4
BROOKLYN WEEKLY, NOVEMBER 24, 2019
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
The city needs to cut back the
hours that men are allowed to
swim at a public pool in Williamsburg
to accommodate ultra-Orthodox
Jewish women, who are
forbidden from bathing with men
for religious reasons, civic gurus
claimed at a meeting Tuesday.
Acting on the request of a group
of mostly Hasidic women, Community
Board 1’s full board passed a
motion demanding the Parks Department
set aside an additional
three hours a week for female-only
swimmers at the Metropolitan Recreation
Center, because the current
time slots are so jam-packed
that one Williamsburger said she
no longer allows her aging mother
to use it for fear she’ll drown.
“My mom — who is hitting
90-years-old, thank god — she’s
a Holocaust survivor and she has
been in the Metropolitan pool for
many many years, keeping her
health and keeping her beauty,”
said Esther Weiss at the civic
meeting. “But now, due to the fact
that they cut the women’s swim,
she can no longer come because
she’s in danger of drowning with
other people bumping and shoving
her — we do not allow her to
come.”
The city-owned pool and gym at
the corner of Bedford and Metropolitan
avenues currently reserves
the pool for women for an hour on
Monday morning from 10-11 am,
two hours on Wednesday from 9-11
am, and two hours for women and
girls on Sunday afternoon.
The northern Brooklyn civic
panel passed a motion put forward
by its Women’s Issues committee
to add an extra hour on Monday
starting at 9 am and a two-hour
slot from 9-11 am on Friday, with
22 board members voting in favor,
four against, and eight abstaining.
The city has accommodated
gender-segregated swimming
times for decades to accommodate
Williamsburg’s large Hasidic
community, which forbids women
from swimming with men under
Jewish law.
The St. John’s Recreation Center
Pool in Crown Heights — another
neighborhood with a large
Hasidic community — also has
one two-hour slot for women swimming.
The Parks Department briefl y
eliminated the female-only hours
after an anonymous complaint
prompted a review by the city’s Human
Rights Commission in 2016.
The investigation found the
policy to be in violation of the
city’s human rights law, which
forbids gender discrimination in
public buildings, but bureaucrats
allowed for an exemption after
Parks honchos proposed cutting
back the women’s hours and axing
the men’s-only block at the Crown
Heights facility, according to a
New York Times report.
New Yorkers can still use all
city-owned single-sex facilities
that most closely align with their
gender identity, according to a 2016
decree by Mayor Bill de Blasio.
One board member and LGBTQ
advocate slammed the policy
— which has previously also been
condemned by the New York Civil
Liberties Union and the New York
Times Editorial Board — because
it doesn’t account for Brooklynites
that don’t identify with the gender
binary.
“This is not a progressive policy,”
said Thomas Burrows, a member
of the LGBTQ political club the
Lambda Independent Democrats.
“Gender-segregated public areas
such as locker rooms and rest
rooms pose a signifi cant hurdle.
By defi nition these spaces exclude
people who do not identify with either
gender or have experienced
trauma in such spaces.”
But the head of the Women’s
Issue committee argued that the
gendered swimming time is for
women of various backgrounds
who feel more comfortable without
men in the pool.
“We’re a community that has
a huge population of Jewish, Muslim,
and older people who really
feel that they are too modest to be
able to swim,” said Jan Peterson.
A spokeswoman for the Parks
Department said the agency does
not plan to extend the current
hours.
“Currently we have no plans
to further expand women’s only
swimming at any of our centers,”
said Charisse Hill in astatement.
Jewish swimmers demand more
women-only time at W’burg pool
Community Board 1 voted to ask the Parks Department to add three more women
only hours at the Metropolitan Recreation Center. Photo by Caroline Ourso
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