In Berlin, Germany, the diversity ombudsman has decided that women and “non-binary” people with breasts can swim in public pools without tops.
According to a CNN article about the “health benefits of communal open-air nudity,” this change happened at the end of 2022 after a woman who had been told she couldn’t swim topless in a Berlin pool filed a complaint with the Senate Department for Justice, Diversity, and Anti-Discrimination.
After looking into the situation, the authorities decided that the woman had been treated unfairly and decided that women and “non-binary” people should be able to swim without covering their chests.
The city’s ombudsman, Dr. Doris Liebscher, praised the decision, saying, “The ombudsman very much welcomes the decision of the bathing establishments because it gives equal rights to all Berliners, whether they are male, female, or non-binary, and it gives the staff of the bathing establishments legal certainty.”
Not Berlin, but the city of Goettingen in Lower Saxony was the first to start this project.
After hearing from a biologically male transman who was turned away from a pool because they wouldn’t cover their breasts because they were a man and men didn’t have to do that, the town’s officials changed their policy.