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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Hampstead Heath Ladies' Pond faces legal action

171 replies

IwantToRetire · 26/06/2025 20:53

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

Hampstead Ladies' Pond faces legal action over trans-inclusive policy

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.

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

OP posts:
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7
crumpet · 28/06/2025 11:31

BeeSouriante · 27/06/2025 19:12

Well this will be an interesting test of whether the truth was spoken by the SC judges when they said that nothing had changed for trans people, though in all honesty, I'm far more interested on how the egregious attacks on privacy rights will be ruled by the ECtHR.

Pathetic including trans slurs tho, very 'playground', but seething contempt is very much the norm.

Lololol. Nothing will happen. Trans people will have the same rights as anyone else i.e. access to 2 out of the 3 Hampstead Ponds.

Any member of the public has access to the pond of their biological sex or the mixed pond. Anyone.

what trans activists want is the right to be able to access all 3 ponds.

TheOtherRaven · 28/06/2025 11:34

I suspect the 'lost rights' thing will eventually get the same tactful, gentle response from a judge that Dr Upton is going to receive re his claim that he is a 'biological woman'.

FeistyCat · 28/06/2025 11:54

BeeSouriante · 27/06/2025 20:59

I mean (a) I'm not a man and I'm not going to swim in the men's (b) this issue and the recent removal of rights (or "reduced rights" as the delightful GC lawyer stated) is not about swimming, it's about being allowed to carry on my life peacefully, long after changing my sex without being outed, but you know this already.

You are not a woman. Your dismissal to even consider the needs of women prove you think with Male Entitlement and Male Patterned Thought Process.

You don't have the right to expose yourself to vulnerable innocent women and girls.

You don't have the right to make women and girls feel uncomfortable. They were our spaces before you occurred. And it's incumbent on you to respect that you are the interloper that needs to ask permission.

And I can PROMISE you, you don't pass. You 'out' yourself by being a male in female attire. Thinking you don't out yourself by being in public dressed as a woman shows absolute delusion.

PencilsInSpace · 28/06/2025 11:55

Agenoria · 27/06/2025 18:53

Isn't there a problem in showing that swimming in a mixed sex environment causes a violation of dignity, given that most swimming faciities are mixed? Do the people who run these ponds have any duty to provide a single sex facility?

No they don't have to provide single sex swimming but given that they do, or at least they say they do, they need to ensure it is actually single sex. Sex Matters' letter goes into some detail about the setup for changing and showering at the Ladies' Pond:

6.1.6. The Ladies’ Pond changing hut contains open communal showers (with no shower cubicles) and an open changing area. There are four closed changing cubicles which have gaps at the top and bottom and open onto the changing area. There is one shower with a shower curtain which is not full length.

6.1.7. The open showers and open changing area involve full nudity. There is no place to hang clothes in the curtained shower area so women enter and leave the showers naked.

6.1.8. As well as the indoor showers and changing area, which is quite small, there is an outdoor shower and women change outside in an area adjacent to the changing hut and on the grass slope.

6.1.9. There are only female toilets, and they are the kind with gaps above and below the cubicle doors.

6.1.10. In summary, the facilities are designed and advertised for single-sex use and nudity is common.

The letter also describes how women often sunbathe topless in the upper meadow.

The provision of facilities like these, while telling women they are single sex when they are not, absolutely violates women's dignity and creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them.

FeistyCat · 28/06/2025 11:57

witchesfly · 27/06/2025 21:22

Gosh, you're posting like that chap on the other thread, LimeFinch.

These males and their spiteful Male Privilege all think the same. IF they were women, they'd be self-sacrificing and understand that female comfort comes first. The fact they think nothing of pushing in and forcing women to put up with it, not even considering they should consult with us first, is PEAK Male Entitlement and Male Pattern thought process. They can change their clothing, but their male essence and male selfishness and entitlement runs rampant in their attitude and behaviour.

MarieDeGournay · 28/06/2025 11:58

MolluscMonday · 26/06/2025 21:37

Excellent news. I wonder if they need any gardening done?

If the Ladies Pond needs help with gardening, I can link them to a useful site called:
"Identification and Management of Invasive Aquatic Plant Species in the UK" Grin

MarieDeGournay · 28/06/2025 12:11

BeeSouriante · 27/06/2025 20:30

This is peak mumsnet

Ticketyboo11, slamming down their gnarly fist on the desk

"Blaady experts, what the fack do they know. I got me common sense"

Cor blimey, Bee, you've been watching Mary Poppins, intcha, and takin Dick Van Dyke's name too fackin literally.😃

Insanityisnotastrategy · 28/06/2025 12:20

FeistyCat · 28/06/2025 11:57

These males and their spiteful Male Privilege all think the same. IF they were women, they'd be self-sacrificing and understand that female comfort comes first. The fact they think nothing of pushing in and forcing women to put up with it, not even considering they should consult with us first, is PEAK Male Entitlement and Male Pattern thought process. They can change their clothing, but their male essence and male selfishness and entitlement runs rampant in their attitude and behaviour.

This is true IMO. As a thought experiment I wondered how I would behave if I woke up one morning with a male body. I think this is something TRAs use to illustrate how distressing gender dysphoria is and how you would still be your gender identity regardless of what your body looks like. And that's all fine, but one thing I wouldn't dream of doing is going into women's toilets, changing rooms knowing full well my apparent sex would at the very least cause others discomfort. I would choose my own discomfort over doing that; intruding in that way wouldn't even be on my radar as an acceptable option. Because it's not all about me.

BeeSouriante · 28/06/2025 12:54

MarieDeGournay · 28/06/2025 12:11

Cor blimey, Bee, you've been watching Mary Poppins, intcha, and takin Dick Van Dyke's name too fackin literally.😃

I was actually thinking of that guy out of that ancient Softmints advert combined with Alan Sugar and I have no excuses.

witchesfly · 28/06/2025 13:08

Really rather you didn't - it undermines any merit that might be found in your arguments.

TheOtherRaven · 28/06/2025 13:11

Does anyone in the UK think anyone else in the UK actually speaks like that?

MrsOvertonsWindow · 28/06/2025 13:40

witchesfly · 28/06/2025 13:08

Really rather you didn't - it undermines any merit that might be found in your arguments.

😂
Have you spotted any merit @witchesfly? A lot of whining & self pitying along with a deep seated dislike of women apparent in many posts but intellectual / ethical arguments that appreciate the rights of other groups in society, the need to safeguard children and the vulnerable, understanding the law?

Nothing.

witchesfly · 28/06/2025 13:54

MrsOvertonsWindow · 28/06/2025 13:40

😂
Have you spotted any merit @witchesfly? A lot of whining & self pitying along with a deep seated dislike of women apparent in many posts but intellectual / ethical arguments that appreciate the rights of other groups in society, the need to safeguard children and the vulnerable, understanding the law?

Nothing.

Still looking

Helleofabore · 28/06/2025 14:20

BeeSouriante · 27/06/2025 20:59

I mean (a) I'm not a man and I'm not going to swim in the men's (b) this issue and the recent removal of rights (or "reduced rights" as the delightful GC lawyer stated) is not about swimming, it's about being allowed to carry on my life peacefully, long after changing my sex without being outed, but you know this already.

So do you, Bee believe that you should never have to disclose your sex? Ever? Not even to a potential sex partner?

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 28/06/2025 16:04

Edward Lord: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3650789-Advice-please-Edward-Lord-1-what-has-he-done-that-is-so-appalling-2-has-everything-been-decided

Meg-John Barker, Lord's partner (was at the time of this thread, anyway): https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3951849-Meg-John-Barker

Both they/thems. Meg-John is female, wears a flat cap and believes Northern women are more naturally aggressive than Southern women. Lord is male and a Freemason, i.e. a member of a body where full membership is only open to male people. There's a good deal more. There are innumerable links on the above threads.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 28/06/2025 16:12

Shedmistress · 28/06/2025 08:40

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.

Well said.

ruffler45 · 28/06/2025 17:33

How much more time, effort and money are people going to spend on this. The only long term winners of this are the legal eagles.

The SC has ruled - get over it.

Christinapple · 28/06/2025 19:54

Their policy was voted on by women.

Datun · 28/06/2025 20:47

Christinapple · 28/06/2025 19:54

Their policy was voted on by women.

'Women'

TheOtherRaven · 28/06/2025 21:30

The vote was brigaded, intentionally, by activists. This is common, open knowledge.

I swear, it's like toddlers who believe if they put their hands over their eyes you can't see them.

BundleBoogie · 28/06/2025 22:20

Christinapple · 28/06/2025 19:54

Their policy was voted on by women.

And?

Some women have been brainwashed into voting against their own interests. Women actively worked against the Suffragettes too.

They don’t represent all women.

thirdfiddle · 28/06/2025 23:15

Who voted for the policy is not really relevant if the policy is illegal, is it?

334bu · 29/06/2025 06:46

Who voted for the policy is not really relevant if the policy is illegal, is it?

Well said third fiddle.

corlan · 29/06/2025 19:27

thirdfiddle · 28/06/2025 23:15

Who voted for the policy is not really relevant if the policy is illegal, is it?

The City of London has to be the least democratic elected local authority in the UK by several light years.

teawamutu · 29/06/2025 19:29

corlan · 29/06/2025 19:27

The City of London has to be the least democratic elected local authority in the UK by several light years.

That, and didn't they ditch all the consultation responses where people said they didn't believe in genderwoo?

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