What is a woman? This is the question Democrats have been avoiding answering. They have been working to reframe gender, claiming that being a man or woman has less to do with biology than one’s subjective identity. 

On the one hand, the Left wants us to believe in a version of the pre-1700s view that there wasn’t a scientific way to distinguish between the sexes. On the other hand, we are asked to “trust the science,” post-1700s science that determined that there are scientifically demonstrable differences between men and women. Go figure? 

Science is being proved right. Just ask women who are losing out on medaling in sports – or being physically harmed.

Nationally, women have been fighting for civil rights throughout the 1960s. They fought for equality in pay, the end of domestic violence, sexual harassment, etc. There have been years of hard work to bring women freedom. Now we are here, watching many Democrats trying to eliminate women as a gender. We should all tip our caps to the ten female Pennsylvania state senators who are working to save girls and women with the reintroduction of the legislation, “Save Women’s Sports Act.”

The inability to define a woman or attempt to eliminate gender as whole can be detrimental to girl’s rights with respect to Title IX. Girls, like all children, require a community’s protection from harm. The threat is harmful to women as well, but even more so to girls who require a higher standard of safety within the community to create an environment they can thrive in without fear. 

If women are not recognized as a gender (or, seemingly as a distinctive sex, for that matter), then what is the point of fighting for women’s rights? Historically, women have fought to gain the rights that Title IX provides, and now the fight is continuing in our own state. 

In Pennsylvania, Governor Shapiro’s Department of Education is working to redefine the regulations of Title IX for students. 

Within Pennsylvania there is a list of schools from K-12 that will enact the new Title IX regulations. Some of the local schools include Haverford Senior High School, Pennridge South Middle School, Southern Lehigh Intermediate School, Conestoga Senior High School, and Upper Darby Senior High School.

To add insult to injury, many articles and amendments avoid using gender terms such as women and men to identify the gender. “The Education Amendments of 1972: Section 506 and Titles VIII and IX” does not use the words “female” or “male”, but it does use “sex,” as that term was – and still is by those with a high school education – understood to distinguish between those with male or female genitalia, having XY or XX chromosomes. Trust the science? Not anymore.

To impose the question of what gender is, we are at risk of seeing changes to Title IX.

We are seeing these threats already happening. In 2022, a seventeen-year-old girl was left paralyzed with brain damage after a teenage boy posing as a girl (AKA “trans”) opponent spiked a volleyball in her face during a match in North Carolina. After instant contact, she fell to the floor, unconscious.

Pennsylvania is no exception to the fight. Central Bucks School District ruled that transgender athletes will have to play for teams in accordance with the gender they were assigned at birth (that is, one’s actual sex). The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association has maintained the rules for boys’ and girls’ sports teams, ensuring boys cannot play in girls’ sports. 

Pennsylvania Department of Education uses terms such as “gender identity”, “sexual orientation”, “sex”, and “sex characteristics” in their Title IX Procedures, and Title IX Policy (2024). Arguably, “sex characters” is considered what a person has biologically. So why aren’t they just saying that? I think we know.

Even the phrase “gender identity” is troubling. Gender roles can be an aspect of identity, but, as with sports, it is one’s biological makeup that matters. One either has reproductive systems and can menstruate monthly (female), and one simply cannot (male).

The Pennsylvania Department of Education includes “gender identity” on its website. However, Pennsylvania needs to align with the federal rules, but the federal rules are being challenged in court. Moms for Liberty is fighting to prevent the recent regulations from being enacted. Over half the states are objecting against the term “gender identity” in the rule and the provisions dealing with areas like restrooms. In Department of Education v. Louisiana and Cardona v. Tennessee, the court ruled that there are three provisions that are unlawfully intertwined with other provisions of the rule.

If these regulations are enacted, it will put girls at an increased risk of sexual harassment, discrimination, etc. By denying scientifically determined sex to be what you biologically possess, boys will have access to women’s sports, bathrooms, etc., strictly on the basis that they decided to wear a skirt one day. That is, if they adhere to the very gender norms they are attempting to deconstruct. 

Confused? So is everyone else.

It is true that every person deserves protection and safety. As a society, we must be compassionate and help people through their gender dysphoria. No matter how someone identifies, he or she should be guaranteed safety and an environment that person, too, can thrive in without fear. But we cannot cherry-pick whom to protect. We need to find a balance for all girls, boys, women, men, and LGBT people to have protections without eliminating a gender in the process. 

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to eliminate these new Title IX regulations created by the Biden Administration. The question I raise is: Will Pennsylvania schools comply if this occurs?

Amanda D’Alessandro is a graduate student in History at East Stroudsburg University. Previously, she worked as a paralegal, where her legal experience helped shape her academic perspective.