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What's in a number?
Dec. 5th, 2018 11:12 am69-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.
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.
