“Age-fluidity”: Good news for paedophiles?

If Sex Is Fluid, Why Isn’t Age?

Emile Ratelband, a 69-year-old motivational speaker in the Netherlands, has petitioned a Dutch court for permission to change his legal age by altering his birth certificate to show he was born 20 years later than he really was — to legally make him 49 rather 69 years old.

Ratelband told the Washington Post:

We can make our own decisions if we want to change our name, or if we want to change our gender. So I want to change my age. My feeling about my body and about my mind is that I’m about 40 or 45.

As the Telegraph reported:

Mr Ratelband was born on 11th March 1949, but says he feels at least 20 years younger and wants to change his birth date to 11th March 1969.

Mr Ratelband said: “I have done a check-up and what does it show? My biological age is 45 years. When I’m 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.”

So, why is Emile Ratelband wrong?

The judges in the Netherlands will probably rule against him. But if they believe that sex has no objective reality, that the sex on one’s birth certificate can be changed, on what grounds can they rule that the date of birth cannot be changed?

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The answer is that there are no such grounds. But only for the time being — because the day the New York Times publishes an article titled “The Idea That a Person’s Age Is Determined by Their Date of Birth Is Not True,” age, too, will become subjective.

Vintage wrote:See what happens when you get too liberal.

eddie wrote:

Vintage wrote:See what happens when you get too liberal.

I do think it can be dangerous to be too “open-minded”. There’s a saying “If you’re too open-minded you can let the wrong stuff creep in”