Stop the press! Wittgenstein's "forgotten remarks" about sexuality

By chance, I stumbled upon an internet site that features a set of remarks on sexuality. The remarks are presented as having "probably" been written by Wittgenstein. The style is quite authentic, and the remarks are very interesting & fun. (But of course it's a hoax. But, oh!, I'd wish he'd really written these things!) And what's up with the illustrations?! A few excerpts:

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1. Suppose I am with Smith. He points and says to me: “What a pretty girl that is!” But I reply: “Smith, I’m not so sure that’s a girl.” How could we check this? “You ought to look for a penis.” But why would this be conclusive? The first problem: what kind of a role do propositions like “that girl is pretty” play?

2. “The general form of a proposition is: This is how things stand.” A proposition makes a picture of reality. It says: “Things are like this!” It points to something - “That’s what it’s like!” For the proposition to have a sense I must understand what it is pointing at. I must know what the picture is representing. A proposition on its own does not explain anything past: “It’s like this!”

20. How do we know: “that’s a boy, that’s a girl”? Where do we learn this? Rudimentary biology. But this has nothing to do with sexuality. I can imagine situations where typical sexual biology breaks down.

21. In the last half-century or so it has become fashionable to think of people as either “heterosexuals” (men attracted to women and women attracted to men) or “homosexuals.” (just the opposite) This gives people the impression that eventually biology and psychology are going to perfectly explain “sexual aesthetics.” This is why Freud is so misleading. But what am I doing when I try to “explain” something like this?

23. Suppose Smith gets a little drunk one night and accidentally has sexual relations with someone who has a penis. Or, suppose he abuses himself to a picture which is actually of a boy rather than a girl. Surely we can’t blame him for this, everyone will make bad choices now and then. But how do I understand what has happened?

27. “That’s a girl!” “No, she has a penis.” Is this a contradiction? What is the “penis” doing here?

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PS: For those of you who always suspected there were some queer stuff going on with Wittgenstein's builders at the beginning of Philosophical Investigations - have a look at this site...


PS2: This cute cat is resting on Wittgenstein's grave. I found the picture on a homepage for a Wittgenstein workshop. Strange idea of a picture.