When i was a guy, i was often assumed to be like 5 years older than I was, and often treated as more mature and knowledgable than I actually was. I was seen as an absent-minded professor type, and given grace in my mistakes and treated as very credible (the persuasiveness of confident white man voice is dangerous).
As a woman, i am often assumed to be roughly 10 years younger than i am (estrogenated vampire skin!), and people assume I am inexperienced or don't know how to do a lot of things. Meanwhile, now, I have over a decade and a half of nonprofit management and community engagement experience, I am a published trans studies scholar who teaches queer and trans studies, I run a program serving hundreds of trans youth across the country, and more. I've lived in 5 radically different countries and speak 3 languages. And like...I'm now often talked down too and seen as inexperienced and discounted as probably not knowing much.
Serious question: when and in which contexts did calling people "individuals" emerge as a common practice, as a synonym for people? Or "an individual" for "a person"?
I ask because I'm noticing it in student writing, and I associate it with police-speak. I don't know if it's in some corners of social science or medicine too