ABSTRACT
During 2018 and 2019 the Kenwood Ladies’ Bathing Pond was thrust into the midst of the ‘Trans Debate’, leading the City of London Corporation to launch a Gender Identity Survey, and subsequently develop a Gender Identity Policy. This chapter considers how this esoteric site of urban nature became so heavily embroiled within ongoing discussions of trans lives, and what trans and non-binary peoples’ relationships to the Pond disclose about the wider context in which it is embedded. The chapter argues that urban imaginaries of the Ladies’ Pond, which are tacitly gendered, racialized, and classed, have become fused with associations of gender purity, to create a potent site in which to locate the ‘Trans Debate’. The chapter makes use of the lived realities of trans women and non-binary people, in tandem with thinking by Judith Butler and Sara Ahmed, to unravel unsubstantiated claims made by advocates of exclusionary policies, which rely on cis-heteronormative assumptions and transphobic stigma, and show key dynamics pertaining to the ‘Trans Debate’ in Britain more broadly.
