
Man, 69, loses legal battle against temporal reality in effort to become 49 - ilamont
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/03/man-loses-legal-battle-against-temporal-reality-effort-become/
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schappim
For a second I thought I was reading The Onion.

I do however like the philosophical nature of the question: If people can
change their gender based on they feel, why can’t they change their age?

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tdb7893
"Gender" is a social construct but while "old" or "young" is a social
construct "69 years old" isn't really.

~~~
outside1234
People are male or female by genetics and have a personal perception of
themselves as something other than that gender.

I can totally see how someone might be 69, but still running triathlons, and
want to identify with an effective age that is 49.

I fail to see how these two cases are different.

~~~
EpicEng
Age is determined by trips around the Sun and sex is determined by genetics.
Gender, by definition, is not determined by sex. You are conflating sex and
gender, but they are not the same thing. You can feel like a man, but be
biologically a woman. You can feel like 40 at 70, but you're still 70.

gen·der

/ˈjendər/Submit

noun

1.

the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and
cultural differences rather than biological ones).

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mindgam3
+1 for Team Reality finally winning one. Feels like we’ve been getting shut
out all season. A small victory to be sure but even those are worth
celebrating in these dark times.

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prossercj
This made me laugh, but unless I'm mistaken, he's quite serious. Luckily,
however,

> An Arnhem court ruled in favor of the fourth dimension.

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ASalazarMX
I wonder if he'll be remembered as a visionary of the age dysphoria trend: "I
was born 69 years ago and identify as myself born 49 years ago."

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maerF0x0
This brings up a valid point about health technology and "biological age". As
(usually wealthy) people are increasingly able to delay the onset of
senescence, the law is going to have issues with time defined "age" which
represents capability.

For example having to retest every 5 years maybe unneeded if people are living
to 125 and remaining healthy along the way.

~~~
o_____________o
Agree and was thinking that in the future, this snarky article will seem in
poor taste, representing a time when fixed identity began unspooling.

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basicplus2
He clearly has not thought through the consequences..

eg

turns up to pick up rented car..

Goes to bank to arrange a bank loan..

Tries to sell or buy land.. or anything for thar matter..

Tries get on an international flight...

Result..

sorry sir there is no way you are 49 years old you have obviously stolen
someones identity just wait here while i call the police..

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LinuxBender
If he _looks_ as young as he feels, then he doesn't need to legally change his
age to say he is 49 on Tinder.

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mikelyons
That's a violation of the terms of service.

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LinuxBender
Probably so. Do most people on Tinder abide by the ToS? If he looks 49, who is
going to report him for a violation? If someone does report him, how hard is
it to make a new account?

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mikelyons
It's also a violation of Facebook's ToS

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LinuxBender
Is the ToS a binding and enforceable contract in your country?

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throwawaywtfvjk
people arguing, that temporal reality is absolute. what do you think about
daylight savings?

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nkkollaw
I don't see why one can change sex, but not change age, race, etc.

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Spooky23
It's an issue of fact vs expression/perception. There was a moment in time
when you started breathing outside of your mother's womb. There is usually a
witness and time is a one-way metric.

Gender expression is a different, more complex matter. There has always been
"grey" areas from an anatomy perspective and I think there is consensus that
other factors affect this as well. Race, depending on context, is even more
complex. Is it about nationality? Geography? Skin color? Religion?

Most things about people don't fit in neat boxes. Age is not one of those
things.

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tboyd47
Really? The idea of age being a publicly known and verifiable fact is
completely specific to highly developed Western cultures. Many places in the
world attach no importance to date/time of birth and do not record it.

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Spooky23
The Netherlands, the country in question, is a highly developed western
culture.

Whatever adjudication process that exists in a culture that doesn’t care about
date of birth would probably reach a different judgement.

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excalibur
> Time is a constant.

Verifiably false, but pedantic.

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nkkollaw
Scientists can prove someone's gender by looking at his/her chromosomes, can't
they (if you take exceptions, there are people born with 4 arms, or even 2
heads: was a new species created, or it's just very rare exceptions?)..?

If you abandon common sense and gender is a construct, race and age should be
a construct, or however you want to call it, people should be able to change
it.

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eridius
No they can't.

Gender is a social construct. But they can't tell that for physiological sex
either. Humans have a whole host of secondary sexual characteristics, most of
which are more important than genitals in determining how other people
categorize them. But even ignoring all of that, chromosomes don't strictly
determine what sex characteristics someone ends up with. AIUI a lot of this
has to do with the presence or absence of a testosterone wash in-utero (which
itself is supposed to be determined by chromosomes, but this doesn't always
work).

There have been documented cases of women with XY chromosomes who not only
exhibit all the usual female sexual characteristics, but even have working
ovaries and have carried babies to term. In fact, while I don't have it handy,
there was a story not that long ago about a woman with XY chromosomes
successfully having a baby, and then they discovered that her mother also had
XY chromosomes.

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EpicEng
So the answer is that they in fact can in the _VAST_ majority of cases. An
extremely rare exception doesn't negate the rule.

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eridius
AFAIK nobody's done a study to determine what percentage of the population has
chromosomes that don't match with their expressed sexual characteristics
(either primary or secondary).

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helen___keller
This legal battle was really about giving a platform to bigots who want to
conflate gender with sex to invalidate transgendered people. Just look in the
comments for proof.

