Thank you! Sometimes feel a bit ridiculous when I say/write stuff like that so it’s nice to know someone else gets it.
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I think it is just a strange new mindset that allows people to even conceive of such a thing. If anyone can be anything they want, then age is just another facet of that philosophy.
In this guy’s favor, he at least has one year of personal experience as a 49-year-old.
I am sure my daughter would have liked to try this when she was 16, and could not attend an ICP concert because of her age.
But of course, that’s not how things work now…
And no, I haven’t read it.
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This ^
trollies do this kind of thing because they think it makes the politics of social identity look weird. Some people who are invested in specific identity-based struggles get uncomfortable, because they worry it will undermine the progress of their struggle. This is understandable.
But it’s ultimately not a progressive strategy to normalize a weird social identity by disassociating it from weirder identities. When we dismiss claims like this in favor of promoting trans acceptance, we’re saying “transgender identity is a normal and respectable thing, unlike those freaky weirdos who think they’re animals or babies or whatever” This is the kind of mistake HRC made and may never live down.
The fact is, our social identities are weird - all of them. They’re absurd and contradictory, they deviate from the norm. We shouldn’t try to deny that or let anyone make us feel uncomfortable about it. If someone is trying to make us seem weird, we shouldn’t respond by insisting we’re normal, we should respond by demanding that all weirdos be respected on their own terms (as long as they’re not hurting anyone, natch).
If some people want to use that respect to make stupid statements like changing their gender to “attack helicopter” or whatever, fine. Really they’re only mocking themselves.
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After 19 years of working construction, my knees and upper back muscles identify as twice my current age.
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From the write up - “…is 69 years old but believes he has the body of someone 20 years younger.”
I’d say he better give it back, 'cuz he’s getting it all wrinkled.
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Right there with you. 42 years old, full time and then some since I was 16, working sawmills and lumber, then construction, and finally finish carpentry and stair building.
Off topic, sorry, but I did have an epiphany just a few months ago. Strength training really, really helps support those creaky joints. Squats are out though. No way in hell are my knees up to that.
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LBGQT aren’t a “weird social identity” and neither are people of color. They are people who did not create the oppressive structures themselves, but are living within them, as we all are. They are REAL struggles that deserve focus and aren’t some weird thing people just came up with to be “weird” or quirky. Trans people are pretty regularly killed for existing. This asshole NEVER experienced that. NEVER. He isn’t doing this because he “feels” like he’s younger than he is. He’s literally driving trollies THE TRANS COMMUNITY. HE’S the one who is trying to say that trans people aren’t worthy of acceptance and support as they are.
Dude is driving trollies trans people. He doesn’t actually believe he’s 49. He’s just an asshole.
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Disagree. If he was able to legally change his age it would create legal precedent for anyone to do so, which would play havoc with all kinds of stuff from age of consent to pensions/social security.
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I think you are right about the strength training. I found that after shoveling screenings or jackhammering concrete all day, as long as I maintain good form, my joints don’t hurt at all. It’s the days where I’m standing on a ladder in one spot that awakens old wounds.
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Oh man, standing on a ladder for hours is the worst, isn’t it?
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And that’s why I’m 95% certain he’s doing this to mock transgender people. It’s worse than trivializing their own civil rights struggle, though that’s bad enough in itself. He’s effectively saying gender is as much an immutable fact as chronological age. It absolutely is not, but that’s the transphobic bullshit he’s peddling here, whether he knows it or not, and I’m pretty sure he knows full well that he is. The alternative is that this narcissist is so blinded by his privilege that he doesn’t realize the implications of his moronic false equivalence, but the effect is the same, and I’m pretty sure he’s driving trollies.
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No but this explains a lot.
It’s how we can have a president in the US who’s, what, 9?
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Hey, stop insulting 9 years olds.
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HRC . . . shakes head. It’s almost hard to square just how normalized the trans identity has become with the vehemence with which mainstream queer organizations distanced themselves from trans people just, what, 5, 10 years ago? Trans folks and their friends were, let’s be honest, a small subset of the already tiny world of activism, which makes it all the more impressive. Maybe there are some lessons there about bucking established orthodoxy?
It’s disorienting to witness the the negation of the gender binary only to have new essentialisms harden in turn. This is definitely the sort of thing intersectionality was supposed to solve.
Chronological age is hardly “new.”
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Raises hand. But I don’t see them as human. I try not to anthropomorphize them out of respect and utility for their being fundamentally different from all humans despite some compatible characteristics that make them good pets for us. But they’re not merely objects either; they exhibit consciousness and that emergent complexity we usually call “free will”.
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Are you sure he’s not saying the opposite…that the age you identify as is as mutable as gender? That’s what he is actually saying, so to turn it around and say “but he really means the opposite” is a stretch
If he is, then he’s conflating chronological age with perceptual age (not even biological age, because how someone looks on the outside has very little to do with things like teleomeric or somatic age), in which case he’s a complete moron. But given that he’s a published phrenologist, I don’t think it’s a strech at all to lean heavily toward him knowing exactly how bigoted his argument is and doing it at least partly for that reason.
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But that’s begging the question. It’s no different than saying “our legal gender (should) not match our mental gender”…which is what the transphobes say.
