If you think about it, Emile Ratelband, who wants to legally change his age, has a good point. Well, not “good,” but a legitimate point when the absurdity of leftist thought is factored in. If the government allows him to legally change his gender, why not his age? It’s discriminatory for the government to insist that biology is determinative. Ratelband identifies as a forty-nine-year-old man and the government in the Netherlands has no right to prevent him from doing so.
Obviously, my previous sentence is absurd. Of course Ratelband shouldn’t be allowed to legally change his age. I mean, that’s as absurd as being legally allowed to change your gender. Oh, wait. The new rules are hard to play by. And that’s really what’s at the heart of this.
Some kind of media personality in the Netherlands and an entrepreneur, Ratelband was told by his doctor that he has the body of someone twenty years younger than his actual age, which is sixty-nine. Ratelband ran with that and attempted to legally change his age to reflect the age he feels and now identifies as. Local authorities saw things differently and refused to allow him to change his birthdate from March 11, 1949, to March 11, 1969.
Sky News reports that the “young god,” as Ratelband refers to himself, claims, “You can change your name. You can change your gender. Why not your age? No where are you so discriminated against as with your age.”
In one sense, Ratelband has a point about being discriminated against because of age. He speaks the truth when he complains that being 69 negatively affects his ability to land employment and get a date. In his words, “When I am 69, I am limited. If I’m 49, then I can buy a new house, drive a different car. I can take up more work. When I’m on Tinder and it says I’m 69, I don’t get an answer. When I’m 49, with the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position.”
No doubt, Ratelband’s examples of age discrimination are all true. But, and at the risk of offending the AARP and having them denounce me, some age discrimination is needed. Because biological age matters (as does biological sex/gender). As the old colloquialism says, only death and taxes are certain. And the older we get, the greater our chance of dying becomes. Father Time always wins.
There are good reasons why young people generally do not want to date those who are almost seventy. There are good reasons why people who are almost seventy find that employers in certain job sectors are less interested in their resume than the resumes of those in their twenties or thirties. I’m in my forties, and even though I take better care of my body than I did when I was in my twenties, my twenty-year-old self has/had the physical advantage over my forty-year-old self.
I wish Ratelband well, if only because it will be funny to watch him potentially upset the transgender movement’s apple cart. On one hand, he’s right: if the government allows people to change their gender, he should be allowed to change his age. On the other hand, his ridiculous lawsuit may help expose the dangerous absurdity of the transgender movement.
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