69-year-old Dutch TV personality and "positivity guru" Emile Ratelband wants a kind of age-change operation, or procedure at least - to legally change his date of birth. He argues that if you can legally change your name or your gender, why not your age as well?

He's gotten a lot of media mileage out of his request and I'd say age jokes are something of a cultural cliché. One of the lab technicians who processes my bimonthly blood tests often asks my date of birth (presumably to ensure she's got the right patient sitting in front of her) and has been known to joke "I guess that hasn't changed since I saw you last." But in spite of all that, my understanding is that a legal change of birthdate is not totally unheard of.

When I worked in the library of Citizenship and Immigration, I was asked to do a literature search on precisely that: under what circumstances could the date of birth on a birth certificate be altered?

Throughout history, there have been people who genuinely did not know their exact birthday. I've known a few of them, too. But these days, it's difficult to access the services we need without official documents. And the documents we need can only be obtained if we can first produce the original document "proving" our existence - our birth certificate. I have a birth certificate, therefore I am.

If for whatever reason a birth certificate was not issued at or very close to the time of the baby's birth, it could become necessary for a parent or guardian or adoption official to offer a sort of best guess. Does this look like a 3-month-old or a 10-month-old baby? A ten-year-old or a twelve-year-old or a fifteen-year-old? Alternatively, a parent or other relative or friend could be deliberately lying to conceal some shameful (in this person's eyes) personal or family secret. Or to make the child school-aged or not school-aged, depending on the preference. Or to have them treated as a legal adult or a legal child. Then there's the whole "birth tourism" phenomenon.

But subsequently, it could become apparent that the original document must be erroneous. The "experts" would be called in to make a new determination and a new certificate with a new date of birth would be issued, and the old one cancelled.

Clearly that wasn't the case with Emile Ratelband. Rather, he seems to be saying that you're only as old as you feel. Is it really as simple as that? And how exactly are we to establish somebody's identity, or prove our own, if we're all identity-fluid?

If we allow for race on a birth certificate or other official document, we're accused at best of racial profiling or at worst of out-and-out racism and bigotry. Yet if race-fluidity is a reality, then why do people get so up in arms about, for example, performances in blackface? Or if we adopt certain practices or styles of dress that are statistically more likely to occur in people of other cultures or colours, why are we then accused of cultural appropriation? It seems diversity is only to be embraced in a restricted set of circumstances!

We're shaped by our experiences in life, some of which we may choose and others which may more or less be thrust upon us. Of course, we could travel a little farther down the philosophical road, debating the merits of fatalism, determinism and free will, but my concerns are of a rather more practical nature.

Last I heard, the Dutch court had ruled that Ratelband would not be allowed to legally change his date of birth. I don't know if the decision could be appealed.
Do you have to be indigenous to teach a course about residential schools? Is it disrespectful if you don't use an array of made-up pronouns to denote people who consider themselves to be outside of the "gender binary"? Can one legitimately "teach" creationism and spiritual beliefs? How about myth, legend and folklore? Would your answer be different depending on whether the course was taught in a faculty of sciences or social sciences or humanities?

Who do you think you are? Who do I think you are? Who do I think I am? Who do you think I am? If the answers to questions one and two are different, or to questions three and four are different, whose view should prevail? Or does either view have to prevail? If we enter into discussion or debate on the matter, is that automatically, ipso facto, disrespectful? Is one of us by definition harassing or oppressing or bullying the other?

In a thought-provoking article in yesterday's paper, Graeme Hamilton explores the question of "indigenization" on Canadian university campuses and whether it poses a threat to open inquiry. One of the critics he quotes is Mark Mercer, a philosophy professor at St. Mary's University in Halifax and president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship. Mercer is not against indigenization initiatives per se, but fears the tendency of some of them to push us towards a "culture of celebration". Mercer contrasts this culture of celebration with "a culture of disputation, a culture of critical inquiry and critical discussion" which he considers more appropriate to a campus environment. (As an aside, I think we tend to vastly overuse the term "culture", often to denote something far less complex or sophisticated than a real culture - think "rape culture" or "learning culture" or maybe even "corporate culture" - but that's a topic for another time)

In my view, this is an issue with tentacles extending far beyond indigenous studies. Think of the Black Lives Matter movement. Or whatever wave of feminism we're now into. Or the LGBTQetc. movement. And of course there's always Jordan Peterson and Lindsay Shepherd and the rough ride they've had over the pronouns thing. And how often is free expression at odds with public safety? Should Ben Makuch of Vice Media be compelled to hand over to the RCMP his communications with a self-described Canadian ISIL terrorist? Do loose lips sink ships, even in peacetime?

I must say that in most cases, I'm firmly in the freedom of expression camp. And I mostly consider my politics to be somewhat left-leaning. But no political stripe is immune from that irritating tendency to dismiss people with whom they disagree by saying things like "Ah, well - Jordan Peterson's one of those alt-right folks". We depersonalize others by categorizing and labelling them when the fact is that any thinking person is going to be a hybridization of views from across a vast spectrum.
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