Hampstead Ponds update today

they are a place of community, belonging and wellbeing.

But are, due to incursions by men, no longer that for the group originally intended to benefit from it.

It's in the EHRC guidance and the law. They have stated it's not single sex. Yes, Christian women would be excluded from Muslim women's swimming, straight people excluded from an LGBT event. All of these things happen, and all of them are legal.

If anyone want to form an association with transgender people and women, they can. In theory, trans men could join, in practice, they won't.

Jesus Christ on a fucking bicycle! It's a service not an association. If CoLC says that it isn't a single sex service then it is open to everyone: you, me, my Dad, your brother and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. It cannot be restricted to women and transwomen.

Such a shame that the creepy men were able to colonise what used to be a lovely tranquil space for women.

So if it’s not single sex, then anyone of either sex may use any of the ponds right? So men can’t complain if women use the men’s pond. They don’t even need to claim to be men either.

So why were women ejected from the men’s pond a few years ago? Either all three ponds are mixed sex or you have two single sex ponds and a mixed.

You really just don’t get it. It’s entirely legal to have swimming sessions for Muslim women ( sex and protected belief), LGBT people (sexuality and gender reassignment) and women and transgender people (sex and gender reassignment.) Why are you so desperate to prevent women from performing activities with transgender people if that is what they clearly want?

You are talking out of your arse. I suggest you read the Supreme Court judgement. It is all there. Assuming you understand plain English.

I'm not sure whether you are ignorant regarding the Equality Act or just being disingenuous but holding sessions for people with two Protected Characteristics means each person concerned must hold both PCs. So a session for Muslim women is OK but not one for women & transgender people although one for Trans Identifying Females would be OK.

That relates to associations, not services.

Don’t the ponds function as a service?

You can’t randomly exclude groups of people from a service because that could lead to unlawful discrimination. You have to check that you are complying with the Equality Act.

The main problem any service would have if it tries to organise around gender is that it has no objective definition, so excluding anyone is likely to lead to claims of unlawful discrimination, so in practice it’s going to be mixed sex.

There is of course no reason that the ponds can’t be mixed sex (very few swimming pools aren’t), but it seems that that would be unpopular with both male and female pond users.

Either there is sufficient desire to have single sex ponds or there isn’t, but you can’t have a mixed sex single sex facility. That isn’t transphobia. It’s just the laws of time and space.

They can, obviously. In the mixed sex pond. They can all go in there together and have a lovely time.

The legal issue is that you cannot call it a women only space - which uses the legal sex exemption - and let some men in. Because you've then fucked the exemption you were using to exclude any men at all.

Which would mean you'd have to call the women's pond a mixed sex pond and the mixed sex pond a mixed sex pond, and the men a single sex space. And then deal with the discrimination claims from women.

And morally, obviously, you cannot stand nobly waffling about inclusion and kindness and wellbeing and socialist utopia when you have fucking excluded women who need single sex spaces to have any access at all and are just pretending not to see what you've done.

And obviously, to anyone with a brain, excluding women from anything so that men can have everything is a sexist dick thing to do and support.

Make it three mixed sex ponds - then whatever. I'll wait for the potential discrimination claims and still think this is misogynist exclusionary dickery, but crack on. You do you. It's the lying that needs to stop.

There are women who swim in the men's pond - my DP, who goes often, sees them from time to time, as well as people who he genuinely can't tell which sex they are (he doesn't like to look too closely). It's not frequent, but it does happen.

The impression I got from him is that everyone just quietly gets on with their swimming. It's a very different scenario to the Man Friday protests, which explains why it's treated differently.

So all three ponds are mixed sex? Awesome. Then they can just change the names to mixed sex ponds 1 2 and 3 and alls good.

I did argue that on a thread once, that they should all be mixed sex - not many people seemed to like the idea. Hey ho

Well I can see why, but if they are all de facto mixed sex theres no point keeping the names. It just looks stupid and raises expectations of single sex swimming

I agree. But I don't think it will happen, anyway

No - it’s in the EHRC guidance with swimming mentioned specifically - for example a swimming group for Muslim people. There are plenty of LGBT swimming groups. As long as they are not claiming it’s single sex, which they are not. Do you think these examples are illegal?

Is this what you are referring to?

In accordance with its public sector equality duty, a local authority assesses demand for swimming classes at a pool provided by the authority for the local community. The assessment identifies an unmet demand for classes that meet the needs of Muslim people. In response to this, the swimming class provider operates a mix of services with some separate-sex classes, which are used predominantly by Muslim women and men, as well as mixed-sex classes which are open to everybody. The swimming class provider has considered the impact of the mix of its services across different protected characteristics and determined that its balanced mix of services is proportionate. The provision made is therefore likely to be lawful.

In this example the service is single sex, not reserved for muslims.

Again, I think you might be confusing associations and services.

Mouldemort · Today 02:04

You really just don’t get it. It’s entirely legal to have swimming sessions for ...women and transgender people (sex and gender reassignment.) Why are you so desperate to prevent women from performing activities with transgender people if that is what they clearly want?

You really ought to look into what the Guides and WI have done, after taking legal advice. They have - reluctantly - banned TIMs from their organisations, because it's not lawful to describe them as female only and allow transvestites in.

As to what they want, how do you know? In their first consultation, they threw out thousands of votes, which said no transvestites and pretended that the majority agreed that they could use the Ladies' Pond.

Now, they have more than 3 times the number of votes than there are actual users. The so-called data is worthless.

The recent EHRc guidance said that using the “singular incorporates the plural” interpretative principle, associations could be formed by groups of more than one characteristic in an associative sense (so, one “or” another characteristic).

this novel interpretation has never been agreed or tested in a court or tribunal but the EHRC thinks it would be needed to give effect to ECHR rights of free association - that people have the right freely to associate with whomever they want. So for example LGBT associations are, or should be legal, despite the members not sharing any one characteristic.

It doesn’t in any way apply to services, and would drive a coach and horses through the legislative intent behind the EA2010 if it did.

If you use the word 'women' then yes, you are declaring it as a single sex space, AND invoking the exceptions to do the legal discrimination involved.

However that only works if you actually then KEEP it single sex. You can't call it women when you actually mean biological women and what ever men happen to want to be there. Because it's then NOT for women - which is a sex based word in terms of legal discrimination to keep men out - its for women and some men. Which means it's mixed sex, you have no legal leg to stand on to let some men in but not others.

This is basically an attempt to say 'we can have an alternative gender based version of women that's in fact mixed sex and still use the legal discrimination exceptions if we want to (which keeps out some men but not others)'.

The SCJ sorted that one. In quite small words.

Not the OP. This is a very good demonstration of why there should be single sex sessions.

I.e. to encourage women to swim who wouldn't otherwise do so in mixed sessions.

They are so ideologically captured they won't have any women's only sessions.

Despite having a survey saying there is demand, and them being a public sector organisation.

Ellie Fawcett, solicitor at Leigh Day said:
“Too often, issues impacting trans people are debated without hearing from the people most affected.

Absolutely true.

Over the past decades, issues impacting trans people have indeed been debated without hearing from the people most affected. That would be women. Millions of them.