For once, a leading liberal pundit said what millions of American women have been thinking but were told not to say out loud. On her podcast Reid This Reid That, Joy Reid admitted she would “freak out” if she saw a penis in a women’s locker room, acknowledging the obvious privacy and safety concerns that so many on the left have pretended don’t exist.
Reid’s remarks came after a viral confrontation at a Gold’s Gym in Beverly Hills, where singer Tish Hyman accused a biological male of repeatedly entering the women’s locker room and harassing women, sparking outrage and a national conversation about where common sense privacy ends and ideology begins. The footage and follow-up reporting showed bewildered patrons and indifferent staff, the exact scenario feminists warned would happen when ideology trumped safety.
Conservative commentators were quick to spotlight Reid’s volte-face, and Dave Rubin seized on it in a Direct Message segment of the Rubin Report, posting the clip as proof that mainstream progressives are finally confronting the consequences of their own policies. Rubin’s audience rightly sees this as vindication: the left’s insistence that biology need not matter in sex-separated spaces has always been a policy experiment with real victims.
To be clear, Reid tried to frame her remarks as compassionate and not “anti-trans,” but that rhetorical dodge cannot erase the reality that women deserve private spaces where they will not be surprised by male anatomy. Even other media voices on the left have been forced to acknowledge this basic point, while conservative voices from across the spectrum applauded Reid for speaking plainly. That small admission should be a turning point in the debate.
This isn’t just about one gym or one viral clip; it’s about laws and policies in states like California that allow people to use sex-separated facilities based on declared gender identity rather than biological sex, with painful real-world consequences for vulnerable women and girls. When the law prioritizes ideology over common-sense privacy protections, it isn’t surprising that private businesses and local managers are left floundering and women are left exposed.
Hardworking Americans see through the slogans and lectures from coastal elites: decency, safety, and fairness are not “transphobic,” they are common sense. It’s time for policymakers and business owners to stop hiding behind woke catchphrases and start listening to the people who use these spaces every day. Our daughters and mothers deserve laws and rules that protect modesty and safety, not experiments in social engineering.
The truth finally bleeding through the mainstream media should spark action, not applause. Demand that gyms and schools reinstate commonsense policies, insist legislators put women’s safety first, and hold the media accountable when they spend years promoting a theory that now admits its own flaws. If conservatives keep pushing this argument with clarity and conviction, the American people will win back their common-sense rights to privacy and safety.
