Frauenbadi and debate about shelters for women: who is allowed in?

The importance of the place becomes clear as soon as you step into the dressing room, with the curtain carelessly drawn. “No Martin, you can’t come to me,” says a woman, annoyed, into her phone. “We can’t see each other, it’s just not possible now!” Your verbal defenses get louder. “Do you know where I am?” she calls out triumphantly after a while: “In the women’s pool!”

A Frauenbadi is a safe space, a protected space to which only women have access. Many outdoor pools also offer gender-separated areas. During the day, the women’s swimming pool on the Stadthausquai on the Limmat belongs exclusively to women. They had to wait a long time for it. It was not until 1837, when women were banned from bathing in Zurich, that the “bathhouse for women” was opened.

But the raison d’être of women’s bathrooms is being questioned more today than it used to be. The debate about whether some places should be made gender-neutral or who is entitled to use the shelters for women affects the swimming pools just as much as the public toilets – if not even more. Since the beginning of the year, it has been possible in Switzerland to change your gender in the civil status register without any effort. This makes such questions more urgent. Only the discussion is not conducted openly.

For this text, I spoke to plant managers and lifeguards and heard about an incident that, while there is anecdotal evidence, actually happened this summer. Because they “don’t want to be attacked by activists”, those involved do not want to be named. You are scared. It’s mostly people who don’t vote for SVP, but are politically left.

A person who could be read as a man on the outside and wore a mustache demanded admission to the women’s area of ​​a Zurich swimming pool. There was an “f” on her ID card, so she is registered as a woman. The pool management was not willing to let the angry person in with the women.

The locked-out guest threatened and complained to the Zurich Sports Office, which is responsible for the bathing establishments. The sports department confirms the incident, but does not want to comment on further details.

Freed from male gazes

In the listed complex of the Frauenbadi nothing disturbs the tranquility on this afternoon in August. It’s quiet here, the mood calm. “Relaxed” is a word we hear a lot. And, as most people say, men don’t look at you. There are no men who judge women’s bodies, and that’s nice. You can be yourself here, says one woman.

I don’t want to disturb the idyll, but I’m thinking of the merciless female gaze with which women measure and compare each other.

Although the location excludes many, letter balloons in rainbow colors form the words “Love is love” above the kiosk. In the bookshelf with the books that the guests have left behind, there are titles such as “What a man is” or “Fair game”. Nobody here has to feel like the latter.

The guests could at least feel harassed if people suddenly came and went who could be read as a man from the outside. Or if gender-separated pool areas were opened for everyone at all because the division is no longer considered contemporary. A corresponding attempt in the Badi Utoquai caused protests in 2019. In a petition, regular guests demanded that the zones for men and women only be returned, whereupon the city council reversed its decision.

A woman in her fifties, who often only comes to the women’s pool for coffee, says: She also likes to go to mixed pools with her husband. But just as she couldn’t imagine going to gender-neutral toilets depending on the environment and time of day, she appreciates the protection in a women’s bathroom.

But even if this is usually guaranteed and a sheet of paper pinned to the door explicitly only welcomes women, men have already gained access in other ways: with drones, which they steer over the sunbathing women.

Sometimes there is already excitement when it is not clear who is doing his rounds. “There’s a man swimming!” the women yell and only calm down when the woman, who only looks a bit masculine, gets out of the water. That’s what I’m told.

The “f” in the passport is easy

It is unclear how the women’s swimming pools will deal with people who cannot be clearly identified as female from the outside. Nothing is mentioned in the bathing regulations of the city of Zurich. The Badi staff were not informed in advance about the new law for easier gender change from January 2022, which my interlocutors criticize. This may lead to more and more situations like the one with the bather with a mustache and an “f” in the passport.

In order to prepare the employees of the city of Zurich’s bathing establishments for cases like these, the Zurich Office for Equal Opportunities is now conducting training courses together with the Sports Office. The current practice is that a conversation is sought with the person. The official gender of a person and the interests of the other guests in the bathroom are taken into account. In individual cases, solutions are sought; there is very rarely a need for this.

Despite these reassurances, my interlocutors say that a riot could not be ruled out if someone who identifies as a woman but is not outwardly recognizable as such mixes with the bathers. You have to look at it situationally: the sooner a person adapts to their appearance, the less they attract attention.

Most of the guests have gotten used to the older trans woman, who also came to the women’s pool and who is clearly feminine. While the older women are a bit more skeptical, the younger ones are relaxed. As long as they behave correctly, trans and non-binary people should also be allowed to swim here, says a woman. “Women can misbehave too.”

The excitement of summer

The afternoon laps like the small waves on the raft, swans glide past, women lie stretched out on the grate. A shadow falls on the cloth. A newcomer opens the parasol. The fact that it’s not just sisters lying next to sisters can be seen from the face of another woman, who annoyed pulls her towel into the sun. “Sorry,” says the parasol woman quietly.

Turf battles are not fought with fists in the women’s pool. However, there is no need to glorify it as a peaceful oasis. “Freibad”, the new film by Doris Dörrie, which will be released in cinemas in Switzerland and Germany on September 1, shows how vehemently women are willing to defend their baths, towels and bodies.

The comedy takes place in the only women’s pool in Germany, the Lorettobad in Freiburg. What the director tells lightly, with a sharp eye and a lot of humor actually happened in 2017. At the time, the media reported about the clashes between old feminists and burkini wearers, the fat and the thin in this bath. When a group of veiled women settles in on the meadow, an open culture war ensues.

“Freibad” is wonderfully politically incorrect for long stretches. The film may play with clichés, but reality confirms their true core. The outdoor pool, which Doris Dörrie calls “a training camp for democracy”, reflects social controversies that go beyond the edge of the pool and the bath towel. The debates of the summer, if not to say the excitement, are concentrated in the Frauenbadi, the most exclusive public place on a water.

One remembers the heated debate over whether women should be allowed to swim topless in outdoor pools. They are only allowed to do so in the women’s pool and in some clearly marked women’s areas. Elsewhere it could offend the “moral sensibilities” of other bathers, as it is officially said. About half of the women in Zurich’s women’s pool have taken off their bikini tops. In this case, too, it is the freedom from the male gaze that is enjoyed here.

The fear of debate

Opening the Badi to everyone would also take away a place from the Jewish-Orthodox women, who have been visiting the women’s pools for years and can be recognized by their bonnets. In “Freibad” the group of Muslim women flees from Switzerland to the baths in southern Germany because of the burqa ban. The young woman, who wears a full-length burkini, has been criticized by older feminists as hostile to pleasure. “No woman wears a headscarf voluntarily when it’s 40 degrees in the shade,” they complain.

A woman who was covered from head to ankle was also enjoying herself in the Zurich Frauenbad. That is not forbidden, but one and the other woman got upset. Religious feelings in honor – but one is among women here!

In “Freibad”, the film, a man in women’s clothing runs the pool kiosk. “A woman is whoever feels like a woman,” a student teaches a woman who questions his presence in the women’s bath. But Doris Dörrie only touches on the transgender topic as if it were too hot for her too. The outdoor pool, on the other hand, gets completely out of control when a man is hired as lifeguard due to a lack of staff.

Where Dörrie reconciles the conflicts with a world-improving message at the end, these remain in reality. The water is a nice metaphor for how fluid gender identities are now perceived. But it’s not that simple, as the descriptions from the Frauenbadi show. Both men and women who look masculine arouse excitement, even rejection, in women. My Badi is mine – or I’ll make a fuss.