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: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @06:00AM (23 children)
This fine young individual is hero... Just like Rachel Dolezal.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Friday November 09 2018, @12:11PM (4 children)
Or Native American Chief Elizabeth Warren
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @03:15PM (2 children)
You're a moron, she had the genetic testing done and yes she had an ancestor that was fully American Indian. She never claimed to be a chief.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday November 09 2018, @07:43PM (1 child)
A "homeopathic" indan more like it. Her ancestry is over 99% North European. She is more white than Richard Fucking Spencer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @09:49PM
The fuck is wrong with you people? Hateful disgusting humans.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @07:24PM
It would be suuuuuuch a shaaaame if you were to choke on one of your dog whistles.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday November 09 2018, @02:27PM (17 children)
Yes and no.
No, not like Rachel Dolezal, whose message is "If you say you are something, then you are that something." Let's try it--say it with me: "I am a venus flytrap." Did you become a venus flytrap?
Yes, on the other hand, because Ratelband is forcing the conversation in a very public way, to acknowledge that if the state recognizes that he "identifies" as being something he isn't (in this case, having an age that's only about 72% of its true value), then that doesn't make the state enlightened, or compassionate, or some such... It just makes the state wrong, clearly and unequivocally, and works to set some boundaries on the "everything is fluid" idea. Some things may change, but everything isn't fluid. This guy may be a genius.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @03:22PM (14 children)
Gender is a social construct and thus is subjective. A venus flytrap is a objective state.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Friday November 09 2018, @04:00PM (9 children)
No; there's more to gender than its social interpretation (which is no less important than its other facets for many purposes). Gender is also a (not strictly binary) objective set of X and/or Y chromosomes; gender is also a (not strictly binary) objective but not necessarily fixed combination of organs such as mammary glands, ovaries, and testes. Some parts of what we call "gender" are objective and immutable, some objective and alterable, and some subjective. That's the point.
As is the count of revolutions of someone's home planet around its sun during his or her elapsed lifetime ("age").
The point is that some things are objective and some are subjective--meaning that "everything is fluid and is whatever anyone says it is" is and always has been nonsense. Some things, sure. Everything, no.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 09 2018, @10:12PM (3 children)
There are cases of people being born with ambiguous genders.
There are zero cases of people being born with ambiguous ages.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday November 09 2018, @11:46PM
This is the difference that makes me say that he "may be" a genius, and not he is clearly one.
He is claiming that age is fluid.
If we reasonably define our terms ("age" as revolutions around the sun, "fluid" as might change in the future), then he's dead wrong, and it's pretty easy to spot that.
He is further claiming that age is fluid, "no different from name or gender." That's trolling.
There are people who claim, wrongly, that everything's fluid and reality is whatever you say it is. This is wrong, objectively wrong, yet many people who point it out are called intolerant or worse.
Our friend here is claiming an extension of that nutty idea by saying that age, name, gender are equivalently fluid. It's top-notch trolling; he's meeting their nutty wrong with his own nutty wrong, the wrongness of which is even obvious to them.
Now, if "everything is fluid" then so is age.
Age isn't.
Therefore, "everything" isn't fluid.
That's kind of a reset. Now that we've established that not everything is fluid, we can talk rationally about what things are objective and fixed, and what things are subjective and fluid--without instantly being called intolerant. (Otherwise, the pro-everything-fluid people are being intolerant here by claiming that, well, yes everything but *that* is fluid and is whatever some random person says it is.)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:32AM
There are people alive whose age is indeterminate, who themselves truly don't know.
(Score: 1) by DeVilla on Sunday November 11 2018, @12:42AM
It's interesting you say that. My dad took a stress test for a physical at work when he was 60. He was told the results showed a "physical age" in the 30s. In other words, his body was behaving like that of most people in their 30s. Many of his coworker who were in their 30s had results putting them at twice their age.
My dad was still 60 but depending on what you are using "age" to tell you, counting orbits might not be that useful.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Friday November 09 2018, @10:44PM (4 children)
BZZT. Wrong. Thanks for playing.
Gender and sex, while often related are *not* the same thing.
cf.:
https://www.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00376.2005 [physiology.org]
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-sex-and-gender-which-are-not-the-same-thing-influence-our-health.html [stanford.edu]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction [wikipedia.org]
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-differences/201110/sex-difference-vs-gender-difference-oh-im-so-confused [psychologytoday.com]
Have a nice day!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @11:35PM (3 children)
Can you show me something from the 1800s that demonstrates that the words gender and sex have different meaning please?
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday November 09 2018, @11:44PM (2 children)
Can you show me something from the 1800s that demonstrates that you're not a complete moron and troll?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 4, Informative) by requerdanos on Friday November 09 2018, @11:50PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @10:48AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @07:57PM (1 child)
I disagree. The name, description, and apparently genetics, of a venus flytrap is human defined. Therefore, it is a social construct. Therefore, we can all be venus flytraps if we want to. It's called species fluidity and you are a cruel, cruel anonymous coward for triggering me with your abusive 'objective' state comment.
I subjectively welcome being subjected as a subjective subject to our subjucating subjectivist truth overlords, with of course, some amount of subjectivity.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday November 09 2018, @11:54PM
The genetics of the living thing to which that name and associated description are predominantly applied are something that come from without humanity; aliens, gods, angels, or demons could as easily recognize the sequence of its genome as can we. Our society does not determine it, nor does any part of humanity. When we refer to it, we simply recognize it, or fail to, as the case may be.
That's not how that works. Your disagreement is noted, however,
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @11:33PM (1 child)
Except gender is not a social construct and until someone very recently started screaming otherwise. Gender and sex were the same and meant the same thing.
If gender is indeed a social construct then what exactly do we hope to accomplish by giving trans people hormones?
You are a fucking nazi for silencing trans voices and denying their existence. Erasing them is just the same as shoving them in an oven.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday November 10 2018, @01:24AM
For the first three sentences, I was right there with you. Not 100% agreement, perhaps, but together on essentials.
Then you kind of lost me in nazi voice oven shoving. What the heck???
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Friday November 09 2018, @07:06PM
Feed me, Seymour!
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Saturday November 10 2018, @12:40AM
"I am a venus flytrap." Did you become a venus flytrap?"
"No, but my best friend did"....Dr. Johnny Fever
https://78.media.tumblr.com/67e8bf6780b1d1a0b6f5f708f535fefb/tumblr_ok64gp0Gan1uppk2eo1_500.gif [tumblr.com]
https://www.bing.com/th?id=OIP.PCs2j15fan3a-Lxrba6U7wHaFf&pid=Api&w=448&h=332&rs=1&p=0 [bing.com]
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday November 09 2018, @06:04AM
That's easy: Get a job in another country. There are legal and not-so-legal ways to go about this.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 09 2018, @06:07AM (34 children)
Time is a quantitative standard, and the units of its measurement would make sense even with no human around to do the measuring. Entropy, which is what time was invented to measure, does not emerge from humanity the way gender does; indeed, humanity (and life itself) is an entropy-shuffling trick. A year is a year even if it doesn't feel like it. Now, there is a chance that cytologically this guy is a lot younger than his chronological age, but that doesn't change his chronological age, and this is a stupid, trollish "hurr hurr own da libs durrrp" stunt he's playing.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Friday November 09 2018, @06:35AM (13 children)
It's entirely possible that some variation of this could become "true" one day with anti-aging. You can only estimate a person's age from their appearance, DNA [soylentnews.org], skeleton, and other forensic clues, if you don't know their actual birth date.
If you introduce comprehensive anti-aging therapies, this could complicate things. We could see partial anti-aging where some aspects are treated while others continue to degrade. Or we could eventually see people permanently appearing to be in their 20s (or "newborn" on the cellular scale) regardless of their actual age.
You could see this applying to
genderbiological sex too. It is possible that improvements in biotechnology will eventually allow people to change their sex on command, including transforming their entire genome. Fully functional parts, swapping out mismatched bones, the whole package.None of this helps Emile Ratelband's case. Even if you could get a full bio sex change and get your relevant government IDs altered to reflect it, no amount of anti-aging (or naturally slow aging) changes the fact that you were officially born on a certain day. You need a time machine to change that, not anti-aging. And if you have a time machine, you don't need no stinking courts to tell you how to live. You could just take some tech back in time and rule the planet forever.
This is a stunt and the court should show him the door.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Funny) by takyon on Friday November 09 2018, @06:45AM (7 children)
TL;DR: "Age" can be fluid, but there is no such thing as birthdatefluid.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @07:59AM (4 children)
You and the other poster Azuki whatever are both bigoted pieces of shit. I hope you fucking die.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday November 09 2018, @08:14AM (2 children)
Care to explain why?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @08:19AM (1 child)
Shut up Nazi piece of shit
(Score: 5, Touché) by takyon on Friday November 09 2018, @08:32AM
Isn't that what you identify as?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Friday November 09 2018, @10:09AM
You will get your wish. Absent injury or illness, they will both die from that whole "age" thing you're denying.
Moron.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 09 2018, @11:59PM (1 child)
...there is no such thing as birthdatefluid.
Well it's something now: my new favorite euphemism for semen.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:56PM
Associating semen to birth is like associating gamblers to jackpot, though. The odds are thin.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by qzm on Friday November 09 2018, @07:56AM (3 children)
And now just replace age with gender.
See what a pig you are being?
Of course not.
Interestingly he has quite a solid point.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 09 2018, @08:17AM (2 children)
I covered gender in my comment.
Seems like you have no point whatsoever. But you can't see that.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @08:21AM (1 child)
Shut up Nazi bigot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @04:13PM
Someone is upset that people think he is a racist jackass.
(Score: 2, Funny) by fustakrakich on Sunday November 11 2018, @07:14PM
You can only estimate a person's age from their appearance, DNA, skeleton, and other forensic clues, if you don't know their actual birth date.
You can't cut him open and count the rings?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @08:02AM (1 child)
Fuck you bigot
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:10AM
You *wish,* you basement-crawling freak.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Friday November 09 2018, @12:36PM (5 children)
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday November 09 2018, @03:02PM (4 children)
Well, there are some major age-based government and business services to consider, at least in some countries. I'd love to declare myself legally 80 and start claiming fully-vested retirement, Medicare, etc. Yeah, retirement wouldn't pay out quite as much per year, but the several decades of additional payout would probably make it quite profitable overall.
Or in the other direction, I could have myself declared perpetually 12 and avoid eligibility for mandatory military service, being tried as an adult for my crimes, and not have to worry about statuary rape charges if I were into teenagers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 09 2018, @03:09PM (2 children)
Another indication to me that those programs probably shouldn't exist.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday November 09 2018, @04:17PM (1 child)
Why not? Retirement programs are generally profitable for everyone involved, so long as you're not allowed to game the formulas in your favor. Professional investors controlling a large pool of money can reliably get a much better return than private "investment hobbyists", and skim off some of the excess for their own profit.
Even social security wouldn't have a funding problem if congress hadn't "borrowed" almost 3 trillion dollars from its dedicated fund over the years. Repay that with interest and it would be in the clear.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 10 2018, @01:40PM
Except, of course, for the youth who get to pay for more services than they receive (due to demographic changes that increase the relative number of old pensioners and/or pensions promising more for decades than they can sustainably deliver).
Depends on the size of the pool and how well the conflicts of interest are addressed. Too big a pool and they aren't going to get a better return. This is a serious problem for the largest funds like PIMCO [wikipedia.org] or CalPERS [wikipedia.org]. But worse is the conflicts of interest between the professional investors and their customers. For example, CalPERS above is virtue [ai-cio.com] signaling [citylimits.org] at the expense of theirs. From the second link:
That's a really fine sentiment, but done with other peoples' money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @10:21PM
Sure, and that's part of what Mr. Ratelband is challenging. By virtue of his age, he is forced into retirement and lacks any standing on the job market. By declaring himself of lower age, he has more chances to land a job. For example, he has already stated in court that were the court to rule in his favour, he plans to suspend his pension until he has reached retirement age (again).
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @03:25PM (1 child)
> Time is a quantitative standard, and the units of its measurement would make sense even with no human around to do the measuring.
no it isn't. Humans do agree on corrections so often. try to run or even sync with an NTP server for fucks sake
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday November 09 2018, @05:36PM
I think you're disagreeing with the wrong part.
Time is a quantitative standard in this case, with age being the distance the Earth has traveled relative to the Sun since a person was born.
Its units of measure are approximations at best, but they're good enough for things like government work. Many of them would certainly make no sense without humans interpreting them according to our social constructs. Hours? Minutes? Seconds? independently meaningless. (But days, years? Not meaningless, and we measure age mostly with those.)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday November 09 2018, @06:33AM (7 children)
In truth, it is no different. A birth certificate documents certain objective facts: this person was born at this place, at this time, to these parents, has this biological gender, etc.. These are facts, and (barring error) not subject to amendment.
If you later want cosmetic surgery, hormone treatment, or to lie about your age - for good reasons or bad - that's on you as an adult. Your actual DNA and actual age have not changed.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @07:00AM
You make me laugh, you think facts are objective to a Lefty Marxist? AHAHAHAHAHA
AHAHAHAHAHAHA https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB2119 [ca.gov]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Blymie on Friday November 09 2018, @10:35AM (4 children)
https://www.ontario.ca/page/changing-your-sex-designation-your-birth-registration-and-birth-certificate [ontario.ca]
https://www.thespec.com/news-story/6699791-same-sex-parents-names-will-both-go-on-birth-certificates/ [thespec.com]
The above trend is very, very troubling to me.
Birth certificates aren't about politics, how someone feels, identifies, and so on.
They're about a record of birth. They establish estate law, the control parental support, with extreme cases like this:
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/doctor-sues-gay-friend-for-child-support-16-years-after-he-first-donated-sperm-to-her [nationalpost.com]
They are important for genetic history, in terms of pre-existing, family conditions. It is important for health!
It is important if you wish to get specific VISAs, like a UK Ancestry VISA as a Canadian... which requires a grandparent or parent born in the UK.
It is important to settle nationality issues with children. The US bizarrely taxes Americans, even when not living in the US -- the consequences can be serious!!
Yet here we have people playing with the entire birth certificate system like it's a *joke*.
Things like gender and name changes? Well, I don't mind those as much.. because you're at least not changing ancestral information.
But even then? Revisionist history is WRONG WRONG WRONG.
What likely really needs to happen here, is a proper split between 'birth certificate' and the creation of 'family certificate'. Or something. One for use in day-to-day life, one for historical purposes.
Because this is.. wrong.
(Score: 2) by Blymie on Friday November 09 2018, @11:32AM
BTW, I was thinking on this... and I recall someone saying that it was important to 'erase' all traces of alternate genders, etc. So the person would not be traumatized.
But really, this is absurd. There will always be some clue. Are you going to throw out all history that says otherwise? And even so, memory exists too. One's own.
I don't mind the idea I touted, a split so that there is a birth and a family cert. Something separate one uses day-to-day, that everyone does, separate from genetic info.
But... I fail to see the logic of trying to hide the truth, when there is no real way to do so.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 09 2018, @12:39PM (2 children)
Birth certificates may be important to those things, but why are those things important to us? Revisionist history is "WRONG WRONG WRONG" until someone uses that history against you.
(Score: 2) by Blymie on Friday November 09 2018, @02:46PM (1 child)
Well, at least where I am? People are looking at getting these things onto their certificates. They want to be demonstrated as , so while I agree that such records can be used against you?
This isn't much of case where I am. At least, the perception isn't.
I'll certainly agree that 'bad things' can happen from 'good intended uses' of records. Like Norway, town records, WWII + the Germans... indicating where you want to be buried, a "good thing" so everyone was happy... can be bad if you indicate 'Jewish cemetery' and then society is overthrown with anti-semantics....
(Score: 3, Touché) by Freeman on Friday November 09 2018, @04:48PM
I don't know, being overthrown by anti-semantics might be just fine. There's quite a bad history of anti-semitics, though.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @03:31PM
Incorrect terminology - they contain legal facts. When I was adopted, by BC was updated to list adopted father.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday November 09 2018, @06:52AM (36 children)
This guy is whatever age he thinks he is
Bruce Jenner is a woman.
Rachel Dolezal is black.
Sen. Warren is a Native American.
And we are commanded to believe these things are unquestionably true by the "Reality Based Community."
Hmm.....
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @06:56AM (1 child)
I identify as a Billionaire. Bellow is my bank account #, please fill it accordingly!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @04:53PM
The Nigerian prince will take care of it. You will be contacted via e-mail.
(Score: 3, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 09 2018, @06:57AM (33 children)
*Caitlyn* Jenner is a woman, just not a ciswoman, and she's a complete waste of oxygen for reasons that have zip to do with her gender. Rachel Dolezal is a race-baiting sack of shit. Warren is by DNA part native american, but the tribes have more stringent criteria than just blood.
0/3, try again never.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @07:06AM (1 child)
Yeah, don't ever talk about Caitlyn's penis like that! But you should toss her of the building, and stone her below for having Conservative believes.
Rachel Dolezal is Black by your idealogy's stringent "I feel like it" criteria.
Elizabeth Warren is more White than me, and I'm 100% of a certain Caucasian ethnicity that migrated from Euroasia a 1000 years ago. Better read up on the sham of a test she took. It actually uses 0 Native American DNA for comparison AHAHAHAHAHA.
Now listen, we know you lost your mind, you can stop remind us all the damn time.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:40AM
Wait, everyone else is telling me she cut the thing off. Which is it? This is, like, Schroedinger's Ding-a-ling here.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @07:12AM (1 child)
>> Rachel Dolezal is a race-baiting sack of shit.
Do you also consider other individuals self-identifying as black like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to be race-baiting sacks of shit, or just Rachel Dolezal?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Pslytely Psycho on Saturday November 10 2018, @12:52AM
False equivalency, Neither of them started out life as a little blonde girl.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @08:10AM
>*Caitlyn* Jenner is a woman
You're on fucking drugs if you think a man who chops his dick off is anything but a man without a dick.
>Rachel Dolezal is a race-baiting sack of shit
Fair enough.
>Warren is by DNA part native american
I am more related to Ghengis Khan than Elizabeth "1/1024 Pocahontas" Warren has any right to claim to be native american. She is a fraud and fraudently claimed benefits intended to help *real* Natives. You are the sack of shit for condoning that kind of shit. Fuck you.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday November 09 2018, @08:44AM (14 children)
DNA-wise, she's closer to the black race than a is transwoman of having the female sex.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Friday November 09 2018, @10:38AM (8 children)
There is no such thing as "the black race." Regardless of melanin content, we are *all* humans (taxonomically: Homo Sapiens).
"Race" is a social construct, with no basis in biology. One can understand why, in the past, people may have thought that there was a biological basis for such constructs. However, we have this thing called "science" which has fully debunked that destructive mythology.
What's more, comparative genetic studies have shown that differences *within* ethnic/geographic populations are generally greater than those *between* ethnic/geographic populations.
Don't believe me? Check out the research for yourself. Here are a few starting points:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics#Population_genetics [wikipedia.org]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/ [nih.gov]
https://genome.cshlp.org/content/12/6/844.full.html#ref-54 [cshlp.org]
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/ [harvard.edu]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday November 09 2018, @11:32AM
Ok, I'll take "race" back and table "phenotype".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Friday November 09 2018, @12:14PM (1 child)
The scientific community disagrees. For political reasons maybe not to loudly, but ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @07:23PM
I don't see a link there. I'll assume you're employing Poe's Law. I mean, the only other alternative is that you're a fucking bigot! Is that the image you want to project?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday November 09 2018, @12:22PM (4 children)
That's innumeracy at work. The std deviation of a group is wider than the difference between two groups implies virtually nothing. Somehow the graphs having some amount of overlap means something, although usually never whats implied.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @04:17PM
You just can not let the truth outshine your eugenics h7h? Truly a nazii bigot dinosaur you are. Get fucked racist garbage person.
(Score: 3, Touché) by NotSanguine on Friday November 09 2018, @08:34PM (2 children)
Actually, it's not.
Look at the research. I presented several links which specifically address that issue.
Where is the *actual* data and research that supports your claim? You don't have any? There's a shocker. Not.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:05AM (1 child)
Those links say intra-race variation exceeds inter-race. They do not say that inter-race means do not differ. Inter-race means do often differ, canonical examples being pigmentation, lipid distribution, hair/less patterning, hair protein kinkiness, height, and even intelligence (Ashkenazi jews).
Now, the **cultural construct** of white/black races is useless, because the genetic pools those describe are grouped pretty tightly around melanin genes, which don't code for much else, and melanin doesn't impact development/life tooooo much apart from some cancers. So the *cultural definitions* of race are very often utterly useless. But population subgroups exist, and some of those are culturally defined as 'races', and eg. Andean populations have different phenotypes, beyond just skin colour, than Inuit, or than Maasai.
Argh. I hate to do this, ie. to argue against someoe who I think is 'more right', but you have to be right for coherent reasons or you don't represent ideas well.
So let's repeat: intra-race variation exceeds inter-race, but doesn't disprove inter-race, which has been demonstrated on some axes between some populations, using the socially common understanding of 'race' which is not the biologist's (H.Sapiens). Further, developmental and epigenetic factors (food security, mental wellbeing, social environment, clothes and shelter, parental exposure to stress/alcohol/formaldehyde/mercury?/lead?/etc) almost certainly provide much larger driving forces in any instance except pigmentation than 'race.' But it's wrong to say Mbena and Maasai have the same expected outcomes in every way.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:36AM
I'm not sure what point of mine you're trying to rebut.
1. I absolutely did *not* say "that inter-race means do not differ" Rather, what I said was that,
a. "race" is not a valid scientific concept;
b. geographically separated populations do differ. They just do so less (on the whole) than localized groups. In fact, you paraphrased my point when you said "intra-race variation exceeds inter-race."
2. I don't subscribe to unscientific definitions as they are too squishy for my taste. For example, the vernacular use of the term "theory" doesn't comport with the scientific use of that term. As such, while I do agree with the premise that geographically or culturally isolated (in the interbreeding sense) population groups are different (this is both empirically and intuitively obvious), there is only one "human race."
3. We appear to be in violent agreement. If you really want to argue semantics, please do it with someone else. I'm not interested in doing so.
All that said, you expressed our (as in collective human knowledge) understanding of how geographically separated populations can and do differ, including genetic, societal, cultural, economic and epigenetic factors quite nicely. Well done.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Friday November 09 2018, @01:14PM (4 children)
Maybe, maybe not. There have been reports of women with XY chromosomes bearing children. Ditto with men with XX chromosomes fathering children.
Turns out that human sex and gender are really fucking complicated.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 09 2018, @02:15PM (1 child)
Citation please.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Friday November 09 2018, @05:37PM
Found this, pretty interesting: https://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask352 [thetech.org]
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @07:41PM (1 child)
Only at the edges, it is pretty straightforward for most.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:08AM
That's what you'd expect out of a natural process, isn't it?
My view is that the "it's a binary!" and the "it's a spectrum!" folks are *both* right, but only seeing part of the story each. Nature "intends," please note scare quotes, for there to be a binary. Nature is also not 1) intelligent, 2) perfect, 3) even necessarily right to follow. And because nature is imperfect, you get fuzziness, clustering around the extremes, and a few cases of outright inversion.
Where the left goes wrong on this is the idea that what we have is a perfectly flat power distribution from one side to another. No, we don't, and if we did, we would not see almost universal gender preferences across cultures and races and time periods, and we'd see waaaaaaaay more ambiguous, "gender-fluid" androgynes than polarized trans* people.
So what we really have here is a lot more advanced of a concept: it's a bimodal distribution with two extremely sharp peaks at either end and a wide, flaring "bathtub" curve in the middle. That doesn't fit in a sound byte, though, so neither side likes it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Friday November 09 2018, @11:39AM (10 children)
I identify as the love child of Azuma Hazuki and Runaway....can I get the courts to legalise that FOREVER!
*Ducks.... severely*
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Friday November 09 2018, @11:50AM
I knew there was something splendid...and wrong about you.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 09 2018, @04:44PM (8 children)
Only if I get full custody rights. I don't want that son of a bitch poisoning your mind with his...well, everything about him.
Okay, not-very-funny joke over. This is another of those "I identify as an attack helicopter" memes, which were both missing the point and about as amusing as a rubber crutch to begin with. I don't "get" the whole trans thing, but I've got trans friends and every single one has improved after transition. That alone would be enough to convince me to support trans rights. It is a false equivalence to equate that with, for example, someone disputing the chronological age he's at, which as I said upstream has nothing to do with humans at all except insofar as we've invented a way of measuring it.
And wow, there sure are a lot of flaky, triggered snowflakes on this thread. Oddly, it's the ones who talk the toughest, and they seem scared of Caitlyn Jenner. She doesn't scare me, at least not unless she's driving and I'm within about 100 feet of her.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday November 09 2018, @10:16PM
I think this whole 'change muh bird-day' thing is an attention getter:
as an aside, I think of myself as, at least mentally, around 35 years old. My body, on the other hand, likes to remind me i'm over 50. If i could legally change my body to a 25 year old one, i'd do it in a heart-beat, lol.
My brain says "Let's really go at the grass cutting, the garden, the job": my body says, "Yeah... fuck you, Grandpa."1
1 I am not a grandpa. Yet.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @10:28PM
That's a mischaracterization of this case though. He is challenging the societal consequences of said age more than the age itself (forced retirement, zero standing on the job market, insurance premiums). Yes, I'm sure he's looked at a few pages in the transgender playbook and playing them too. But that doesn't make him wrong, and I actually think it's quite ageist to dismiss his troubles with a "tough, suck it up" attitude as some seem to do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @11:40PM (3 children)
Lol!!! like we're supposed to think you're not trans.
Seriously I didn't even know you were trying to claim otherwise.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:46AM (2 children)
Oh for heaven's sake...why do you think I'm trans, because I defend trans rights? By that "logic" I'm also black because I defend civil rights, and also a male baby because I'm against circumcision, and ALSO a cat because I donated time and money to the local animal shelter.
Or is it that you think I'm not demure and passive enough to be a woman? Leaving aside any speculation that gay women might have masculinized brains, if you think *I'm* bad, you should see my sister. My ramrod-straight sister, who would implode on herself and pop back out as Freddy Mercury if she liked dick any more than she actually does. I at least do the research before going off on a rant; she's far less well-read and seems to take it as a point of pride not to consider the opposition's side...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @10:18AM (1 child)
So, this sister of yours... is she seeing anyone?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:57PM
Last I heard yes, though he's a bit of a manbaby. I've been politely advising her to drop him for a while now, but it's her decision in the end.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday November 10 2018, @12:40AM (1 child)
I don't think it's that; it's far more subtle and approachable conversationally. There does not appear to be an element of mocking anyone. Though there is certainly some overlap in the positions.
People who discover themselves to be transsexual often have a ton of problems** and suffering only to have that just added to by treatment from others who are not capable of understanding the positions of anyone who is not just like themselves. People with problems should get nothing but support.
No, this age-trolling is not equivalent to the rights of people who need help or at least understanding and compassion.
Even though people with problems should get nothing but support, life isn't all one thing or another, and often, people with problems find that they, for whatever reasons, make more problems for themselves. Some people who are trans, for example, and by no means most nor all, might overcorrect for bias against them and claim that not only is gender not a solid, unchanging measurement, but everything's whatever anyone says it is.
The former is absolutely correct*; the latter is just nonsense, wrong as wrong ever could be. There is, as I said of something else above, some overlap, this time between people who are trans, and people who say that pretty much any part of reality is whatever you say it is.
This case actually can help communication by serving to remind all parties that some things are fixed, and some things are not. This counters both the "everything is fixed and so is your gender" intolerant-and-wrong people, and counters the "everything is fluid and reality is whatever I say it is" people, who are wrong, and who are also offensive, albeit in an intellectual way rather than an archie-bunker way.
It can encourage people to put down "all" and "everything" and "always" and "never" and accept reality, and work from that. That sure seems to need doing.
-----
* Sure, your DNA with its XX, XY, YY isn't going to change in most of your cells, but that's only one thing that goes into gender, and not always the most important one at that. Other things that go into gender, such as what gender-related equipment one has, is relatively stable but can change. And one's self-identity is what it is regardless of one's DNA and equipment. So though parts are unchanging, gender itself isn't, and it's perfectly normal for people who experience a mismatch on these three factors to want to resolve it. Since it seems that most people match on all three (all three indicate the same gender), most people are in a position to have trouble understanding that issue without compassion. Sadly, someone saying "reality is whatever I say it is", even if they strongly-but-wrongly feel that's the case, makes it worse (turns n problems into n+1).
** For some people, their appearance and the appearance of their baby genitalia at birth may have been ambiguous, and they may have had parents and doctors make some decisions for them (modifying the genitalia to more closely match a particular gender, for example, and then enshrining that artificial choice socially and legally). If the decision matches up with the intrinsic self-image, then great--dodged a bullet there. But if it doesn't--then what insane and unnecessary problems compound on top of any initial ones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:25AM
> people with problems should get nothing but support
until their problems extend beyond themselves. Psychopath dumping mercury into the stream can be physically stopped from destroying lives and nature, even he resists.
The line is hard to find. What about someone advocating violence, but not enacting it? What about dogwhistling? What if you don't know it' s dogwhistling? (One of my siblings' favorite players in the 90's and 00's was #88, he only recently got told he's gotta stop wearing his favorite ratty jersey!)
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Friday November 09 2018, @04:48PM (1 child)
To quote Ted, there's no such thing as girls with dicks, only guys with tits.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Friday November 09 2018, @05:39PM
Says someone who's never been to a (good) drag show!
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.