Former MSNBC host Joy Reid admitted that if she were to see male genitalia in a women's locker room, she would "freak out." On Sunday, during her "Reid This Reid That" podcast, Reid was reacting to a viral incident that happened at a Gold's Gym in Southern California, where a woman was seen getting into a shouting match with a man pretending to be a woman who had been in the women's locker room.
"I’m alarmed enough when I see a woman with her dangling boobies. If I saw a penis in the ladies’ locker room, I would freak out too," Reid said. "This is nothing against trans anybody. What it’s saying is if I turn around, and I see a pee pee – a penis in front of me, inside of the room, I would probably go to management and say, ‘Wait a minute. Why is there somebody — a naked man — in this room?'"
"Because, just the world we live in, just from a safety standpoint, just from a privacy standpoint, I can see why she would have gone and reported to management," she continued. "Now if they clarified and said trans...okay, but I think they should take her concerns also seriously."
NEW: Joy Reid comes out against men with no clothes on in women's locker rooms but says women with their "danglin' b**bies" also stress her out.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 19, 2025
"I'm alarmed enough when I see a woman with her danglin' b**bies..."
"If I saw a pen*s in the ladies' locker room, I would freak… pic.twitter.com/3jw4XmbkkB
The woman at the center of controversy is Tish Hyman, a lesbian singer from California. It was later revealed that the man she confronted in the women's locker room, Grant Kyle Freeman, who now goes by "Alexis," has a history of domestic violence, having beaten his ex-wife so badly she needed reconstructive surgery on her jaw. She was banned from the gym for the incident.
As Republicans continue pressing the issue of biological men in women’s spaces, Reid’s comments highlight a growing shift among some Democrats who, until recently, avoided voicing such concerns publicly. What was once considered a taboo topic on the left can now be more openly challenged, especially as real-world incidents draw attention to the safety and privacy implications. For many voters, these questions were never supposed to be partisan at all.
Reid’s unusually candid comments suggest that portions of the Democratic political landscape may finally be catching up to a reality that most Americans have quietly understood from the start.