Pond Life

Remembering the moment feminism started to go down the toilet.

( In sections of this I have used the term “trans woman”. I would rather when possible and if preferred by the person- just say woman. But for the sake of describing situations within this story it felt important to differentiate between a trans woman and a cis one. )

Go back 7 years.

I am attending a series of yearly run, free humanities lectures on various topics around a theme, held every Tuesday evening for twelve weeks, followed by an accompanying discussion class on a Thursday. I don’t have a formal education, I left school at 15, and my life since has been one long scrabble to gain knowledge.

But that is a subject for another piece of writing.

I had attended the lectures for 3 years by this point and they were a wonderful thing, maybe the most progressive and inclusive educational experience I have ever had. My mum was 86 at the time, I had been telling her about the classes ever since I had started going, but this year, for the first time, she asked if she could come with me. Unlike me mum was very educated, and I was nervous to take her. She could at times be opiniated in a pretty brutal way and on her less kind days she had been known to mock my “naivety” and lack of education - and as the classes meant so much to me I was worried that she might attend and then tell me they were rubbish. BUT this was also a complicated time. A few months earlier mum had announced she had been given a dementia diagnosis and in the same sentence she had also announced that she intended to end her life as soon as possible, via assisted death at Dignitas.

And so we were right in the middle of processing all of this when she asked if she could join me at the classes. You don’t get long to muck around if you want to end your life with a dementia diagnosis. You have to go before you lose “capacity”, so the clock was ticking (I have written about this in other posts … and may well do again, but this isn’t the subject of this one …). She already had a “potential” date set for her death, and so I knew if she stuck to her plan, which she seemed pretty intent on doing, she would be dead by spring and I was determined to do all I could to make the most of my remaining time with her. So, I put aside my nerves and I agreed to take her with me to the classes.

I was concerned she would find the lectures patronising or would want to correct the things the often younger (nearly everyone is younger when you are 86) lecturers were saying. But she didn’t. She was gracious and humble and week after week she simply said how much she enjoyed attending. A ridiculously intelligent woman and a socialist to her core, she would usually have been forensic in her appraisal of the quality and politics in this kind of environment. But as it was, she didn’t seem to care that much about critiquing the content of the lectures or discussions. She just seemed markedly grateful to be getting a break from thinking about her own death and to be hanging out in a room where people were spending their Tuesday and Thursday evenings doing some thinking and discussing around thorny and often complex subjects.

That was until the discussion group after the feminism lecture.

I can’t recall much of this lecture. I remember finding it a bit dry and a bit too broad. Mum had again simply smiled throughout and afterwards said how much she had enjoyed it. I remember thinking that a few months ago, pre-diagnosis and her decision to die, she would have had much stronger opinions and I was sort of missing them. But she just seemed happy to be soaking it all in, even if it was a little basic.

I asked if she would like to attend the discussion group with me on the Thursday, half expecting her to tell me she would sit this one out.

“Oh yes please” she replied warmly, as if I had just asked if she would like an extra blanket on a chilly evening.

And so, the following Thursday, off we went.

At first the discussion sort of ebbed and flowed around feminism and its history, some talk of suffragettes, some slightly more in depth talk of intersectionality. Despite having been heavily involved in political theatre productions highlighting issues of women’s inequality during the 1970s and 80s, which often meant “all women’s” performances, mum had always said she did not feel a need to call herself a feminist. Instead, she called herself a socialist. She believed feminism without socialism was a slippery slope and that if you were a true socialist you were already focussed on all iterations of inequality and there was no need for the definition.

She was also, like many of her generation at times, slightly confusing about her allegiances and could be found having arrived home from a night performing with “the women’s theatre” group in a play about women strikers only to chastise her daughters for not looking after their father whilst she was out. Or later in life telling them off for not taking care of their male partners better … “Look at the poor man he is exhausted, get him something to eat.” Often then turning to said male partner and declaring of one of her adult daughters “she is useless, I don’t know why you put up with her.”

Mums’ socialism was clear. Her gender politics muddier.

I can’t remember how the discussion on the feminism lecture ended up going there (I would be surprised today if a discussion on feminism did NOT) but within about ten minutes the discussion on feminism had become fixated on “toilets”.

Who should use which? Who was safe in which? And who should be allowed in which?

A heated debate took place. And contrary to the previous weeks, Mum was not smiling anymore.

In the car on the way home she sighed heavily and stared out the window. I was worried about her. I knew a constant fear of the progression of her dementia was causing a lot of anxiety. As of course must have been the daily stress of mentally preparing for her own death. I felt very bad that these weekly lectures and discussions which had been up until this point providing her with some intellectual relief, seemed to have now added to a sense of weariness and foreboding.

“You ok mum?” I asked tentatively.

“Not really.” she replied flatly.

“Are you thinking about Dignitas?” I asked, honestly hoping she would say yes. I felt more up for stumbling through a conversation with her about death than I did one where I had to try to explain the current state of feminism.

“Nope. Not Dignitas.” She replied

“That discussion was awful.” she went on. “What is wrong with them? When did feminism become about who is allowed to use the toilet?! It’s awful. It’s just depressing.”

“It is.” I agreed.

And I went onto to try to describe to her another “debate” which had also featured toilets that I had recently attended.

Like many an old fuckwit who has had a brush with depression and low mood I had recently got into “cold swimming”. Local to me is Hampstead Ladies Swimming Pond. I had been there on and off during the summer months throughout my life. I even remember taking my swimming test there as a child in the mid-seventies, accompanied by my mum and some other women who were at the time living with us in the “commune”. But I hadn’t swum there with any regularity as an adult, and I had never been one of “those” people who swam through the winter. But now I was. And I loved it.

I am not evangelical about it. It did not cure me of low mood, and I am not writing a book about it. But it did change my life, quite a lot, and for multiple reasons and not all of them to do with the water. One of those reasons being that in the beginning, for the most part, I really liked the community.

Until I didn’t.

The subject of trans rights was starting to surface a lot in the media, in politics and in conversation. It was pretty febrile, and “women’s spaces” and toilets were often focal points for debate. And the ladies’ pond, which for me up until then, had been a gentle experience bar the odd brusque older woman screaming at a younger woman to put her phone away - was becoming a hotspot for the issue.

An event had been organised for users of the pond to “debate” whether trans women should be allowed entry. It was at the time (and I think still is!) -not actually legal to deny a trans women entry, but there was a vocal faction at the women’s pond hoping to put the case forward that the pond should be deemed by law a “biological women only space” and so an evening of speakers and “debate” was organised in order to get a feel of how swimmers felt regarding this.

As many of us had at the time, I’d already started to clunk and stumble my way around discussions of women’s only spaces. “Female friends” were fighting it out with one another. Men were chipping in with less than helpful opinions and sometimes pretty progressive ones compared to the women. And I had a wise and thoughtful child (at this point not out to me) who was keeping me on my toes around my thinking. But I will admit I was still a bit confused and unsure about what I truly felt was “right”. I had a friend at the time (no longer) who had been a police officer, and she and I had already come to blows a few times around her need to tell stories of “predatory” men in changing rooms. Although not yet fully formed in my beliefs or fully educated on the facts versus the fiction, I didn’t trust the connection being made between these stories and trans exclusion, however evocative and emotive- this seemed to me to be a misleading line of reasoning for excluding trans women.

But whilst attempting to educate myself I had also come across some pretty aggressive comments made by trans women about cis women (a woman whose gender today is the same as the one assigned to her at birth-for example: me ) which were also causing me concern.

Although I pretty instinctively couldn’t get on board the idea that if a trans woman was allowed to swim or use a toilet it would pave the way for a sea of predatory men to follow her (an instinct backed up by the fact trans women were already swimming at the pond and using the toilet without “incident”) -I still felt a need to listen and to give space to concerns around the protection of a space that was used and valued by a large group of “women”, many of whom had direct experience of gender based violence and aggression.

On my way to the event, having consumed way too much twitter for one brain- I had an anxiety that the meeting might be protested by trans “activists” ( I am pretty keen on an activist- so I am using the term the way my over tired brain was on that night… yes?) -keen to shout at what could quite reasonably be considered this overwhelmingly white and pretty privileged bunch of Hampstead women debating their right to go for a swim. But on arrival at the hall the only “protesters” present were a group of cis women swimmers. They were wearing around their necks, tied by rope, large pieces of cardboard on which was a printed photograph of the “Women Only” sign from the entrance to the pond. As we made our way in, they called out to us with a tone I am prepared to risk an accusation of sexism to describe as ‘matronly’:

“DO THE RIGHT THING TONIGHT! DO NOT LET US OR YOURSELF DOWN!!!”

Inside, the room was full. The atmosphere was quite tense but polite enough. A lot of joking about “not recognising each other with our clothes on” general chatter and the nodding of hellos.

There were to be 2 speakers: a woman feminist academic who would talk to us about why women’s spaces must mean “biological women” only; and then a trans woman who seemed to have been invited to have to prove to us- why this was not correct.

I had noticed the feminist academic whilst we had been finding our seats. She was a confident looking woman dressed in what I would describe as a very familiar North London “Toast” look - good jeans, a nice jumper, trendy neckerchief and Blundstone boots. She seemed to have friends in the “audience” and she was talking and laughing with them whilst leaning on a chair at the front of the hall.

I also noticed the trans woman. An older woman, perhaps in her late fifties, dressed in a pretty dress and smart shoes. She didn’t seem to know anyone but had a friend with her who was holding her hand tightly, they had walked together looking straight ahead and chosen to sit at the far corner of the front row. The woman who was later to speak to us stayed staring straight ahead- whilst her friend looked around, seemingly keen to make eye contact and maybe to illicit a friendly smile. I had obliged and smiled back.

The academic spoke first, accompanied by slides on a power point. She talked about biology, about sex and the importance of its definitions and her tone was confident as if what she was telling us was obvious … a trans woman is a biological man and to let them swim in the same space as biological women was pretty obviously not a good idea and if you called yourself a feminist and had any care any for upholding women’s rights, you would know this. She did not talk about her connection to swimming at all.

At the end of her talk a few of the women who had been wearing the cardboard signs around their necks clapped and cheered.

Then the transwoman got up to speak. She had a power point too, but she was far less confident. Her voice quivered and her hand was visibly shaking. She told us a bit about her transition, she talked about being grateful to be given the chance to talk to us and thanked the organisers for inviting her, she talked about being the victim of male hostility, then she talked about her battles with depression and how they had led her to find swimming. She clicked onto the next slide which simply read –

“Why do trans women swim?”

By this point I had noticed that her voice was cracking, the way your voice does when you are attempting to hold back emotion. I recalled for a moment some preparation I had done a few years previously for an acting role. I had been playing a rape survivor giving evidence in a court case. I had spoken to a barrister as part of my research, and he’d told me that one of the key pieces of advice he would have given any survivor testifying in such a case would be “if you show emotion the jury could turn against you as they might feel you are trying to manipulate them with tears. BUT if you are NOT emotional, they may also turn against you as they might decide that you are cold and unaffected.”

He told me what he would tell them- that they had to clearly and accurately describe the details of what had happened to them whilst being sure to strike the balance between showing too much and too little emotion, which I had decided was brutal and almost bloody impossible.

And so, I watched as this woman who had been allotted the task of trying to persuade a room full of other women that she was not a threat to them and simply wanted to be able to access a facility in the same way they were able to, tried not to become “too emotional” whilst doing so.

The academic had not been emotional at all. She had remined cool and factual with just a hint of passion.

But the trans woman’s emotions were getting the better of her.

“Why do trans women swim?” she read out her question.

“Because I really love it, and I need it” she said, her voice petering out as she did- then she quietly thanked us for listening and sat back down next to her friend, her shoulders visibly slumping as she did.

The two speakers were then asked to leave the room so that we, the collected swimmers, could “discuss and comment”. My ex-police officer friend got up and talked yet again of predatory men upskirting in changing rooms. One or two people shared stories of male violence. A few were outwardly hostile and dismissive of the very concept of being a “trans person”. I had not formulated what I was going to say, in fact I wasn’t even fully aware that I had formulated a clear opinion, but I could feel it rising in me. I had to say something. So, I stood up and opened my mouth.

A few years later I would be much more connected and clear on this subject. I would find myself to be the mother to an adult trans child. I would have adult friends who had transitioned. I would have read more, thought more and learned more. I would have chosen to end relationships with friends and relatives over the subject. I would have been on marches and signed petitions. Yes, I would at times still feel confused about logistics and nuances and I would always feel a desperate shame and sadness that it was so often feminism and “women” being pitted- and pitting themselves- against trans rights, but I would understand the facts and the fundamentals, and where I stood.

But at the time of the pond “debate” I had experienced none of those things and I was still very much muddling through, thrashing around, trying to work out within all the noise and fear and at times blatant bigotry, what truly felt right to me. When I had arrived at the event that evening I had been determined to listen as carefully as I could to both speakers. And now having done so, when I stood to speak something like this is what I said:

I just could not see how we as a group of women could hear those two speakers and conclude that it was right to send a trans woman with needs so familiar to all of us to either the men’s pond or to the mixed pond, with its single sex changing areas, and potential for hostility, to take her chances.

I asked how we could possibly tell ourselves that was safe or fair for her.

I found myself talking pretty passionately of how important my feminism was to me. Of my own experiences with male aggression and how much I understood anyone with a fear of it, but how this evening had clarified for me that in order to be true to what feminism really meant it was vital that we remain compassionate towards anyone facing the same threats we had, I had realised that we must get our heads round inclusion and solidarity with trans and non-binary people, that together we must make it our priority to fight patriarchy and acts of violence and not each other! And that to my mind constantly re-hashing and conjuring up an image of a predatory man “dressed up” as a “fake trans woman” whilst ignoring the very real needs of trans women right in front of us, was crude and not helping any of us. I ended by saying I sincerely believed we needed to wake up to just how ugly and aggressive we were risking becoming if we did not do some proper evolving and thinking- and I ended by letting the academic know that despite her confidence and power point, it was not her testimony that felt convincing to me.

The words sort of tumbled out of me. The friend who had talked again of predatory men looked at the floor whilst I spoke, some people tutted loudly- and I realised that, ready for it or not, I had declared my opinion- she just needs somewhere safe to swim, she needs protection from aggressive predatory men as much as the next woman and I am pretty certain that she is as committed to protecting safe spaces as any of us believe ourselves to be. It is as simple as that.

As the evening concluded and we were making our way out, a woman who had been chatting earlier with the academic marched over to me and poked her finger angrily into my chest.

“Good luck in your utopia!” she sneered.

I didn’t go back to the pond much after that. I started to swim at the Lido instead, a mixed facility down the road.

And in March of 2019 mum ended her life.

And a year after that my child would come out to me as trans.

I have no nifty way to end this…

I have never forgotten hearing the transwoman speaker trying so hard not to become emotional whilst also attempting to politely explain to a room full of cis women how much she loved and needed to swim, some of whom only minutes ago had been yelling at others to make sure to do “the right thing!!”, by which they had meant coming to the conclusion that we must exclude her.

I am grateful to her for her courage.

Thanks to her, by the time my child came out to me, I had already done much of the important thinking, reading, listening and re-assessing of my own blocks and fears, and I was pleased that it did not take a loved one coming out to me for me to have formed my own views on trans inclusionary feminism vs trans exclusionary “feminism.”

I do not like the term TERF. I’ll go along with the trans exclusionary part for sure - those women shouting with the placards were all about exclusion - but it’s after “exclusionary” that the acronym loses me. I don’t find anyone fighting to exclude another marginalised group very radical and I am still not entirely ready to give up on feminism.

But I have also never forgotten the night with mum, watching her palpable deflation having just witnessed a room full of supposedly intelligent and thoughtful people disappearing down the toilet trying to define what feminism is and isn’t. And these days, I sadly understand more and more why she would not use the term in regard to herself.

And if she were alive today, I reckon she might have a thing or two to say on seeing front page photographs reporting on a group of white women high fiving and popping champagne because they believe they have “won” by putting at further risk of violence, humiliation and exclusion those that they could have been forming powerful solidarities and alliances with. I think this may be all the proof she needed to validate why when it came to defining herself, she gave feminism a swerve and stuck to socialism.

( Since writing this a few hours ago I have googled and seen that some questions are yet again being raising regarding trans exclusion at the ladies pond- two things I can say to this- The Lido is not without its issues but it’s pretty nice. And a very very heavy hearted sigh. )