Summary: A Los Angeles woman who says she was harassed in a gym locker room took her complaint straight to California state politics, confronting Sen. Scott Wiener at a San Francisco event and sparking a heated debate over safety, identity, and who should decide locker room policy.
Tish Hyman says she was forced out of a Gold’s Gym in Los Angeles after confronting a person she identifies as a man who entered the women’s locker room. She reports the gym revoked her membership after she pushed back, and she’s since taken the issue to a public meeting with California Senator Scott Wiener. The confrontation became a flashpoint in a room of San Francisco progressives, with anger and boos breaking out as the exchange heated up.
Hyman made her case forcefully and plainly. “I want to support you,” she said to Sen. Wiener. “I have millions of people behind me, watching this right now and we want to know, are you going to protect women? Not trans women. Women. Women and trans women are a different thing.” One audience member replied that, “trans women are women.” Hyman then repeated, “No, they are not, they are men.”
The crowd’s reaction shifted when Hyman accused the individual of violent behavior. “He broke his wife’s jaw so bad she needed reconstructive surgery,” she said, and the room went quiet. The person she named, Kyle Grant Freeman, now uses the name Alexis Black, and Hyman noted he spent a year in jail in Ohio after pleading guilty in a domestic violence case against his ex-wife. That criminal history, she argued, is relevant to who belongs in a women’s locker room.
Hyman framed her concerns around safety for women in private spaces. “I’m a lesbian. I’m not transphobic, and I’m black, so if there’s another black woman in here who wants to tell me how they feel, please join in, but all of you are not. And I don’t know who you are or what you are, but I’m a lesbian and I’m telling you right now, men are harassing women in the locker rooms!” she shouted to a mostly white, liberal audience. Her words underscored the tensions between lived experience and progressive identity politics.
Sen. Wiener attempted to respond with empathy while also speaking about the wider vulnerabilities facing trans women. “I appreciate your point of view. I’m so sorry you were harassed,” he began, and later added, “I think we need to protect the safety of all women, and obviously, that’s incredibly important. And I also know that trans women are also brutalized in this country.” He tried to balance concerns for cisgender women with the risks trans women face, but that balance did not satisfy Hyman.
When Wiener restated the broader point, saying, “So, women and cisgender women are brutalized in this country, and we have to protect the safety of all women,” the exchange still devolved back to Hyman’s central demand: concrete protections for women in restrooms and locker rooms. Hyman answered bluntly: “We have to protect women. We cannot be raped in the bathrooms by men that want to say they’re women. They’re not women.” She then walked out, declaring, “I am leaving! Because you know what? You guys are not protecting women. This thing with the trans, it’s not right. Thank you very much.”
The episode highlights several practical clashes conservatives have been warning about for years: when policy privileges identity labels over biological sex, women’s privacy and safety can be endangered. Hyman’s argument was not framed as abstract politics but as a personal safety complaint backed by a criminal record she cited. For many watching, that combination made her case feel less theoretical and more immediate.
Onlookers in the room offered both support and derision, making the event a vivid snapshot of the cultural divide over gender and public accommodations. The debate did not produce policy changes on the spot, but it did amplify the same questions conservatives press in legislatures: who sets the rules, how are safety concerns weighed, and what happens when institutions like gyms respond by removing the person who complains instead of addressing the complaint?
Editor’s Note: After more than 40 days of screwing Americans, a few Dems have finally caved. The Schumer Shutdown was never about principle—just inflicting pain for political points.
