Outrage as controversial film to be shown in Edinburgh Uni lecture hall
Some staff and students have branded a film, set to be shown in a University of Edinburgh lecture hall, as transphobic - but organisers disagree
The University of Edinburgh is coming in for criticism after refusing to step in and prevent the screening of a controversial film in one of it's lecture halls.
Tonight (Wednesday December 14) the University's Academics for academic freedom (AFAF) branch will show the documentary 'Adult Human Woman' in a room on the George Square campus.
The movie has been branded transphobic but some staff and students, and the student union has called on the Uni to refuse to host the event - but this request has been denied.
The organisers refute the claim that the film is transphobic and have encouraged objectors to watch it and even engage with the AFAF.
Now the University's PRIDE society has announced plans to have a stall outside the venue, which they say will "provide non-harmful information about the lived realities of trans people."
Iina, a student at the Uni's School of Divinity, told Forth News that they do believe the film is transphobic and offensive to many students and staff.
"A lot of people are dead set of promoting the rhetoric that trans people are dangerous, confused and frankly don't exist.
"I'm quite exhausted, having to see this sort of documentary, and the rhetoric about trans people being hosted, with permission, on my campus is very exhausting.
"The idea of biological essentialism, which is quite essential to this documentary, the idea that there are very clear biological categories which people fall into, reducing people into their reproductive organs and certain sex characteristics is very contrary or very counter-productive to anyone who is a feminist.
"This rhetoric kills trans people, that's one of the reasons I find the content of the documentary offensive."
But Dr Shereen Benjamin denies claims the film is transphobic, she told us:
"A lot of it depends on how you frame transphobia - for most people transphobia would mean denying the rights of transgender identifying people to live free from discrimination and harassment.
"Certainly in AFAF we've said we support those rights.
"There's a more expansive definition of transphobia that tends to be invoked - there's an idea out there that everybody hast a gender identity and that identity should always overwrite sex in every instance.
"That's a theory, it's quite a new belief, we need to discuss it, we need to think of it's implications.
"But some people consider that to be critical of that belief, or to want to examine it's implications, makes you transphobic - and that's where we get into the kinds of accusations that have been made at us by a minority of people in the University."
The AFAF has encouraged those who wanted to see the film showing cancelled to come along and watch it, and engage in dialogue.
But Iina says that isn't something they will consider doing:
"It's incredibly hard to have these conversations when the starting point is the other person sees you as inherently a threat, or somebody who is perverted, or that a fundamental part of them does not apparently exist.
"When you are branding these documentaries as freedom of speech, we really need to question what we see as freedom of speech."
We've asked the University of Edinburgh for comment.