — and isn’t bothered that this comparison might offend transgender people, whose medical needs have been recognized by the American Medical Association. It comes down to free will, he maintains.
I want to be recognized as an alien trapped in an Earthling's body.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday November 09 2018, @01:07PM (9 children)
I logged in just to reply to some misnomers here. First of all, this doesn't appear to be a stunt or someone trying to prove a political point. He has reasons for this, which I'll get to. Second, to those saying he should give up his pension and other legal benefits of senior citizens, he is willing to do so. (The WaPo has paywalls, so here's a link [npr.org] to a source without them that explains all of this.)
It's disappointing to see so many ad hominem and kneejerk reactions to this suit, from people who clearly haven't bothered to learn anything about the case. Also, from a legal perspective, what matters is what makes legal sense according to precedent, not some political argument. Transgender folks have argued compellingly that there are elements to information that appears on official documents that perhaps should be challenged at times. (Frankly, intersex people have an even stronger case for all of this, but they don't have as strong a political lobby.)
Let's take a moment and realize that society emphasizes chronological age to an extent that far exceeds its predictive utility value. Agism is a real, serious discriminatory problem in the workplace. And age-determined BS restrictions pervade our society and often legal restrictions. We also make a lot of unsupported assumptions based on age. I first realized this when I had a kid. Every time we'd go for a doctor's visit, we'd get this list of things he was "supposed" to do at particular ages. I never paid much attention to it, until I realized that in the vast majority of things, my son could clearly understand things and perform tasks that supposedly were cognitively or physically "impossible" according to psychologists at certain ages. I have a friend who studies math cognition in children and actually observed my son because of his unusual understanding of numbers at very early ages -- but I never pushed my son on anything. I just didn't look at the "sheets" that told me what he was supposed to do and instead just showed him stuff that he was interested in. (In a few areas, he was "behind" expectations too. I didn't worry about that either.)
We have educational systems that continue this age-related segregation, for which there is little scientific evidence that it's the best method. "Skipping a grade" is very unusual most places, while "being held back" is a source of ridicule, rather than what it probably should be viewed as -- namely just allowing students the ability to develop at a reasonable personalized rate.
One of the few legal places where we actually have a court mechanism to commonly overcome assumptions about age is for late teenagers, where courts can grant "emancipation" to minors who demonstrate more maturity than their supposed guardians. But those same minors would not be successful in a bid to argue they should have a right to vote or have other benefits of older people, even though they may be a lot more mature.
I'm sure we've all met a teenager who is an "old soul" and is about as mature as a 40-year-old, while I'm sure we've also all met people in their 20s (particularly guys) who have the emotional and social maturity of an early teen. Yet we just accept that one's birthdate should be the presumed determinant for all sorts of legal, social, educational, etc. restrictions.
Why? Seriously -- start thinking seriously about it, rather than just having an ignorant kneejerk reaction. Is chronological age the best determiner for MOST people? Sure. Definitely it works well for the majority of people, just like traditional rules about heterosexual marriage and male/female binary for gender work for MOST people.
The question is whether we should place so much weight on one's birthdate -- which we KNOW is used for discrimination in many cases -- all the time.
The question isn't whether a year is an objective standard of measure. Most people have chromosomes that determine their biological sex (excepting a minority of intersex folks). Should those be the relevant measure for society, or should we accept a conception of "gender" that's more fluid?
Let's take this out of the political arena. As another example of a supposedly "objective" measure that has questionable "human" relevance, think of temperature. What humans sense is heat transfer -- which is why a coin feels "cooler" than a wooden table it is sitting on in the same room. We have correctives like "wind chill" and "heat index" to attempt to deal with effects like humidity and convection that influence heat transfer -- but really heat transfer is what we should be reporting in terms of human comfort. How many thermostats in the world would work better if we took such things into account? Yet we continue fumbling through with an objective measure that isn't generally the most relevant factor for humans. (One, I should note, that historically wasn't measured accurately or thought particularly relevant until the last few centuries.)
Back to birthdates -- they may be an objective measure, but of what? How long you've been breathing? Is that enough to justify their presumed use in 100% of cases to determine all sorts of aspects of people's rights, their educational trajectory, their social lives?
Now, to this guy. Personally, I think his reason for the age change sounds frivolous. If you read the NPR link I posted above, he basically says he wants to date younger people and post a younger age on social media to get more dates. He apparently wants to have more children, and finds agism to be an impediment.
Does that sound frivolous to you? It does to me. BUT, all of the recent questions about sexuality and gender have often been framed in terms of people's relationships (sexual, social, etc.), and that is precisely the basis this guy is using to make his argument. So if we declare his rationale to be frivolous, must we not also declare much of the concerns about sexuality from LGBTQ folks to be similar frivolous? I don't think LGBTQ people have frivolous concerns -- so maybe this guy's concerns should be considered more thoughtfully rather than dismissed summarily.
I'm not saying I agree with his lawsuit or his argument. But I think it's undeniable that agism is a serious element of discrimination and that we use birthdates for WAY too many things that they may not be an objective measure of. Whether this guy's lawsuit makes sense or not, he brings up an important issue about human (and humane) metrics of time, how we view each other on that basis, etc.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday November 09 2018, @01:22PM (3 children)
Oh, as a final note -- I'd just like to remind everyone that we used to have more confidence in age fluidity in terms of social roles than we do today. Teenagers used to be called to rule countries (with aides of course). Younger teens who wanted to get married were often allowed to. Children were assumed to be able to work when their bodies were able -- and in agrarian societies, that often meant starting help with chores at a young age. "Childhood" was invented in the 1700s, and "adolescence" as a period without responsibility was basically an invention of the 20th century.
Older people worked until they were able. Older people (and particularly older men) often continued to have relationships and have children as they were able. "Retirement" was also invented in the 20th century as a common experience, partly due to increased life expectancy. But age 65 was adopted as an age for "Social Security" effectively as insurance -- the word "insurance" appears in the original act -- that is, insurance against living longer than the expected life. Most people were still expected to work basically until they died. Now they often "retire" earlier.
I'm not saying it's all a bad thing (which it isn't), but we have many issues of age stratification and expectations that are effectively recent social inventions.
IQ also stands for "Intelligence Quotient," back in the time when it was thought proper to divide one's "Mental age" by one's "Physical age." Nowadays that idea is deprecated by psychologists, who apparently want us all to be properly segregated educationally and socially to develop at the "proper" rate.
A lot of it is based on BS. Again, that doesn't mean I think this guy should get to change his birthdate. But perhaps we should seriously consider why we place so much emphasis on it in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @02:04PM (1 child)
he wants to lie.
it is a fact that he was born in 1949, and he wants to say otherwise.
he can already do that. go to a bar, meet a woman, lie about his age. then, as the relationship progresses and the woman decides she wants to have children with him, he can always tell the truth (at that point the woman should be somewhat pissed off, but able to get over it). or he can keep lying until he's caught, I don't care.
the LGBT people say "I don't feel like a man even though I have a penis and testicles. I feel like a woman, and I want to be treated like a woman". This is not about facts, it's about how the person feels, and how the person wants other to act towards them. They want to have an official acknowledgment of how they feel.
if you really insist on making the comparison to "non-standard sexual orientatiton people", you should be comparing this guy to someone saying "you think you see a penis and testicles, I know you see a penis and testicles, but I want everyone to say that it's in fact a vagina, and act accordingly".
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday November 09 2018, @02:42PM
I'm pretty sure I repeatedly said I don't necessarily agree with this guy's lawsuit. I just think it raises questions about the importance we give to a birthdate and how it is pervasively used in records of people, often to their detriment.
Actually, no. He wants to change what's on his birth certificate. I don't know what the laws are in his country, but I assume it may be similar to the laws used in most states in the U.S. that now allow transgender people to change their sex on their birth certificate [wikipedia.org]. (Some don't even require evidence of sex reassignment surgery to do so.)
It is a fact that many transgender people were born with certain genitals and certain chromosomes. They are now able to change their birth certificates to state that something different happened. Again, I think this guy's claims are questionable, but your analogy is not quite on point given the ability of transgender folks to alter records.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:04PM
> we used to have more confidence in age fluidity in terms of social roles than we do today. Teenagers used to be called to rule countries (with aides of course). Younger teens who wanted to get married were often allowed to.
David Farragut, midshipman at 9, commanded ship at 12, comes to mind.
OTOH those were not teens who spent their years with TV and tablets munching on MSG food and drinking basically sugar. These kids have trouble with shoelaces.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday November 09 2018, @05:28PM (1 child)
You must be new here. Welcome!
Some advice you may not be aware of -- in order to keep up with the discussion, you should often delay reading TFA until after discussion (after which it's optional). Geez, much less doing independent research. What are you, intelligent or something?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:08PM
rules of the green site which this site also follow:
1. reading the title of the story before commenting is OK
2. reading the summary before commenting is cheating.
3. reading the article is anathema.
4. your comment has no memes?
5. ???
6. DON'T POST IT!!!
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ilsa on Friday November 09 2018, @06:56PM (2 children)
The reason why the opposition is so harsh is because it feels like a dogwhistle lawsuit trying to discredit transgender people. While your arguments regarding age-ism are true and worth discussing, the lawsuit doesn't seem to speak to them.
Especially when you consider the political backdrop: The Right has been seriously ratcheting up their rhetoric against Trans people, lead by the Orange Gropenfuhrer. Based on that, it is very hard to see this as anything other than a poorly veiled attack on Trans people.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @01:53AM (1 child)
You do realize this guy is in the Netherlands, not the USA, right? So it isn't a Trump thing. And did you bother to look up this guy, who is a minor celebrity and seemingly quite vain, just the sort of person who might want to pretend to be younger than he is??
No -- it must be a grand conspiracy to undermine transgender rights... Because no one in the world ever wanted to lie about their age.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Tuesday November 13 2018, @10:33PM
I actually double-checked after I made the post, but the point still stands.
If you knew anything about the world of transgender rights, you wouldn't be so quick to throw out terms like "grand conspiracy".
The fact is that Trump has done an exceptionally good job of empowering bigots all around the world. There have been incidents outside the US where the douchebag cited Trump as motivation for their douchebaggery. And nevermind the US sending their shit-stirring missionaries around the world, inciting hatred. Look at what happened with gays in Africa.
And heck, we haven't even gotten into US foreign policy yet. It's not at all hard to blame the US for tons of things happening all over the world.