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...