Excellent second letter.
Not legal here and sorry this will be long, but while hoping I’m wrong on this- I predict this will take a legal case to sort out.
From what I read here: there’s KPLA, a captured volunteer user group with no decision making power but who are a mouthpiece for mixed sex swimming in the Ladies Pond. plus the Corporation of London which is powerful and legally decisive- and also captured.
The Corporation of London could make all three ponds mixed which would be perfectly legal and fit with their politics thus far. Note the reported quote saying; ‘ oh staff say it’s all fine and it’s actually been mixed sex for years in the Ladies’ Pond ’ I’d say that’s been very tactically given.
So to secure public facilities as single sex (or create any new single sex spaces) needs a big iconic legal case. Why should any service providers otherwise keep or create anything as single sex, when they will get blasted for doing so by extreme trans activists and everyday misogynists? Not to mention putting women and families off from their facilities entirely if they fear that protestors will start being there doing piss protests and whatever.
Seems like the next thing to fight is stopping public spaces becoming mixed sex or gender neutral only. Stopping the Supreme Court decision being used against us. Opposing mixed sex can not rely on showing that an existing service has been single sex for years. That will be undercut by opponents saying yeah yeah it was mixed sex for years with no problem. You just didn’t realise etc.
GC women and men need to articulate the case that unisex individual spaces and communal mixed sex spaces are both a risk and a cultural disbenefit to women in a way that single sex communal spaces are not. Because of the sexist culture of the UK.
Single sex communal spaces offer advantages and freedoms to women of association with each other because of the absence of men that single individual provision or missed sex communal provision does not. That goes for anything from swimming pools and toilets, to schools I would say.
All women need this option but also especially for example lesbians, whose right to meet without men has been suppressed for decades, plus women with any kind of vulnerability or additional need, including cultural or religious need, neurodiversity or traumatic life history. Any worman who just wants a space away from mainstream culture which includes men, in which to relax. You don’t have to have any specific’ ‘reason’ for that. That should be enough reason in itself. But loads of people will absolutely violently hate that idea.
That simple argument which advocates for benefits for women of talking freely to each other without men, will be read as extremely threatening by some men and women. Just watch. There are men that hate women talking on Mumsnet for example. Massive red flag but we know those type of men are easily found, and in all walks of life. So we need to make the argument for single sex spaces as a unique and essential benefit to women louder and louder right now.
And, that will mean supporting and creating some men-only spaces too. Which involves its own complexities for women. It’s not straightforward because of sexism being so pervasive.
So I do think this issue will need a court case to scare service providers with financial losses if they simply obliterate female single sex provision. That is an unacceptable response to the Supreme Court’s excellent decision. I hope some brave female and male swimmers will take on the court case here because with the iconic history of these Ponds it could be the precedent. Misogyny never goes away, it just takes on new forms.