The 69-year-old Dutch “positivity guru”, who claims he does not feel his age, has begun a battle to be legally recognised as being 20 years younger, on the grounds that he is being discriminated against on a dating app. At a court in Arnhem (the Netherlands), Emile Ratelband claimed that he did not feel happy with his date of birth and compared his desire to change it to cases where people identify as transgender.
The Guardian, 8 November
The news about Emile Ratelband’s struggle to change his legal age appeared in the mass media at the beginning of November, but by the first few days of December, the same media outlets were reporting that the court had rejected Ratelband’s request. It must be said that this court decision has not particularly upset the 69-year-old, thoroughly energetic “positivity guru” and neuro-linguistic programming instructor. In any case, Ratelband is showing no public disappointment. On the contrary, in interviews, he claims it is excellent that he now knows what things he needs to pay attention to when thinking about an appeal. In other words, the show must go on.
A show seems to be one of the first thoughts that might come to mind when getting acquainted with this case. For where else could one find better material for a conservative television company’s weekend entertainment show or a news broadcast segment: a 69-year-old man in Holland wants to change his age because, after all, if you can change your gender, why not your age? Or, as Ratelband himself said to Piers Morgan on the morning show Good Morning Britain: “These days, you can do anything you want. You can be born as a little girl and then later realise: I feel like a man, I want a penis.” (Here, however, Morgan interrupted him, pointing out that such loose language is not acceptable on British television.) It seems that a large portion of people might get the impression that Emile Ratelband is quite simply, as they say now, trolling liberals. And exactly this view also appeared in the comments under the fragment of the aforementioned show posted on YouTube. However, that is most likely not true. Firstly, because Ratelband himself denies it in interviews. Secondly, if it were only a critique of certain views, then most likely the publicity already gained would be enough for Ratelband, and he would not be thinking about appealing the court’s decision. Of course, these considerations do not entirely rule out the trolling version, yet it is highly improbable. Therefore, let us assume that Ratelband’s intentions are serious. Still – what exactly are they? Let us think about it.
At first glance, the answer to this question seems quite simple: Emile Ratelband wants his year of birth changed in his passport. Currently, it says he was born on 11 March 1949, but he wants it to say he was born on 11 March 1969. Why? And here we encounter some difficulties. Ratelband cites several reasons, yet forming a coherent picture of his considerations is not that easy. “If I am 69,” claims Ratelband, “I am limited. If I am 49, then I can buy a new house, drive a different car, I can work more. If it says 69 on my Tinder account, no one answers me. If I am 49, then with a face like mine, I will be in a privileged position.” Alongside this consideration, in several interviews, Ratelband has also pointed out that his passport age does not correspond to his biological age, that doctors have told him he has the body of a 45-year-old man. (Here, someone might ask why, then, he wants his age reduced by 20 years, not 24, although, it seems, round numbers have their own beauty.) One might think this is the reason why Ratelband also claims that he does not feel appropriate to the age shown in his passport. In turn, it is precisely this feeling that, in his opinion, makes his situation similar to the situation of those people who want to change their name or gender.
On one hand, one could say that some of Ratelband’s considerations point to a significant problem – age discrimination. At the same time, it is not entirely clear whether the examples he mentions should be considered cases of such discrimination. Perhaps the practice existing in many countries, which stipulates that upon reaching a certain age a person must retire, can be viewed as discrimination. But what about banks being unwilling to lend money – it seems this is exactly what Ratelband is thinking about when he complains about his inability to buy a house and a new car? One would think that, in essence, a bank is little interested in exactly what number is in a passport; it might be more concerned about whether the person will live long enough to be able to pay back the debt. In turn, this capacity correlates on average with how much time has passed since the moment a person came into the world. In short, yes, our various opportunities decrease with age, but there is a basis to talk about discrimination only in those cases where these restrictions are unfair. Moreover, fighting against the discrimination of old people by reducing their legal age is about the same as fighting against gender discrimination by declaring everyone to be of one gender.
But what about Ratelband’s argument regarding his biological age? We do not know exactly what the doctors told Ratelband, but the so-called “biological age” is a concept that can cause various misunderstandings. Various calculators are becoming increasingly popular, with the help of which people are offered the chance to find out their “true biological age”. Likewise, there are calculators that can determine the biological age of individual organs, for example, the heart or lungs. These tools compare a person’s indicators regarding certain health risks with the statistically average or some ideal indicator for the respective age. Namely, if my biological age is greater than my chronological age, it means that one of the risk factors is higher than what is determined as normal. However, since different calculators use different indicators (so-called biomarkers) and since these indicators can be compared with both statistically average and ideal indicators, different calculators can show different results. Moreover, there is also no real clarity as to how accurate the predictions of these calculators are. This only means that “biological age” is a rather approximate value. And, since risk factors largely depend on such factors as physical activity, diet, and the like, biological age can be volatile. For example, in an episode of the BBC programme “How to Stay Young”, the story is told of Richard, a 49-year-old man with a sedentary lifestyle and excess weight. At the beginning of the programme, Richard learns that his body’s biological age is 92 years, but by the end of the programme, we learn that in just a few months, Richard has managed to reduce his biological age by a whole 13 years. This is possible because Richard reduces several risk factors – he starts moving more and gets rid of excess weight. What does all this mean in the context of Emile Ratelband’s story? Firstly, of course, that – provided the doctors are right – Mr Ratelband is in very good health. However, his considerations about biological age carry no weight when discussing his legal age, for the simple reason that both ages measure completely different things. For example, Emile Ratelband’s chronological age is the answer to the question of how many years Emile Ratelband has lived, whereas Emile Ratelband’s biological age is the answer to the question of how many years Emile Ratelband might still live? And it seems that the same can be said about feelings. Namely, however Emile Ratelband might feel, it does not in any way change the answer to the question of how many years Emile Ratelband has lived? Admittedly, in this case, additional difficulties are caused by the lack of clarity regarding the meaning of the phrase “not feeling appropriate to one’s age”. What exactly is meant when people say that they feel inappropriate to their age? (And is it not suspicious that people usually tend to say that they feel younger than their years, not the other way around?) Could it be something like a person first, so to speak, looks inside themselves, then looks at their passport and discovers that the number of years obtained in the first case does not match the second? Be that as it may, I manage no such thing. When I look inside myself, I do not find any feelings about a specific age there. A much more reasonable explanation seems to be that in this way people want to say that they can still do the things that younger people typically do. And, given that more and more people tend to live longer and tend to have better health, there are more and more such people who can say that they feel younger than their years. But again – that really has nothing to do with their legal age. And here emerges the essential difference between Emile Ratelband’s case and people who cannot identify with the gender assigned to them. Namely, belonging to a gender will be largely related to how a person feels, whereas legal age has very little to do with feelings and self-perception.
What we call legal age, of course, is a certain type of agreement. After all, in some sense, it can be said that Emile Ratelband already existed before 11 March 1949, yet for various considerations, we do not count a few months (though it is difficult to say exactly how many). Furthermore, cultures have existed and still exist in which precise age has no meaning; there, age is played by other signs (for example, whether a man is already growing a beard or not yet). However, in modern Western society, a series of legal norms are linked to age – from what age one has the right to vote, at what age one can enter into marriage, and so on. In many cases, we can ask questions about how justified one norm or another is, and there may be cases where, due to various changes, we can reach the conclusion that some norm is either unfair or does not serve the purposes for which it was introduced. However, in all these cases, we would sooner change the norm rather than people’s age. A legal system in which everyone could adjust their age to match norms would lose all meaning. By the way, this was approximately the court’s reasoning in the Emile Ratelband case as well.
Article first published in the January 2019 issue of the magazine Rīgas Laiks