Civil rights movements have dominated the American political and cultural landscape for some time now. Whether it is the struggle that Black Americans have gone through to attain equality or the women’s rights movement, the United States has been a battleground for equality for some time.
One of the most notable of these civil rights movements has been the transgender movement. Their success has been nearly unprecedented in political and cultural history. The rapidity at which they have succeeded at achieving recognition has been remarkable, especially when you consider that movements who represent larger portions of the population have taken much longer to achieve their goals.
There are many reasons for this success, but at least some of the success must be attributed to the key argument utilized by the movement with which they have gained public acceptance. This argument, at its most simple form, says, “I identify as such a thing therefore I am that thing. Furthermore, society should identify me as that thing, too.”
The argument appeals to common decency above all else; it seems only compassionate to accede to such a request. It even appeals to the American ideal of self-determination. If you are convinced that you are of the opposite gender, it seems cruel for society to tell you that you are not.
Yet, there may be a problem with the argument.
A 69-year-old Dutchman, Emile Ratelband, is suing in a Netherland’s court for the ability to change his age on his birth certificate in order to be 20 years younger. His reasoning is simple: He feels like a younger man and wants his birth certificate to reflect that fact. There is “evidence” to corroborate this idea, he claims; doctors have told Ratelband that he has the body of a much younger man.
In other words, Ratelband identifies as a younger man and he wants society to recognize him as such.
The idea that age is a malleable trait is a ridiculous one. No one can change the amount of time that has passed since their birth – the reality of the passage of time does not change in response to your feelings. Thankfully, most have identified this request as a ridiculous one, but it is not clear that such requests in the future will be treated in the same manner which we have treated Ratelband’s. Certainly, Ratelband would have been treated more seriously if he had claimed not being recognized as a younger man was causing him serious harm instead of his current argument – that he would have more success finding matches on Tinder.
It is unfortunate that the argument which has underpinned the transgender movement’s success for so long is so easily co-opted by such outrageous claims. But these individuals pose serious issues for the intellectual credibility of the movement. Fair or not, individuals such as Ratelband or Rachel Dolezal infringe upon the legitimacy of the transgender movement by cloaking their inane ideas in the language and logic which the transgender movement introduced and relies upon. Neither is it clear to me that the distinctions between the requests of these individuals and the transgender movement are large enough to avoid this delegitimization.
