A trans-identified male in Linköping, Sweden, filed a complaint with the country’s Discrimination Ombudsman after being told he was not allowed to use the women’s changing room at the Tinnerbäcksbadet swimming pool. The man, known only as “Amy,” is refusing to use the “gender neutral” changing stalls available, insisting he should be allowed to change with women.
Amy was sympathetically profiled by Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT, and reported that he began swimming at Tinnerbäcksbadet about a year ago after buying a mermaid tail. The facility’s website states that it offers “mermaid” swimming classes using similar accessories for those aged “7 and older.”
Amy claims to have used the women’s changing room at the pool for months without issue, but was recently banned from doing so after a male staff member confronted him. According to Amy, the staff member banned him from continuing to use the women’s area, stating: “You shouldn’t go in there, you are a biological male.”
While it is unclear what Amy’s legal sex marker is, the staff member may have simply been enforcing the guidelines set out by Medley, the company that oversees and operates the Tinnerbäcksbadet and other swimming facilities across Sweden. According to Medley’s policies, patrons at their facilities must use the changing room that corresponds with the stated sex on their legal identification documents. In July of 2025, Sweden drastically eased the requirements for obtaining a legal sex change, dropping the requirement for a diagnosis for gender dysphoria.
While the Linköping facility does offer two private “gender neutral” changing areas, Amy has refused to use them. In his interview with SVT, he said he wanted to be able to change around females and not be treated any differently than them.
He went on to file a complaint with Sweden’s Discrimination Ombudsman (DO), but the agency dismissed it without opening a full investigation. Only a small proportion of complaints reach that stage each year due to a crippling backlog. Despite the dismissal, Amy has stated that he intends to pursue whatever action is available to him against the swimming pool.
Despite being questioned by SVT on the case, Medley’s press spokesperson Nils Rådström unambiguously stood by the staff’s decision to ban Amy from the women’s changing rooms.
“In this case, we have referred [Amy] to our gender-neutral changing rooms,” Rådström said. He also gave an example of how their policy is enforced, explaining that if a trans-identified male “enters the women’s changing room but looks like a man” or has male anatomy, and causes discomfort to others, staff are to follow policy and redirect them to the neutral rooms.
SVT’s report on the incident framed it primarily as a discrimination case, quoting lawyers who suggested that Medley’s national policy might conflict with Sweden’s Discrimination Act, though no clear court precedents exist. Other Swedish media outlets took issue with SVT‘s one-sided coverage, with Samnytt criticizing SVT for portraying the issue as a human-rights violation and emphasizing that the DO complaint had already been dismissed.
Fria Tider similarly focused on criticism of SVT’s coverage by Professor Agnes Wold, who argued that the public broadcaster should have balanced their coverage by speaking to women who could feel uncomfortable sharing facilities with males. Wold said women should have the right to sex-segregated spaces such as changing rooms and prisons, and expressed concern about Sweden’s new law permitting legal gender changes without a medical diagnosis, warning that it could be open to abuse.
The incident in Linköping is not unique. Similar disputes have emerged in Sweden in recent years as institutions adapt to new gender-identity and “anti-discrimination” regulations.
According to data from Sweden’s Discrimination Ombudsman, complaints related to gender identity or gender expression have grown steadily over the past decade and tripled since 2015. While many cases never make it to the investigation and ruling stages, there have been successful “discrimination” complaints lodged based on misgendering incidents.
In January of 2024, the Discrimination Ombudsman ruled that two regional healthcare providers had discriminated against transgender patients by recording their birth sex in their medical files.
In both cases, the patients had informed staff of their preferred “gender identity,” but clinicians had made notes that included the patients biological sex – one during a doctor’s visit, and another in an online consultation through the national health platform 1177.
The regions argued that the errors were unintentional, but the Ombudsman found it to be “direct discrimination” on the grounds of gender and gender identity or expression, citing violations of Chapter 2, Section 13 of the Discrimination Act. They were ordered to pay compensation to the transgender claimants.
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