Last week Sweden legalised topless swimming in the country’s swimming baths/pools.

It’s a little bit more complicated than that. This stems from a case where a person wishing to be identified as transgender was ejected from a pool for being female. A court case followed and the law was changed so that there wasn’t any requirement for a female to wear a bikini top.

Of course, this comes at a time when Swedish pools are being simultaneously increasingly segregated by ‘female only’ sessions, due to ‘a risk of collisions with other cultures and religions. There are [Muslim] women swimming fully dressed. Even people without religious or cultural ramifications may be offended by women bathing shirtless’, according to the manager of one Stockholm bathhouse.

The rise in immigrants to Sweden has led to some unpleasant incidents int he recent past, to the extent that some pools are employing ‘groping guards’

I’m in favour of people having the right to seek a better life and relocate elsewhere around the globe, and for them to bring their own traditions with them. What I’m not in favour of is that any culture assumes to imagine it can press its own unpleasant values on the host nation, such as the concept, in some, that women are only there to be treated as sexual objects.

When in Rome…adopt your behaviour to that of your hosts.

Hopefully, though, this legislation regarding the opportunity to dispense with unnecessary items of swimwear on the grounds of equality can now be extended to pools (and parks and anywhere, really) everywhere.

Trine