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‘Renderings of stable, biological, binary sex don’t make sense under close scrutiny,’ professor writes
University of Pennsylvania Professor Beans Velocci published a book this year claiming “sex isn’t real” and the gender “binary” is “incoherent.”
Velocci is an assistant professor in history and the sociology of science who claims to be nonbinary and transgender. This identification has shaped the professor’s questions and conclusions because “that is how knowledge works,” Velocci wrote in the book titled “Sex Isn’t Real: The Invention of an Incoherent Binary.”
In an interview with Duke University Press, which published the book, Velocci expressed joy that “any right wing or TERF detractor who wants to s***-talk the book is going to have to say or write the phrase ‘Sex Isn’t Real’ in the process.”
Velocci claims in the book that “cisness” is unnatural and that people fitting into their “assigned sex category” took a large amount of work to construct and maintain.
Sex science throughout the 19th and 20th centuries was a close ally to those invested in supporting white-supremacist governance and ejecting women from political life, Velocci claims.
“Science continues to be an anti-trans ally,” the professor wrote, adding that sex has little to do with bodies, but is instead about categories and who controls them.
The professor also wrote that “current efforts to annihilate transness are couched in references to biology and science.”
Velocci claims the book came to exist during a time of “increasing assault on transness” in the U.S., arguing that legislators, government officials and Internet “malfeasants” repeatedly claim that sex is binary, self-evident, and unchanging.
“Renderings of stable, biological, binary sex don’t make sense under close scrutiny,” the professor wrote. This includes transition-related healthcare, bathroom use, sports participation or “anything else Republicans/internet trolls/children’s authors get mad about.”
One chapter covers obstetrician, gynecologist and surgeon Robert Latou Dickinson’s gynecological practice and how Velocci thinks it proves that sex is a matter of degree instead of a type.
In another chapter, Velocci unpacks how the authors of the Kinsey Reports acknowledged difficulty in finding physical differences between men and women that would explain differences in sexual behavior.
The professor also wrote that the rise of transgender medicine in the mid-twentieth century grew out of decades of disagreement and a readiness to overlook the “diversity of sexed forms.”
Velocci further contends that medical “transition” procedures must remain available for trans youth precisely because sex is “infinitely mobile.”
However, Craig LeRoche, president and CEO of the Family Policy Alliance, told The College Fix this constitutes a civil liability.
Family Policy Alliance is a conservative Christian organization that lobbies at the state government level.
“That’s right on par with encouraging people to have sex underage,” he told The Fix. “They want to give a healthy person permanent and chronic disease, and not be held accountable for that.”
He compared the phenomenon to people encouraging others to commit suicide, and believes Velocci’s book explains “why the American college system is due for a correction.”
The professor’s arguments, according to LeRoche, are self-centered, indulgent, “an attempt to devalue a person’s dignity and their worth as a human being” and a “request for them to be elevated to the status of God.”
LeRoche compared what he calls Velocci’s “weird justifications for sexual dysfunction” to racism, and is passed through individuals, genders and even through generations.
“Kids, before they can use words, know the difference between a boy and a girl, and they know which one they are,” he told The Fix, citing the Supreme Court calling gender “immutable” in its recent ruling on keeping transgender men out of women’s sports.
“Immutable means you can’t mute it,” he said, noting that the transgender ideology is something that must be taught repeatedly in order to “keep it going” — otherwise, “the truth would win out.”
He added that by identifying as transgender, Velocci “wants the world to know that there are two genders and they left one of them.”
To him, Velocci plays “an important role in demonstrating why organizations like the University of Pennsylvania should be looked into” for investing in employees who “clearly have a mental illness.”
Velocci did not respond to The Fix’s request for comment.
