Trans Swimming sessions

[DaveDave]

Just saw the below event advertised at my local pool. How come this is ok but we can't have biologically female only swimming sessions? I'm annoyed, not because of the event, but because it seems impossible to have female only swimming without being accused of being transphobic.

"Been hoping for a swimming event that's only for trans, non-binary, and/or intersex people? Well, here it is!

To ensure privacy we have booked an entire public pool so it's just for us! Apart from the lifeguards, the rest of the building will be empty too, so there's no need to worry about which changing room to use or people staring. Whether you want to swim laps, float about, or just hang out, you're very welcome. We want these sessions to be accessible to as many people who need them, so if you need a carer who is cisgender to attend with you they are welcome to come along. Parents/guardians are welcome to come and wait in the changing rooms but will not be allowed in the pool or on the poolside.

VENUE: The venue will be given to you during booking to ensure privacy. Please do not advertise this information. You can arrive 15 minutes prior to our swimming session starting, but please note that if you arrive more than 15 minutes late you may be locked out. There is very little phone reception by the pool so you may not be able to get in touch with anyone to let you into the building.

CHANGING FACILITIES: The changing room is gender neutral, wheelchair accessible, and has individual changing and shower cubicles. Before swimming you'll have 15 mins to get ready, and 30 mins at the end.

AGE RANGE: This event is for all ages, but if you're under 18 you'll need to get a consent form signed. Just let us know when you're booking and we'll send you one to bring filled in on the day. Please bear in mind that we do not currently allow cisgender parents and guardians to be in the pool or on the poolside.

DRESS CODE: As always, genitals covered. If you have [insert word you're comfortable using for your chest/boobs/breast tissue] you'll need to have your chest covered too. A rash vest would be best, but if you don't have one or can't afford one a light weight t-shirt is also acceptable.

BOOKING: To book, or ask any questions, contact [email protected]. If you are disabled and need a cisgender carer to attend with you please let me know during booking.

COST: This event is free to attend but as a charity we welcome donations. You can donate on our website

www.rainbow-project.org/donate/ or there will be a donation bucket available at the event.

(redacted)

I don't know what pool this is, or the layout, but most public swimming pools have some sort of viewing area, either behind glass in a cafe type place, or a viewing gallery type of area. Even when my kids went to the local crappy secondary school pool for their lessons, there were still benches poolside to watch. I dont think i have ever been to a pool where there is no possiblity of watching at all?

If the parents are allowed to watch from somewhere while their kids are in the pool, then it's not a problem. I assume there is a minimum age for this for water safety reasons.

More worrying for me is that they had to state that 'genitals should be covered!' Why on earth would that need to be said?!

Lifeguards aren't there to supervise your children. They're there to save their life if they get into trouble swimming.

In this instance there is arguably more safeguarding as explicit parental consent is required for all attending up to age 18, compared to public UK pools where none is required.

Why do you keep ignoring that Datun?

Again, you don't understand safeguarding. It's not the job of individual parents to mitigate the safeguarding risks because this charity isn't.

You don't understand the safeguarding issues at all. You could easily be one of those parents, not getting it.

Parents aren't trained in safeguarding, unless it's their job.

You’re confusing unconfirmed neutrality with presumed approval.

Theres no ground (based on what OP shared) for presuming either exemplary safeguarding or its absence.

What I’m calling out here is the presumption of a failure to safeguard children when there’s nothing to indicate that.

It’s not OK to throw accusations of safeguarding failure around just because an organisation is trans led. And that’s what this thread laid out. So I’m challenging that narrative and inviting you to consider the prejudice at play here.

And I'm inviting you, using your entire imagination, and every word in the English dictionary, to give me a credible reason why parents would be expressly forbidden to attend?

Lifeguards aren't there to supervise your children. They're there to save their life if they get into trouble swimming.

Actually that’s not true at all.

www.rlss.org.uk/safeguarding

Thats just one example of life guarding guidance on safeguarding. It’s pushed heavily in all major lifeguarding organisations and training.

I hope you’re not a lifeguard if you’re so unaware on that Datun!

I put on events for different groups and I would have made this session adult only and then determined how to safely include minors if there was demand, as there are extra considerations driven by the nature of it, such as how to facilitate young swimmers who aren’t confident and want a parent nearby etc. It sounds like a nice swim session, but as a charity they will have to have a safeguarding policy. Why don’t you ask to see this?

Exactly what I was thinking. Do people with a DSD, a personal medical condition, really want to advertise it by turning up to an event like this?

And there we have the crux of the matter and your view. You’re prepared to give organisations the benefit of the doubt unless proven to be bad. That is in itself a safeguarding failure. No organisation deserves even neutrality when it comes to safeguarding children. They show they’re doing it, or the assumption is they aren’t. That’s the safeguard.

No one is throwing around accusations of safeguarding failure because they’re trans led. There are accusations of safeguarding failures because of the evident safeguarding failures.

But I am happy to admit my own prejudice in adding this organisation to a long list of trans organisations who seem to think these standards don’t apply to them. Like I said, when these organisations demonstrate that I’m wrong and they have excellent standards and safeguarding is a priority and it’s noted in their actions, I will be able to challenge my own prejudices.

In the meantime you need to challenge your own prejudice about the fact you haven’t a clue how to safeguard children and you’re willing to fail to scrutinise an organisation if they’re trans. You believe in the sacred caste. That’s your prejudice.

why parents would be expressly forbidden to attend?

Again, for the hard of understanding (popular expression in these parts) parents are not forbidden to attend.

They’re invited to wait in the changing area, and their kid can only swim in the lifeguarded session with the parent’s explicit consent.

It’s rather like when kids go to swimming lessons or parties in small pools with no room poolside, and the parents hang out in the changing rooms or cafe.

Except those types of sessions often don’t even have a lifeguards, so this one actually seems safer overall in terms of supervision. I can see you’re struggling with that concept, but at least try not to invent things to try and prove that the dreadful trans people are up to no good.

That's not the supervision we're talking about, tho, is it?

By the time young children are in a pool with grown adults, without any kind of parental oversight, the safeguarding is already compromised. That's what I'm talking about.

Your gleeful reaction in trying to find holes in an argument that promotes safeguarding is deeply disturbing.

Don't you want to try and close every single safeguarding loophole? Seriously, is that not something you would like to see??

Can you genuinely not see any issues, whatsoever with unknown adults inviting children, without a minimum age by the way, to swim with them without any parental oversight at all, in that it's expressly forbidden?

Where's strawberry being "gleeful?"
They're just commenting, like you are.
Seems like the usual emotive language being brought into play to illicit a negative response, especially when teemed with "deeply disturbing" when they haven't mentioned not caring about safeguarding at all.

I do hope then that you’re going to take this fight to every public pool in the country Datun (and others of course) as you feel that their safeguarding is severely compromised.

You’ll likely have more success if you can manage not to accuse anyone who disagrees with you of being on some sort of anti-safeguarding mission and know nothing about safeguarding.

You don’t have an exclusive on understanding and applying safeguarding, but you certainly do have significant prejudice against trans organisations and activities.

As I said before, I don't think I have ever been to any kind of pool where is no way of an adult being able to watch their kid in the pool somehow. In the blurb it says that parents are not allowed 'poolside', but doesn't state if that means they cannot watch them in the pool at all, or whether they are literally not allowed at the poolside but can watch from elsewhere. And they are allowed in the changing rooms.

I think part of the reasons this has got people wondering, is because quire a few of these charities seem keen to do things with adults and kids together - how many group things have we seen now, where the age group of 12-25 is lumped in together despite it being inappropriate?

I think it maybe hasn't been thought through by the organisers, which I guess is worrying in itself.

"They’re invited to wait in the changing area,"

You've missed off the bit where they're not allowed to go and look in on their children.

Parents/guardians are welcome to come and wait in the changing rooms but will not be allowed in the pool or on the poolside.

Safeguarding only works by leaving absolutely no loopholes, whatsoever.

As Lang Cleg, our erstwhile safeguarding expert, used to say.

There's nothing innate in priests that make them pedophiles, or popular TV celebrities, or teachers or scout masters. It's because those professions allowed safeguarding loopholes to emerge. The men in them were considered beyond suspicion. And therefore, predators flocked to those jobs.

It's the reason why stricter safeguarding protocols were created. No secret castes.

Supporters of transgenderism go out of their way to create loopholes. Rapists in women's prisons, men in changing rooms with teenage girls, women not allowed to ask for same-sex HCPs, no safe spaces for women at all.

It's a feature. And here's you, desperately trying to protect it.

*sacred casts

It’s the inevitable ad-hominem Red. The late-thread resort when someone actually has the time and energy to point out the holes.

You see, it’s really important to discredit me as fast and frequently as possible to move the thread along past the bits where the holes are exposed.

People, including children, should be able to access sport facilities and exercise without being gawped at, judged or made to feel 'other'. We want this for women, why should we try to deny it to other groups?

There are barriers to trans/NB people of both sexes, including post-pubescent children, accessing general swim sessions so having a specific session is a great idea, they can swim in peace without fear or judgement. I see why they don't want a viewing gallery of (hostile/ judgemental) people attending to gawp and chat on the poolside.

If a father wanted to accompany his female child into women's only session it wouldn't be allowed, they would have to wait until the child could self supervise. Why should the rules be different in this case? I presume allowing parents to supervise the changing is to prevent any accusations of wrong doing in a more private area and more to protect the reputation of the group than because the child actually needs help getting changed.

Datun

No you don’t - that is a ridiculous way to go about risk assessment and leads to the utterly ineffective ones that I reject all of the time as generic “anything you can think of” nonsense. Risk assessment is that …… an assessment of risk specific to the activity and rules it has stated.

I won’t give the name of body of which I am chair of as it would be outing but let’s just say I’m as highly qualified in safeguarding (in the us) as it is possible to be. And if you are too, then you’ll know likely what.

The activity here is VOLUNTARY event that requires parental consent for under 18s to attend. So parents know what they are agreeing to. It’s not a secret. The name and email address of every participant is likely known. There are lifeguards in place. Parental supervision is allowed during changing which is likely the only time a child could conceivably be alone with an adult although there are other people in close proximity. It is has more checks than a child being allowed to go swimming without their parents which no one would shriek “safeguarding risk” at.

The event is entirely VOLUNTARY so if you feel that your child should be supervised by you at all times and they never go anywhere without you being on hand then they wouldn’t be going would they?

Is your risk assessment that the advertised lack of parents at poolside increases the likelihood that a sex offense will take place at a closed invitation only group where you have to supply your name and email address and where the only likely private contact place is supervised? If you do, then don’t send your child.

There is absolutely no specific safeguarding risk here at all other than the usual background societal risk that all parents undertake whenever their child goes anywhere unaccompanied. Unless you believe that this group of people present a higher risk …… which is really what this is about….transphobic nonsense. This is the reason why so many of us are angry with the group of self titled GC ‘feminists’ who claim to speak for us but don’t (because we are apparently too stupid and they know better. Most of us want a sensible debate and conclusion to this issue; it is threads and nonsense like this that is undermining the rest of us with ridiculous transphobic scaremongering of which this is a fine example.

Ffs - they even state that they have single cubicles….

You have read ONE copy and pasted advert relating to the event!!! When I signed my son up for rugby the two liner I read on Facebook didn't give much info. But when I contacted them, through the email provided, guess what, any questions I had were answered!! And on that basis he joined. Amazing!!!

AltitudeCheck

Absolutely agree

Maybe this is exactly what happened??

Parents/guardians are welcome to come and wait in the changing rooms but will not be allowed in the pool or on the poolside.
Yes, parents are allowed in the changing rooms with them.
They're not allowed poolside which is usually the case in swimming pools up and down the land.
As for not being in the pool with them you wouldn't send them into a pool by themselves if they weren't competent to swim alone.

The rash guards / T shirt statement is surely to make a helpful suggestion as to what people who wish to present in a masculine way but who have breasts (for example someone who may usually hide them with a binder or baggy clothing) might wear so as not to be indecent (public pools have no nudity rules) but without having to wear a female swimsuit or bikini. Many pools don't allow T-shirts or rash vests so it's useful to make it clear that this is an option.

Also stating the no nudity rules clearly means anyone who might have thought this was anything other than a swim session is set straight from the outset and anyone breaking the rule can be removed easily.

If I find an "all gender", "all sex" and "all ages" swimming session that bans parents from the pool I will be complaining about it on the grounds of safeguarding

You see, it’s really important to discredit me as fast and frequently as possible to move the thread along past the bits where the holes are exposed.

Tell me then, what is the reason for not allowing parents to view their children during the session. Not 'everyone else does it, they've got a form, I don't see a problem.'

What is the actual reason?