Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson made comments about transgender people that outraged some staffers at the HUD office in San Francisco, causing at least one of them to walk out of the room.

During a HUD meeting, Carson warned about "big, hairy men" posing as women to get into battered women's shelters, according to several sources who spoke to the Washington Post.

The remarks made several of the 50 present HUD staffers visibly upset and led one woman to walk out of the meeting, though an official who spoke to the Post clarified that Carson was not trying to single out transgender women with his comments.

Carson also asserted during the meeting that gender definitions have remained unchanged for millennia, a claim that one staffer described as "demoralizing and mortifying," causing some people to be "shell-shocked."

"The Secretary does not use derogatory language to refer to transgendered individuals," an HUD spokesperson said. "Any reporting to the contrary is false."

During the 2016 presidential primary, the neurosurgeon offended some when he called transgender people "abnormal" and said they should not get "extra rights."

"Everybody is equal, everybody has equal rights, but nobody gets extra rights. And when we start trying to impose the extra rights based on a few people who perhaps are abnormal, where does that lead?" Carson asked at the time.

In May, HUD proposed a rule that would require transgender women to use the bathrooms and sleeping quarters that correspond with their biological sex, as well as offer federally funded shelters the option to turn away individuals on religious grounds.