Ousted MSNBC host Joy Reid said she’d ‘freak out’ if she ‘saw a penis in the ladies’ locker room’, weighing in on the lesbian singer who was banned from her Los Angeles gym after complaining about a transgender woman.
Reid’s comments came after a now-viral dispute in which Tish Hyman accused a transgender woman of following her into the locker room of a Los Angeles gym and calling her a ‘b***h in a deep, angry voice.’
Hyman claimed the trans woman – later identified as Alexis Black, 32 – had been removed from the gym.
But then, the staff ‘turned around and terminated my membership too, as if I was being punished for speaking up.’
Reid came to Hyman’s defense on Sunday’s episode of her podcast.
‘I would be disturbed – I’m telling you – I would be alarmed,’ she said.
‘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 stated that her comments were ‘nothing against trans-anybody’ and that she was simply concerned about women’s safety.
Speaking on her podcast, Reid said that Hyman’s concerns should have been addressed by the gym’s management
She said: ‘What I’m saying is if I turn around, and I see a penis in front of me, inside of the room, I would probably go to management and say, wait a minute, why is there a naked man in this room?’
Reid added that Hyman’s concerns should have been taken seriously by management.
‘Because if she’s uncomfortable, does she not have the right to be at least uncomfortable with the situation?’ Reid asked.
Her co-host and cousin Jacque Reid agreed and said she did not want to be in a woman’s locker room and ‘see men genitalia.’ She suggested opening a trans locker room in the gym.
‘Or gender neutral,’ Joy Reid said. ‘Because give people the choice.’
The confrontation Reid was referring to gained national attention after a video of Hyman screaming about ‘grown men with big d**ks’ in the gym’s locker room went viral.
‘And I want to make sure the girls know,’ Hyman added while being kicked out of the gym.
Hyman went into the gym and shouted to other patrons about her outrage regarding the trans individual
Black, an Ohio native, has used the women’s changing room since she started taking estrogen and progesterone
Hyman’s dust-up was with Alexis Black, a 32-year-old trans woman who previously told the Daily Mail that she still had male genitalia and previously went by the name Grant Freeman.
Black, a divorcee from Ohio, has been using the women’s changing room since she began taking estrogen and progesterone.
The former DJ said she was open about her transition and had talked about it in the gym’s changing rooms.
She said she felt disrespected by the encounter, but that it was not the first time Hyman had confronted her.
Black previously told the Daily Mail: ‘She didn’t want to do introductions.’
The location of the dramatic confrontation used to be called Gold’s Gym Beverly Center but EoS Fitness purchased nearly all of the Gold’s Gym franchise locations in Southern California last month.
Black previously told the Daily Mail that she had ‘no interest in having a penis’ and planned on fully transitioning.
Hyman asked California state senator Scott Wiener if he was going to ‘protect women’ and added that trans women were not women
The dramatic blow-up took place at an EoS Fitness location that used to be Gold’s Gym Beverly Center
Reid said a possible solution to prevent similar confrontations in the future could be gender-neutral rooms
Hyman had accused Black of entering the female locker room behind her and calling her a b***h, which she claimed ‘terrified’ her.
She then ‘ran out into the gym screaming there is a man in the restroom.’
When Black was asked by the Daily Mail if she had labeled Hyman a ‘b***h’, she would not confirm whether the inflammatory language had been used.
Hyman’s claims even reached state senator Scott Wiener, who represents parts of San Francisco, after asking him if he was ‘going to protect women.’
Hyman said: ‘I want to support you. I have millions of people behind me, watching this right now and we want to know, are you going to protect women?’
She also said: ‘Not trans women. Women. Women and trans women are a different thing.’
When an audience member interjected that ‘trans women are women’, Hyman said: ‘No, they are not. They are men.’
