Troll level; Jedi

We wrote about the Cloggy Kaas Kop who is taking the Dutch government to court in an attempt to change his age from 69 to 49.

At first blush this looked like a serious request and simply a logical extension of the “everything is a social construct” lunacy.

However, it’s increasingly likely this is an excellent exercise in trolling and is having the desired effect.

Hilary Brueck over at Business Insider, for example, is tying him/her/zherself in knots trying to explain why age isn’t a social construct but gender is.

In fact, no she isn’t, leaving this statement hanging awkwardly without any reasoning to explain why what Retelband is attempting is “problematic” (now there’s a great word to look out for when you suspect you’re being bullshitted).

Depressingly, there was no further “logical” explanation as to why age can’t be changed than what is written above. It would seem that simply saying the words, “problematic”, “offence” and “nonsense” constitutes an argument these days.

Here’s Shon Faye’s “takedown”, by the way;

Which seems to be saying, “it’s not the same because it’s not the same“. Again, not really an argument is it? Feelings trump facts.

Predictably, the Grauniad’s Komment Macht Frei gets in on the act with an article pointing out that our Dutch friend has a long and glorious history of trolling and mischief but never quite gets to the part we are, by now, desperate for someone to articulate. Namely, how is it that biological gender is a social construct but chronological age isn’t?

Bill’s Opinion

People such as Ellie Mae, Shon and Hillary might want to consider counting the assumptions required to be correct for each of these statements to also be true;

1. Gender is a social construct that can be altered by a change in societal attitudes of acceptance, application of hormones and surgery.

2. Age is a social construct that can be changed by societal attitudes, legal edict, and editing numbers on government databases.

3. Biological gender is determined by, erm, biology and gender dysphoria is an unfortunate mental illness that should be treated with sympathy rather than complicit fantasy.

4. Emile’s court case is what you get when people realise a large group of society has agreed to ignore a illogical and indefensible idea and are making significant practical real life changes based on the fallacy.

Loving your work, Emile.