Hampstead Heath Ladies' Pond faces legal action

[IwantToRetire]

Hampstead Heath Ladies’ Pond is facing legal action for allegedly failing to ban transgender women despite the landmark Supreme Court gender ruling.

The famed women-only bathing spot has maintained its trans-inclusive policy pending a ‘review’ in spite of the UK’s highest court ruling in April that trans women are not legally female.

Women’s rights campaigners sent a legal letter to the City of London Corporation, which manages the ponds, last week warning they intend to bring a legal challenge unless the policy is revoked with 'immediate effect’.

The legal letter, seen by the Mail, says that the current policy ‘violates the dignity of women using the Ladies’ Pond’ and that the Corporation is ‘operating it unlawfully by allowing trans identifying males to access it’.

From https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14851251/Hampstead-Heath-Ladies-Pond-legal-action-ban-trans-women-Supreme-Court.html

Different version of same story https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/26/hampstead-ladies-pond-swimmers-accuse-trans-women-spying/ and at https://archive.is/fZ31q

If you're a "trans woman" is the desire to use the women's pool because you don't want to bathe with men (for propriety and dignity purposes) or because you want to be included with the women as a "to be recognized as a woman" thing?

Does anyone have an insight into how big a problem this is in reality? I’ve been using the ladies’ pond for years and years and never seen a trans person there and love the female only space, particularly the meadow when sunbathing after a swim

If you're not going to swim in the men's, you can still swim in the mixed pool. If you have "changed sex" to female (an impossibility) you are not eligible for a women's facility. It doesn't sound as if you are a woman who would like to be a man. And you have not lost any rights that you actually had under the Equality Act 2010, any more than I have.

How big does it need to be? Should the law be about your personal experience and if so, how do we implement that?

If you were a user of the Hampstead Women’s Pond you have already been using a mixed sex facility.

Just highlighting that again! ^^

It doesn’t matter if it’s one biological man in there, or even none at all and it’s “just” the worry that there might be.

Women have the right to not only HAVE women-only spaces but to KNOW they are women-only.

I've never been but I've seen it stated that like women-only swimming and other exercise sessions in sports centres this was a godsend for women and girls from strict religious groups, e.g. Orthodox Judaism, who are unable to use mixed sex spaces. In the last few years they have presumably self-excluded.

@BeeSouriante to go from your posts above, you appear to be a trans woman (as you have referenced “changing your sex” and “not being a man”).

If this is the case, you have no right to use women-only spaces. You are not a woman.

Bee is a male transexual so is very definitely a man as it's impossible to change sex.

Women have the right to not only HAVE women-only spaces but to KNOW they are women-only.

As SidewaysOtter has so succinctly put it, this is the reason for the exceptions in the Equality Act.

Several women have reported being intimidated by men in the women’s pond. Lucky you that you’ve not experienced it.

Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Just because you don’t mind (if you don’t) doesn’t mean that others feel the same.
If one woman self-excludes from such a place for religious, cultural or personal reasons because a transwoman is there, that is one woman too many.

There are many good reasons for excluding men - whatever they may call themselves - from women’s spaces, most of them immediately clear to anyone not suffering a deficiency of intellect.

If you’re not a man, why can’t you use the women’s pool then?
Oh I see…..🤣

As a reminder, 3 times the number of men who are in prison who say they are women, are in prison for sexual offences as men who do not say they are women.

So places and spaces where men who say they are women have increased access to women and girls in vulnerable situations [toileting, changing, removing clothing], are particularly both:
more dangerous to women and girls
key places that men who say they are women desperately want to access.

Men who say they are women seem to be perfectly fine wandering the streets, using joint spaces, going into betting shops, pubs, going train spotting, and doing all the things they would normally do, but when it comes to using a facility, are completely unable to explain why they cannot use the same facility as the men they always hang around with. It is all so very odd.

There was a woman on here a while back, who said a man in a frilly costume sat on the edge of the pool, with one testicle hanging out.

I don't know if that was Bee or not. I should guess not, because I don't imagine Bee has ever swum in Hampstead in his life.

Yes.

It's nothing to do with the space, or the pool, or the changing room. It's everything to do with the women in those places.

It is the women who provide the validation. The changing room is just a room. If all the women left and went to another room, it's the other room that would become the focus. Because it's the women who are the resource. Not the space.

And clearly, in this case, not the pool. Since there are three.

It's the presence of the women and girls that is crucial.

It is they who are being used.

Surely on that basis transmen are in the same position as transwomen, i.e. they have three ponds potentially?

You would think. But when women have tried to identify into the men's pond, they have been removed in short order because the men are not having it, and the police support them.

Men on the other hand can invade the women's pond and everyone, police included, tells the women to submit or leave.

This has been proven by Man Friday.

If you read the articles from the time this was introduced, you'll find a number of letters and comments and petitions from women who were regular users of the women's pond for many years, and had to stop using the ponds as they could not use a mixed sex space. Men forcing their entitlement to use the women's if they wanted that experience for their own reasons drove those women away and deprived them of any access at all.

It's nice that you personally are not currently being affected. I'm not sure a policy for those women who are of 'you can turn up and swim, and possibly a man won't be there at the time and you can enjoy your visit, but if one turns up you'll have to leave' is really feasible. Or at all fair.

In practice, no, because they are kicked out.

But anyway, why should men not have their private spaces too, without women (whatever they call themselves) intruding?

Technically, yes. But in reality, no. Women identifying as men were kicked out. Which tells you everything you need to know about who has the power.

But also, although the men don't like women in their pool, they're not intimidated by them.

In the same way you don't see women clamouring to get into men's prisons or changing rooms. Or men being worried about competing against women in sport.

The dynamic is not symmetrical.

Quite.

Bluntly: women are not a sexual threat to men. Particularly of sexual violence.

And women do not invade men and their spaces for the purposes of sexual excitement.

Males never had the right to enter female spaces.

How does that affect trans people?

Of course you don't care about 'privacy rights' of NAKED FEMALES. It's all Male Supremacy and predators invading the privacy rights of naked females. Your seething contempt for vulnerable naked females is palpable.

As others have said, regardless of the numbers of people involved, the issue is this: is it OK that females whocannot use a mixed sex space lose 100% of their provision, in order that a male who claims ladyfeelz gets to select his preference of all the spaces?

I say no. What do you say?

Didn't we have a TRA on here arguing that no trans person claims to actually be the opposite sex, and that was made up by right-wingers?