Sadly, this is barely a parody anymore

Scene: Typical middle-class suburban living room. A woman in her mid-thirties is pacing up and down with a cell phone pasted to her ear.

Woman: Hello? Kate? Is Tommy there? No, he hasn't come home from school. It's 5:30. Is Larry there? Has he seen him since school let out? Yes, yes, fine, I'll wait. No? Does Larry have any idea where...

(knock on the door) Kate, there's someone at the door. I gotta go. (opens the door. Two Police Officers are at the door.) Oh my God. Has something happened to my son?!

Cop 1: (to Cop 2) It insists upon gendering the child. We've got a live one.

Woman: What's going on here? Do you have information about my son? Tommy. Where is he?

Cop 2: Person, may we come in?

Woman: What?

Cop 1: It asked if we may come in. May we come in, person?

Woman: Why are you addressing me as "person"?

Cop 2: Because you are a person, a sentient human being who is capable of Public Reason.

Cop 1: Or should be capable, at least.

Cop 2: So, may we come in, person?

Woman: I suppose you may, er, people. (Cops walk in) Do you know anything about my son? He has not come home from school. Please, please, tell me that he is alright.

Cop 1: Calm down, person. This child is fine and finally safe.

Cop 2: Yes, person, it is safe.

Woman: "It"? My son is not an "it". My son is a human being.

Cop 2: I have had about enough of this. We got all we need. Let's haul this person in now, colleague.

Woman: What? What are you talking about?

Cop 1: There was an incident at lunch today. The child that the state has heretofore allowed you to raise was caught using heterosexist language. The principal concluded that it must have learned such perverted language from its parents and immediately called social services for its protection.

Woman: You've taken him away from me?

Cop 2: What did you think would happen, you pervert?

Woman: Pervert? What is this? You can't do this. Where is my son? Where is my son? I demand--

Cop 2: Okay, hold it right there. Person, we are placing you under arrest. Would you, please, put your hands behind your back?

Woman: What did I do?

Cop 1: Person, please, we don't want to use force.

Woman: You have to tell me the charge against me.

Cop 2: You have absolutely no shame, person. Colleague, hold it down. (Cop 1 wrestles the woman to the floor, and Cop 2 cuffs the woman's hands.)

Woman: (yelling) What have I done? Where is my son? Why are you doing this to me? Where is my son? Where is he?

Cop 2: You have the right to remain silent, person, and I suggest you shut the fuck up right now.

Cop 1: Person, I arrest you on the charge of reckless endangerment of a child and the sexual abuse of a minor.

Cop 2: You pathetic pervert. How dare you sexualize an innocent child! How fucking dare you, you pervert!

Woman: What did I do? Just tell me, please! Tell me, please. What did I do?

Cop 2: You shameless whore!

Cop 1: Er, Colleague, "whore" is usually gendered. Careful now.

Cop 2: Oh, sorry, colleague. Thanks, friend.

Cop 1: What are friends for?

Woman: (now crying hysterically) Just tell me, please, what did I do?

Cop 1: You really don't understand, do you?

Cop 2: You are not only a filthy pervert, but a dumb one at that.

Cop 1: You use gendered pronouns with your child.

Woman: Is that a crime?

Cop 2: You shameless pervert! I can't fucking believe this.

Cop 1: Okay, person, are you familiar with the Socratic Dialectic?

Woman: Huh?

Cop 2: A method of questions and answers, by which reasonable persons arrive at what is Publicly Reasonable. But, Colleague, this is an incorrigible sex offender. Reason won't work.

Cop 1: But it is a person and as such not beyond rehabilitation. Let me give it a shot, Colleague.

Cop 2: You're wasting your time, but okay.

Cop 1: So, person, why do you refer to the child that was placed in your care as a 'he'?

Woman: Please, get off me. I can barely breathe.

Cop 2: Just answer the question, pervert.

Woman: Because he's a boy. Why do they let crazy people like you have guns?

Cop 1: Did it tell you that it wanted to be a boy?

Woman: He's a boy. He's always been a boy.

Cop 2: And why do you say this, pervert?

Woman: Because he is a boy, you lunatics!

Cop 1: How do you know it's a boy? Eh? Answer!

Cop 2: Yes, answer you disgusting pervert! (Cop 2 presses its boot against the woman's head)

Woman: I can't breathe! I can't breathe!

Cop 1: Why do you think your child is a young male, person?

Woman: BECAUSE HE HAS A PENIS, YOU IDIOTS!

Cop 1: And isn't that objectifying an innocent, pre-pubescent child as a sex toy?

Cop 2: Yes, isn't it, you piece of shit pedophile? (Presses its boot harder against the woman's head)

Cop 1: Okay, we've had enough. It's time to go to the station. (Cop 2 removes the boot from her head, and both Cops lift her up).

Cop 1: And after we book you, we're gonna put you in the general population. They really don't like pedos in the general population.

Cop 2: (laughs) Yeah, they sure fucking don't.

Exeunt

Wittgenstein's Beetle in a Box

Something that is intelligible can only be so if it corresponds to something that is identifiable. For instance, sadness is (usually) identifiable by tears, anger by raised voices and tense glowers, and so on. Gender identity, on the other hand, does not have, according to current gender theory, any outward expression at all. Anatomy does not express gender identity because lots of transwomen have penises. Dress and behavior cannot express gender identity because such gender stereotyping would put gender in an oppressive box, and the whole idea of current gender theory is a rebellion against exactly that. So, if gender identity does not attach to anatomy, dress, or behaviour, to what outward expression does it attach?  Professor Reilly-Cooper contends (as do I and, I would hope, any person with a functioning intellect) that it does not attach to any outward expression at all and is, thus, as incommunicable and unintelligible as Wittgenstein’s Beetle in a Box. (That link is to Dr. Reilly-Cooper's hour-long talk on 'gender identity'.  You may not want to watch the whole thing although I highly recommend that you do.  If you just want to hear her point about Wittgenstein's Beetle in a Box, she makes it at the tail-end of her lecture, starting at 1:04:12.)

Why can't we all just get along?

Christian: Original Sin.

Freudian: The Death Instinct.

Hegelian: Beats me, History was supposed to have ended in 1806.

Marxist: Because Hegel was wrong, the Historical Dialectic has not ended and will not end until the last Capitalist is strangled with the rope he sold to the revolutionaries.

Libertarian: Because no one listens to me.

Nietzschean: Because some of us don't want to be that namby-pamby emasculated Last Man who sings Kumbaya as he euthanizes himself.

Queer Theorist: Because TERFs won't obey us.

(Feel free to add to this list.)

The Carousel by Rainer Maria Rilke

For a little while in a roof's shade,
Brightly painted horses turn in a band.
They have all been taken from a land
That hesitates before it fades.
A pinching harness keeps them bound,
But all have courage in their eyes,
A crimson lion terrifies,
And now the china elephant comes 'round.

Just as in the woods there's a buck,
Except that it's saddled and carries
A little blue girl all buckled up.

And on the lion rides in white a young
Boy and holds on with a small warm hand
As the animal shows his teeth and tongue.

And now the china elephant comes 'round.

Bright young ladies are also there,

Almost too old for these wooden mounds,

In the middle of the leaps and bounds,

They look up, around, at us, anywhere.

And now the china elephant comes 'round.

And so it goes--faster, hastening its end,

It circles and it turns and has no aim,

A red, a green, a grey sent around,

A small inchoate outline of a face,

And sometimes we see a smile triumphant

And bless'd that sparkles and is spent

On this blind and breathless game...