The man was seized by staff at the sauna's monthly Queer Kallis event, the only time when the normally gender-segregated men's and women's sauna rooms are open to all, regardless of legal gender.
“This is not acceptable in any way,” Jonas Rincon-Dahlberg, Kallbadhuset's co-owner, told the Sydsvenskan newspaper.
“Staff dealt with him immediately and managed to get hold of the women who had been sitting in the sauna and had been frightened, disturbed, and stormed out.”
The man was kept in a separate room until police arrived. He is now suspected of sexual harassment.
While everyone is welcome at Queer Kallis, the event is billed as being held “particularly for LGBTQ people”.
“Non-binary and trans-people who previously were unable to visit Kallis on account of its strict gender segregation into a men's and women's section can now have access to everything,” the sauna explains on its website for the event.
The queer sauna day was launched in May last year after a campaign led by two Malmö politicians, the Left Party's Hanna Thomé and Linda Hiltman from Feminist Initiative, who argued that the sauna's strict gender segregation discriminated against trans and non-binary people.
Rincon-Dahlberg said that the man's behaviour was something “unique for Kallbadhuset”.
“The gender-neutral day is going to stay, but we are going to discuss this at an evaluation meeting,” he said.
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