Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed said that it’s OK for young girls to see male genitals in their locker rooms because they are going to see them on the internet anyway.
The claim referred to a segment from an extended interview with El-Sayed on “60 Minutes,” available to view on YouTube. In it, El-Sayed was asked about parental control over education and the interviewer cited one example being the debate over transgender kids playing sports. In response, El-Sayed made the argument that rather than try to shield kids from things they may not understand, it is a parent’s job to guide them through it. There was no mention of locker rooms or male genitalia, nor was there evidence El-Sayed ever made such a statement.
Rumors that Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed allegedly said it was OK for girls or young women to see male genitals in their locker rooms because they could see them just as easily on the internet are circulating.
People on X shared a purported clip of an interview with El-Sayed, with one person claiming, “Abdul El Sayed just embroiled himself in national scandal by saying we should let girls see men in their locker room because they can SEE IT ANYWAY on the internet.”
The claim, including different versions of supposed direct quotes from El-Sayed on the matter, circulated online in anticipation of the 2026 midterm elections, in which El-Sayed opposed Republican Mike Rogers.
Can someone please check his hard drive? 😳 “Your daughters are going to see male g***tals anyway…so who cares if they see it in their locker room…” -Abdul El Sayed
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) November 2, 2026
The clip shared with the claim was authentic, but the alleged quotes on the subject attributed to El-Sayed were fabricated. We reached out to El-Sayed to ask if the alleged quotes accurately reflected his views and will update this article if we hear back.
Neither the clip itself nor the full-length version of the same interview showed El-Sayed made the statement, and there was no evidence he ever made such a statement publicly.
Rather, those sharing the claim were hyperbolizing one of El-Sayed’s responses during an interview on “60 Minutes.”
On Nov. 1, “60 Minutes” aired a segment about the contentious Michigan Senate race between El-Sayed and Rogers that featured interviews with both candidates. The segment is available to watch on the “60 Minutes” YouTube channel, and a transcript of the segment that aired is available to read on CBS News.
“60 Minutes” also posted extended interviews with the candidates to the show’s YouTube page.
Social media users twisted El-Sayed’s response to the question at the 44:30 mark of his extended interview into the version of the claim that circulated on social media.
The response came during a conversation about the protection of rights, including rights to religious and sexual preferences, that some individuals might not understand.
Interviewer Ross Douthat asked El-Sayed:
What about the rights of parents to control over their children’s education? Because a lot of places where there’s tension between Islam and Muslim voters and what I’m calling cultural liberalism are around issues like what is taught in school, what happens with transgender kids on sports teams, and so on, right? These are places where rights are in conflict. What do you think happens there?
El-Sayed did not immediately address the transgender kids in sports specifically. Instead, he explained a broader approach to his thinking behind the issue:
You have a phone in your pocket. You can get access to anything and everything in the whole world. All the world’s information in your pocket. The notion, somehow, that you are going to prevent your child from being exposed to something that you may find disagreeable, and that that is going to be because of school, is so profoundly outdated.
Because of course, you have all the information and they have all the information. So here’s the thing about it. I think it’s really important for us to recognize that the free flow of information is actually a beautiful thing. It’s really important. And the most important thing you can do is not try to protect a person from seeing a thing, it’s about trying to make sure that as you coach your kids through the world, that you are engaging with them and saying, “Here’s what I believe. Here’s what you may see in the world.”
You get to make your choices about who you’re going to be in the world, but that’s going to require us to make do with the fact that the internet is a real thing and this debate about “what’s taught in a classroom,” I think, has been made intro a cultural flashpoint because a lot of the folks who want to make this a topic of conversation don’t want to be talking about the real issues that we face in our lives.
It was this part of his response that critics on social media latched onto, turning it from a hypothetical conversation about fundamental rights to a made-up example about male genitals in girls’ locker rooms, presumably in an attempt to extend his line of reasoning to that specific scenario despite him not doing so himself.
Regarding transgender kids in sports specifically, El-Sayed said:
A lot of the culture war issues that get fought right now are about trying to distract us from the fact that we can’t afford our gas, can’t afford our groceries, can’t see a doctor, are worried about whether or not our kids are going to have a good life. And instead, we’re out here talking about who gets to play what sport. Which should be a question for the people who govern sports. I’m not running to govern sports.
My interest is in making sure people have the ability to live a good life, that they can get the healthcare that they need. That they can breathe clean air, drink clean water. That they’ve got good schools are well-funded in the first place.
A comprehensive search of Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo about El-Sayed saying a statement such as the one in the claim yielded no credible results.
Given the tumultuous nature of the Michigan Senate race and the national attention it drew, had El-Sayed actually said the statement or one like it, major media outlets would have reported on it.
El-Sayed won election in Michigan on Nov. 3 and said during his victory speech of his opponent, “You chose hate and Michigan chose hope. May we never have to see the likes of you in this state again.”
For further reading on the tense Michigan Senate race, check out Snopes collection of claims we investigated about both candidates prior to Election Day.
