Beans Velocci
@beansvelocci
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asst prof at penn hist & soc of science and gsws. classification. uncertainty. queer stuff. trans stuff. history. sts. many feelings. they/them.
Philadelphia, PA
Joined April 2016
today i listened for two hours to an 86 year old trans person tell me about experiences with mid-century psychiatry and fuck i do not know how those of you who do oral history cope.
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completely by happenstance i had an appointment with my therapist scheduled right when i got home for which i am very grateful.
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it occurred to me in the course of this that being a historian doesn't actually allow you to do very much witnessing or sitting with the gravity of people's stories.
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anyway my therapist told me to eat a whole pint of ice cream so i guess that is what i'll do.
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for the record this isn't a ~take~ i am literally just processing.
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which it turns out is not a skill that any of my professional training has cultivated because the focus is always on having smart ideas and producing a piece of writing out of the devastating thing you've heard.
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and there was no intended outcome other than being heard, and being the third person ever to hear this story.
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when what actually was going on was that this person had seen my name in the new york times and reached out because i seemed like the right person to tell this to.
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like i found myself trying internally to come up with essentially an argument about what had happened, and feeling like i needed to ~do something~ with this story.
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tonight was care as method night in trans method. my students asked me to leak their list of suggestions to make education feel less like suffering so here it is.
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lol up early to attend a faculty orientation that was moved to zoom because it’s not safe to meet in person where they’re going to tell us we have no choice but to teach in person 🙃.
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new article out today in cell! is sex a useful category? spoiler alert: no
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Penn is hiring a HISTORIAN OF SEXUALITY (!!!!) as the second person in my cluster hire (TT, assistant professor level, would be based in History with strong ties to GSWS), job ad just posted:
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how, in the year of our lord 2020, is every single academic-ebook-reading platform on the internet THIS BAD.
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huge thanks to @The_OAH and the d’emilio prize committee for recognizing my work. winning this award was a quiet dream of mine the whole time i was writing the dissertation and i could not be more pleased.
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the first published bit of my dissertation has dropped! learn how contemporary trans medical gatekeeping is rooted in a few guys making things up as they went
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thanks to @hssonline for recognizing trans history as not just relevant but important enough to be prize-winning within the history of science!
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i literally have told multiple nyt reporters who have interviewed me about the long history of constructed uncertainty as a way to deny access to transition care who then went ahead with their ~debate~ framings and lol here we are.
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i did almost accidentally submit it on proquest to yeshiva university instead of yale but it's done, gender-neutral title unlocked, going to print this mf and set it on fire now
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nothing like an email from a dean to remind one that vagueness is a power move and uncertainty is a cover for the abdication of responsibility.
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i realize this makes me part of the problem but i was tbh so delighted to have my phd officially conferred in atrocious latin
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i got my absolute DREAM job as asst prof of history & sociology of science at penn! i feel exactly like this about it and am working on how to feel all aforementioned feelings (joy! relief! extreme guilt! rage for my precarious colleagues!) simultaneously:
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unless the standard is “oh cool you want hormones/surgery/whatever? nice! here’s some actual research on how to get the results you want, and a clinician who won’t be a shit to you and knows what they’re doing! also it will cost zero dollars!” i have no use for it.
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i haven't said anything due to feeling v complicated relief/ excitement/survivor's guilt, and also trying to read the devastating room of the job market, but it feels weird to not say anything and it's a big deal worth celebrating even while recognizing the system is very bad SO:.
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about to defend the old dissertation whilst wearing my @SUEtheTrex shirt for both queer science reasons and "very dead" reasons.
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a uh timely reminder that the wpath standards of care started as a way to protect doctors from what they saw as unhinged patients and negative public opinion by instituting a system of “peer review” of trans cases
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i was having real first day of department events appearance respectability anxiety but have decided no, they hired a resident trans, they are getting a resident trans. will my confidence in my aggressively casual outfit last the day? time will tell!!.
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I was angry about everything the phrase “these uncertain times” was hiding so I wrote this.
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who am i kidding, what i really miss about in-person conferences is the opportunity to have a panic attack in a novel hotel bathroom. thrilling!.
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how does one get over feeling guilty for “just reading” instead of doing “real work,” and why have i become so deranged that i feel guilty for reading when a large part of my job is literally reading.
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wow i have a department bio i guess they actually hired me
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"Each of us will probably die by getting shot by some patient like E.V.," wrote urologist Elmer Belt to Harry Benjamin, endocrinologist and so-called father of transsexuality, in February of 1960. Find out what happened next in:
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everyone’s all queer archival silence but today i found historical evidence of scissoring so i don’t know what sources y’all are looking at.
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2-year History of Sexuality postdoc (only one course, one semester of required teaching) at Yale:
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you've heard of panic at the disco, now get ready for crying at the archive.
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absolutely screaming i just received word that my new article has already made an appearance on Lex, i wish this person all the best
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the academic job market:.
I have two godchildren, brother and sister, that are in quarantine together. My godson (who is six) made a scavenger hunt for my goddaughter (who is nine). This was the treasure that she found at the end of the scavenger hunt:
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i'm sorry committee, i cannot finish my dissertation because my options are downloading books one chapter at a time, attempting to read poorly formatted epubs with endless transcription errors, or scrolling through a pdf that moves at a rate of approximately one pixel per hour.
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the first day of the queer science class i’m co-teaching with @JoannaRadin was SO GOOD and this is probably the most hopeful i have felt about anything in months.
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deeply horrified that an offhand tweet about a feeling got eleven thousand likes overnight, that is not the amount of being perceived by the internet i wanted.
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reading a fucking atrocious trans brain study and realizing it was written entirely by people at my own institution is a real chef's kiss moment.
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thrilling to be the face of penn’s trans diversity while having to pee in a basement and pay out of pocket for trans healthcare.
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Let’s ask who benefits from the constant refrain of “these uncertain times.” Me bringing some agnatology to the present moment:
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does the 7 minutes between coming up with a question after a talk and deciding to ask it and then actually asking it count as aerobic exercise, asking for my overworked little heart.
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And then some days you get a big fellowship you thought you had no hope of getting 😱.
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do people actually like. proofread their dissertations? i will perish if i have to read this again.
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i was feeling very anxious about the fact that i'm struggling to find a place to stay in chicago for my research trip that isn't a zillion dollars but then i realized i get to visit nonbinary icon @SUEtheTrex and am now soothed!!!.
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save the date, june 14 at 6pm i'll be doing an online science on tap talk called "repurposing life sciences for queer survival" where i'll probably just have a lot of feelings about nonbinary bees
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@mckellogs I really want to wear this shirt when I give a paper about an ornithologist later this semester.
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i'm having my first wildly productive writing/revising day in forever and while i'm relieved this chapter is, in fact, salvageable, i'm so sad that i can't access this level of joy and interest and capacity for my work most of the time.
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perhaps the lesson here is we should get rid of the wpath standards of care.
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today at 1 est! tune in to learn how early 20th c eugenics contributed to sex being an absolute mess of an analytic category.
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i know people get cranky about informal student emails but i am always so pleased when a student is comfortable enough with me to send an all lowercase email peppered with emojis and thank u's.
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i was honestly feeling pretty chill about all of this until a few days ago and now instead am like mmm but will i be fending off a panic attack while going over the syllabus who can say really.
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should i start a new section on my CV for positive changes to medical systems i'm a patient in because i am continually raising a trans fuss.
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uh welcome everyone and set your expectations low, this is 95% shitposting and complaining, 5% professional self promotion, 0% discourse.
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here is what i mean when i talk about the weaponization of uncertainty.
The new right wing angle of attack is that NO trans people should have access to hormone replacement therapy because it's "experimental." Trans people have literally taken cross-sex hormones since at least 1918. Governor DeSantis' move is illegal, dangerous and based on lies.
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i need to stop writing multi-paragraph responses to my students' weekly think-pieces so i can do other kinds of work but i just want to keep talking to them about their ideas.
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a reminder of how much work it takes to make binary sex and gender seem natural.
Athlete Caster Semenya loses challenge against rules restricting testosterone levels in female runners
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interesting when reactions to trans work involve suggestions to ~make it less trans~.
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so like how are we navigating the i-can't-focus-on-anything-because-the-trauma-of-an-entire-pandemic-has-rotted-my-brain/must-be-as-productive-as-usual combo.
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come help me not be the newest person in the department!.
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what's everyone's favorite work on the history of statistics and/or making sense of large amounts of information, especially early-to-mid 20th c? i've already got stigler, bouk, porter, igo, and blair but feel like i'm probably missing things.
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i got this insurance denial/appeal denial the same week that i was on a @PennEidos being lgbt in the academy panel and co-taught a trans-affirming pedagogy workshop for the penn ctl.
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at #HSS22 i’ll be debuting my trans history to history of statistics pipeline work at “naming stakes: critical histories of classification” saturday @ 11, yelling about the nyt being garbage at trans stuff on the political advocacy roundtable at 4, and tbh hiding in my room a lot.
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a subtweet: let's not do the thing again where we defend the existence of trans people with "we're not saying sex isn't real!! sex is obviously real!" . if by "real" you mean a coherent biological thing, sex is not, in fact, real.
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clearly yale is anticipating "emergencies" and "crises" and has decided a) that's ok and b) the best way to deal with that is to dramatically underpay grad students to write reports when undergrads die on their watch.
ok can we talk about how Yale is trying to manipulate poor grad students into risking their lives to make sure undergrads (who literally shouldn't even be coming back to campus) follow COVID safety guidelines? 1/
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Me on why the proposed redefinition of sex as binary isn’t a good science vs bad science problem:
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anyway when we said “talk to trans people” we didn’t actually mean “talk to trans people and then blatantly ignore everything they tell you”.
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i'm pretty sure everyone who is like "write 15 minutes a day in disconnected segments between twenty-seven other things and you shall produce an article!" is, in fact, wrong.
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why did i, a person who has cried in every professor's office i have ever been in, not anticipate that i would cry in my own office and be prepared with tissues.
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is there any good work on trans joy? i have a week on Feeling As Method that is bleak af and while i want to talk about the trans studies feeling bad turn and that is personally my general vibe, i'd like to give my students something that is less rage/depression-oriented.
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that feeling when you have high hopes for an archive folder but all that's in it is a crab recipe.
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last week i learned that there's an insert footnote shortcut in word, why is this not what they teach you at grad school orientation.
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please send thoughts of fortitude and anti-nausea as i begin reading my dissertation to figure out what needs to happen for it to become a book.
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i had my students write love letters to the future in class today, after harlan weaver, and am enjoying my further descent into the feelings-based pedagogy of which the humanities are accused but don’t actually do.
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there are a lot of shitty things about these articles but what i’ve spent the most therapy time on is how my name is getting used in them to check the I Cited A Trans Expert box and then deployed in the service of transphobic bullshit.
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i wish i hadn't learned anything while writing my dissertation so that the chapters i wrote two years ago didn't now feel like they need to be set on fire and rewritten from scratch.
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just changed my "sex assigned at birth" in mychart to "uncertain" out of spite after being ~aggressively~ misgendered getting an mri yesterday.
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by “chill” i mean angry but not like existentially afraid.
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this is. the best summary of the argument of my dissertation i’ve ever seen wow.
tired: assigned female at birth. wired: gerrymandered into a girl district.
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if you’re going to #4S2019 and want to hear about why 19th century worker bees are non-binary icons of the future, come to my panel on thursday at 2:45
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and while teaching a week on institutionalizing trans studies in my trans method class.
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“They wryly recall the plan: ‘To be a historian and destroy the gender binary with history and primary source analysis.’” . tbh i think it’s working?
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just found out that my new therapist subscribes to tsq (in hard copy, no less!) and will therefore be receiving my harry benjamin article lololololol.
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my department (history and sociology of science at penn) is hiring a senior lecturer for a 4-year position at 2:2, open to any geographic focus, any aspect of sci/tech/med. at least one year of teaching and undergrad mentoring experience preferred.
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i'm going to be a research fellow at the APS this summer! wow! thanks for supporting aggressively queer research @AmPhilSociety!.
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what should i call my first-year seminar about sex and science that isn’t just “sex and science”?.
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everything's a nightmare but 6 years of research training and the yale vpn enabled me to locate the lost peanut butter cookie recipe of my childhood in a 1980 cookbook so that's nice.
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i just put a picture of gay penguins at the top of my queer sts syllabus and i'm a very serious scholar and you should hire me.
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they said: trust students. don’t spend so much time on tests. accommodate everyone. academic rigor is fake and exclusionary.
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I need a #UniversalExtension because a pandemic is not a writing retreat. @COGS_Yale @Yale #StudentsAboveSurplus.
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my writing improved dramatically when i realized i could just say how, sorry smith college to betray you that way but it’s true.
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a guy from the gas company just solved the several-week problem that was my oven making a mysterious high pitched sound by banging on it with a flashlight, which gives me hope for my dissertation.
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