Last year, on a classically cold and gray January morning, I cycled down the river to meet some friends at the lido. I’d decided to go with them on a whim the day before, watching them organize this swim in a WhatsApp group. Though they didn’t know it yet, these three queers were about to witness my first swim at a public pool as an adult.
There was mist rising off the River Lea as I pedaled south, my fingers numb, chin tucked deep into my coat. I felt a sudden trepidation as I got closer, fear and anxiety rising at the thought of going willingly to a place I’d avoided for so long.
Despite living near this east London lido for most of my adult life, I’d never swum there. As a non-binary person, public spaces where facilities are divided into “men” and “women” exclude me by default. And at pools especially, there are two genders: people wearing trunks or swimsuits. I didn’t fit into either category.
I had tried going to swim at leisure centers a few times in my 20s, but I’d end up hunched in a corner of the women’s changing rooms, trying not to be seen or see myself, before leaving in a panic. It wasn’t socially acceptable for me to wear trunks to the pool before I got top surgery, in 2021, and I hated wearing swimsuits so much—they are entirely incompatible with my gender—that I barely ever swam in public. Because I didn’t understand these feelings before I learned more about transness, I experienced them as a murky shame around my inability to function like many other people, who seemed to simply enjoy everyday activities like going swimming because they are fun and good for you.
Which is sad because I love to swim. I lived in Hong Kong when I was little, and in every place we lived there was a shared pool. I swam like a marine mammal, playing fearlessly in the water with kids and adults alike. Most of my early childhood memories revolve around playing in the pool or swimming in the ocean. Returning to the UK at eight, it felt like swimming was one of the few things I knew how to do in this damp country. I swam competitively for a few years, going to swimming galas with my classmates, a childhood spent being chased around the pool translating into a fast, smooth breastroke.
I’ve liked being submerged ever since that watery childhood, but as an adult I tried to swim surreptitiously. I swam naked with my lovers and friends in empty stretches of the sea, abandoned gravel pits, and looping rivers tucked away in the tiny mountains of the Lake District.
After I had top surgery, things began to change. Like Elliot Page, I vividly remember the euphoria of wearing swimming trunks for the first time with a flat chest. The summer after surgery I swam a few times at the beach, but I was still tentative, needing to keep the scars out of the sun and overwhelmed by being able to be bare-chested in public. The way strangers perceive my more visibly trans body can feel risky, and it’s taken time to adjust.
Discomfort at using public services that are categorized by gender—bathrooms, changing rooms, swimming pools—is a common experience for trans people, particularly as these places are the main focus of transphobic campaigners. According to LGBTQ+ anti-violence charity Galop, four out of five trans people in the UK experienced a transphobic hate crime in the last year. As a result, nearly two-thirds of trans people don’t use public restrooms, and half of the trans people living in the UK feel unable to leave their house due to transphobia. As an openly trans journalist, the amount of online abuse and harassment I’ve received over the years has left me on edge when it comes to being in gendered public spaces.
I was holding this mulch of feelings when I met my friends outside the lido in January 2022. I gingerly followed them through the reception and entrance gates to the pool, where they started stripping in the open air. As well as men’s and women’s facilities inside, this lido has unisex poolside showers and changing cubicles—something I’d checked before we came. My friend explained we had to shower first, and then we got in—at which point I felt cheated, because the internet had said this pool was heated and the water felt freezing. The four of us meandered up and down the slowest lane, chatting and swirling and diving, and after a bit I went off and did a few slow lengths.
As I swam, a quiet revolution was taking place inside my body. My flat bare chest dipping in and out of the water felt like a slow unravelling. Since that first visit, I’ve been to the lido nearly every week. My delight in slipping through the water has only increased as my shoulder muscles have grown and I’ve moved from the slow to the medium to the fast lane. The smell of chlorine early in the morning promises me a day that will be brighter and richer after the swim I’ve gifted myself. Once I figured out how to do it in a straight line, I also fell in love with the backstroke, my face turned to the sky from the cool water—especially good in the rain. After swimming, my appetite is huge, another pleasure I’d been missing out on.
But my joy is often eclipsed by anger at the wider political climate and by those in power who want to stop trans people enjoying the benefits of sports like swimming. Earlier this year, Swim England and World Athletics became the latest sporting bodies to ban trans women athletes. Anti-trans laws in the US bar young trans people from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity in 22 states, while British politicians have fallen for and actively promote the transphobic lie that excluding trans people from sports (and public spaces) will “protect women and girls.”
After we swam at the lido on that misty January day last year, my friends and I showered together outside, steam rising off our slippery bodies, blissful. Then we went and commandeered one of the big wooden tables outside the lido at the edge of the park with hot chocolates and a game of Bananagrams. I was relieved and energized.
Against the backdrop of transphobic moral panic in the UK, that swim and every swim since has felt like a small act of queer resistance. Now, instead of hiding my trans body, I flaunt it. I couldn’t do it in a lot of places, but at this lido, in the gayest part of London, I can and I will. Trans people exist, and the magic of swimming at the lido is ours, too.