The starting point was the incident with Lotte Mies in December 2022. She came to swim topless in a regular indoor pool, which is located in Berlin’s Kaulsdorf district. Previously, the 33-year-old activist called the pool to find out about the possibility of swimming “without a top”, to which she was answered in the affirmative. However, on the spot, the sports complex staff asked her to either cover her breasts or leave. Refused by Lotta Mees to comply with these demands, the administration called the police.
“I was treated like a second class person – by gender, and it was very humiliating and extremely unpleasant. I was deprived of the opportunity to independently decide how to present my body,” Mies tells DW. “I thought about it and decided that I don’t want to be ashamed of my breasts, this is not normal,” the activist continues. “The constant sexualization that we are subjected to is not only about the chest. And I just don’t want to put up with it anymore.”
Lotte Mies filed a complaint with the Metropolitan Ombudsman responsible in Berlin for enforcing the local anti-discrimination law, which came into force in June 2020 and is groundbreaking for Germany. If the German Federal Law of 2006 “On Equal Treatment”prohibits discrimination in the areas of labor and civil law, the Berlin Municipal Anti-Discrimination Act expands the list of legally protected rights in matters of protection against discrimination in the public sector.
The capital’s pools have never had a particular gender dress code: there was only a general rule about “regular bathing clothes” for all visitors. What this meant specifically was decided by the staff. After the public outcry caused by the incident with Lotte Mies, the Association of Public Swimming Pools of Berlinissued an official clarification in March 2023 – ensuring that all visitors can now swim topless.
Equal rights for all residents of Berlin?
The clarification clarifies that topless swimming is equally acceptable for all people, and only “primary sexual characteristics” need to be covered. They are understood as the organs necessary for reproduction. The German Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency classifies breasts, beards and body hair as “secondary sexual characteristics”.
Doris Liebscher, head of the ombudsman’s office in the capital responsible for enforcing the anti-discrimination law, welcomed the clarification of the rules and said the decision “enshrines equal rights for all Berliners, whether male, female or non-binary.”
One of the first cases brought under the Berlin Anti-Discrimination Act dealt with a 2021 case involving Gabrielle Lebreton. She came topless to the outdoor swimming pool in Berlin’s Treptow-Köpenick district with her five-year-old son. When Lebreton refused to cover her chest, the police were called. As a result, she and her child were forced to leave the pool. The woman decided to defend her rights in court, but in the end she lost, because the district court ruled that women’s breasts are different from men’s and therefore their attitude towards them can be regulated by other rules. Currently, Lebreton is trying to appeal this decision on appeal.
“That’s where breast discrimination starts,” Lebreton’s lawyer Leonie Thum told DW. overcoming a social attitude that is not defined by law. Tum believes that the court’s verdict undermines the very idea of an anti-discrimination law, since it turns out that if “a part of the public does not agree with something, this is enough to justify discrimination.”
Campaigners call for upper body desexualization
After Lebreton was ordered to leave the pool in 2021, activists in Berlin founded the feminist alliance “Equal Breasts for All” (“Gleiche Brust für Alle”), which works to desexualize the human torso in a similar fashion to the 2014 “Free the Nipples” campaign. “(“Free the Nipple”) in the US. For example, campaigners cycled topless through Berlin to protest the hypocrisy of denying women the right to walk topless in a city plastered with ads depicting “half-naked, sexualized and unrealistic images of human bodies.”
“Men don’t need to hide their beards just because at puberty it means they’re ready for sex, but for some reason this is the case with female breasts,” says Tum, adding that men have biological markers that signal about puberty in the same way as in women. The only difference, she says, is that men are not required to hide them.
Another often overlooked aspect of topless bathing rules is the rights of transgender and non-binary people, Tum says: “If a state has gender regulation based on two sexes, that is, binary, then there will always be discrimination against transgender and non-binary people. “. So, in August 2021, in the German city of Göttingen, a non-binary person who swam topless was ordered to leave the public pool. But after the launch of the “Equal Breasts for All” campaign, the municipal authorities introduced a pilot project in 2022 allowing everyone to swim “topless” on Saturdays and Sundays in the city’s four pools.
Naturism in Germany
Germany is known for its liberal attitude towards nudity. Fully nude bathers can be seen on the beaches and in parks even in the most conservative regions of the country. There is a long tradition in German society of public skinny-dipping as part of the “free body culture” (“Freikörperkultur”, commonly referred to as FKK for short), a philosophical movement that emerged in the late 19th century with the goal of a healthy lifestyle and the unity of man with nature.
Unfortunately, these days, the Lotte Mees case has led not only to clarification of the dress code in public pools, but also to a wave of hatred. The woman was subjected to insults on the Internet – ranging from derogatory comments about her appearance to threats of rape.
“While Germany lags behind other European countries in the application of anti-discrimination legislation, long established at the level of the European Union,” says lawyer Tum, “I hoped that the path to building an equal and free society would be less difficult.”
By the way, from April 1 in all city pools of Cologne also, as in Berlin, you can swim topless – regardless of the gender of the person.