Identity is a subjective thing. Nowadays, things like gender and nationality are becoming more and more fluid and flexible and are subject to change. Thanks to the many academic and not-so-academic discourses in circulation, people are now aware of all the grey spaces they do inhabit. Identity is definitely not etching in stone!
Now, you always find satires of this aspect of human existence. For instance, there is that spoof video of a woman that “identifies as furniture,” much to the dismay of her significant other who has grudgingly gotten used to it.
Let’s get to the headline: a man, Emile Ratelband, 69 years old, has sued to change his age to 49 because “he feels he's in his forties.”
His logic? People in his country change their gender then they should be able to change their ages as well.
A motivational speaker by profession, Ratelband states he has other reasons for doing this. For instance, he'd probably have an easier time dating, buying property or vehicles, and also getting another job.
On his Washington Post interview, he said that if he could lower his age, he'd have an easier time dating and not be branded as “outdated” or an old man as soon as people discover that he's 69.
And he isn't willing to lie on Tinder because then he would have to remember his lie daily.
The Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf, interviewed him too, where he said he feels like a paragon of youth and believes he also has the physique to prove it.
Another and one among the remotely logical reasons is that it'll help him please more clients as a life coach and motivational speakers. The majority of his clients are people who ask for his services for their younger employees. When he tells them his age, they get skeptical about his claim of knowing exactly how young people think and talk.
He cites his tip-top mental and physical condition as proof of his notions of age, and he gets them checked.
In case you are wondering, no, it isn't his first time with the court. Such an incident had also taken place when he sued to name his twin kids Rolls and Royce after the carmakers.
The battle he lost and the court made him name the kids France and Minou. To this day, however, he continues to call them by the names Rolls and Royce.
This time, he has pulled the move that trans-individuals use to change their birth certificates.
And he's agreed to go forward with a court-mandated psych-eval test too.
This kind of living, said Ratelband, is distinctly American.
He also cited Donald Trump as kind of a role model for this attempt of his, inasmuch, he thinks that Trump is honest, showing emotions on Twitter and breaking all presidential standards of the past.
To break the judges, he also gave them a motivational speech, which obviously did make them a bit more pliant.
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