Ladies’ Pond swimmers lose battle to block trans access

TRANSGENDER women will be allowed to continue using the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond, after a meeting on the issue descended into angry protests.

Gender critical campaigners are said to have shouted “traitors” and “shame on you” immediately after the vote at the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond Association (KLPA) AGM on Sunday.

Female swimmers lost a vote to bar trans women from swimming at the open-air venue on Hampstead Heath in north London, the Daily Mail reported.

Earlier, the two-hour meeting heard pleas from women who said they no longer felt safe using the pond.

Venice Allan, one campaigner at the meeting, told attendees it was “inevitable” that women and girls will be sexually assaulted.

She accused organisers of creating a “fantasy porn set” for “perverted men”.

A video shared by Ms Allan online shows her standing on a chair and shouting to a packed hall after the vote: “That when the inevitable happens, as a result of your trans inclusive policy, that the majority of women, and, so I’m told, two men, have voted for today, and one of these men, that you’re so inclusive of, attack or rape a woman or girl, I want you to remember that you voted for that. I hope you wake up in the middle of the night and remember that you made that act of male violence in a sacred woman’s space possible.

“Until then, enjoy maintaining the fantasy porn set that you’ve created for these perverted men and maintaining their erections.

“You’ll be glad to hear that you won’t be seeing me there ever again until this single-sex policy is implemented.”

Kenwood Ladies’ Pond opened in 1926 and is advertised as a “unique women-only space” that “provides a place of refuge and security for women and girls of all ages”.

It has been open to trans women since 2019 when the City of London Corporation, which runs the facility, adopted a new gender identity policy to be “fully compliant with the Equality Act 2010”.

A spokesman for KLPA said: “Members discussed a proposed resolution to amend the KLPA constitution to interpret the word woman ‘literally and biologically so that only those born female in sex can use the pond’… The proposed resolution was rejected by a large majority of the members present at the AGM.”