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
COURIER L 34 IFE, NOV. 22-28, 2019
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 femaleonly
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
Community Board 1 voted to ask the Parks Department to add three
more women-only hours at the Metropolitan Recreation Center on Nov.
13. Photo by Carolin Ourso
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 an
emailed statement.
Jewish swimmers demand more
women-only time at W’burg pool