A lecturer at the University of Toronto says the notion of “biological sex” — that humans are born either male or female — is a “very popular misconception.”

Nick Matte, an historian who teaches a class on transgender studies as a part of the university’s Sexual Diversity Studies program, said the science has long been settled on the matter, reported Red Alert Politics.

“Basically, it’s not correct that there is such a thing as biological sex,” Mr. Matte said last month on “The Agenda,” a Canadian talk show, adding that “for over 50 years scientists have shown that that’s not true.”

Mr. Matte also said gender pronouns — a contentious topic within the transgender community — only reinforce the false idea that humans exist as sexually compatible organisms with distinct chromosomes, hormones and genitalia.

“I don’t focus on pronouns, because pronouns are actually part of a cisnormative culture,” he said.

He defined “cisnormativity” as “basically the very popular idea and assumption that most people probably have, and definitely that our structures convey, that there is such a thing as male or female, that they connect to being a girl or a boy, a man or a woman.”

“Cisnormativity is basically that everyone assumes that there is male and female, and so very little is actually looked at to understand what’s actually the case,” he said.

The historian also condemned his colleague, University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, whose unwillingness to call transgender students by their preferred gender pronouns sparked massive protests on campus earlier this year.

Mr. Matte said Mr. Peterson “abuses” students by refusing to address them by preferred terms including “zie,” “zim” and “zir.” He said it’s “tantamount to violence” and “hate speech.”

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