By Josue Sierra,
November has become a month of heightened attention to transgender ideology, including Transgender Awareness Week (November 13–19) and Transgender Day of Remembrance (November 20). These observances have become political tools for activists who invoke identity and victimhood to demand ideological conformity, suppress dissent, and pressure Americans to affirm beliefs they sincerely reject.
But while politicians celebrate the lies of gender identity, Pennsylvania women and girls are paying a price for policies that refuse to recognize biological reality.
Girls are losing athletic opportunities to males. Parents are discovering that schools have concealed their children’s struggles with gender identity. And women who underwent irreversible sex-transition procedures as minors are now taking medical professionals to court.
The question for Governor Josh Shapiro and the new Pennsylvania Democrat majority is simple: When will you demonstrate the same concern for protecting women, girls, and parental rights?
Consider the Shapiro administration’s forthcoming “State of the Woman” report. The Governor’s Advisory Commission on Women is scheduled to release its findings November 17. Yet the survey itself offered “transgender female” as a category, allowing trans-identifying males to participate in defining women’s needs. How can an administration claim to champion women while refusing to recognize what makes women distinct?
Women in our Commonwealth deserve thoughtful public policy grounded in biological reality. They also deserve elected leaders who recognize that womanhood is not a self-expressive identity anyone can enter simply by feelings or declaration. We are made male and female. Objective reality is not a subjective feeling or a partisan preference.
In Pennsylvania, these ideological assumptions are becoming government policy. While House Democrats repeatedly blocked a vote on the bipartisan Save Women’s Sports Act, they found the votes to pass House Bill 2103 in April, 101–100. That measure would expand so-called gender-identity protections in public accommodations, potentially undermining religious freedom and the legal protections women need for privacy in bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing areas. Governor Shapiro, meanwhile, has refused to commit to signing legislation protecting girls’ sports.
The problem is not theoretical. HeCheated.org continues to document the hundreds of Pennsylvania scholastic competition results involving males participating in girls’ events. The latest tally identifies at least 73 girls’ competitive placements taken by male athletes. Behind those numbers are daughters who trained for opportunities they cannot get back.
As Pennsylvania education advocate Nicole Prussman told Broad + Liberty: “Blocking a vote on protections for girls isn’t neutral — it’s a decision that hurts our girls.”
This is not a fringe Republican concern.
A New York Times/Ipsos survey found 79% of Americans oppose allowing males who identify as female to compete in women’s sports—including 67% of Democrats.
Separately, Parents Defending Education found 78% of parents opposed males on girls’ teams: 60% of Democratic parents, 82% of Black parents, 83% of Hispanic parents, and 88% of Asian parents.
The November 3 mid-term elections last week drove the point home. Even as Democrats enjoyed a national wave, voters in reliably blue Colorado and Washington approved sex-based school sports protections. Arizona and Nebraska did too. Colorado also approved restrictions on sex-rejecting surgeries for minors. The message crossed party lines: biological reality matters, and girls’ sports belong to girls only.
Parents are also discovering the consequences of gender ideology in Pennsylvania schools.
On November 9, The Daily Wire reported that the U.S. Department of Education is investigating two Pennsylvania districts: Pine-Richland, where policies allegedly facilitated students’ gender transitions without parental notification, and Pennsbury, where officials allegedly concealed a girl’s social transition from her parents for nearly three years. The stakes are unmistakable.
We have already seen one encouraging victory. After a demand letter from Independence Law Center and Alliance Defending Freedom, Chester County Intermediate Unit rescinded a policy requiring school staff to conceal students’ social transitions from their parents. Parents should never need attorneys to learn what a government school is doing with their own child.
Nor should anyone dismiss the growing number of women speaking out after their own medical transitions.
The legal system is beginning to listen. In a landmark victory for detransitioners, a New York jury awarded Fox Varian $2 million in January 2026, finding her psychologist and surgeon liable for medical malpractice after removing her healthy breasts at just 16 years old without adequately obtaining informed consent.
Chloe Cole, Prisha Mosley, Luka Hein, and Camille Kiefel, among many others, have publicly described serious harms, questioned informed-consent practices, and challenged the medical professionals they trusted. These women are not abstract political talking points. Their lived experiences expose the consequences of treating a child’s confusion or mental health distress as justification for permanently altering a healthy body.
Chloe Cole’s case against Kaiser survived an appeal seeking private arbitration and is headed toward a 2027 trial. And Camille Kiefel reached a confidential settlement with mental-health providers in 2026 after alleging inadequate assessment before surgery.
These are not isolated controversies. They are the consequences of a worldview that elevates subjective identity and self-expression over objective reality, disregards the rights of parents, and too often treats legitimate questions about medical interventions as unacceptable dissent. We can treat every person with dignity and compassion without sacrificing biological truth or the protections women and children deserve.
Governor Shapiro: You cannot claim to champion Pennsylvania women while refusing to define them, protect their sports, safeguard their privacy, or respect parents’ authority over their children.
As Pennsylvania observes Transgender Awareness Week, the administration should recognize something increasingly clear: Protecting women and girls is not a fringe political position. It is supported by Americans across party lines, including Democrats and minority communities, and voters are demanding action.
Pennsylvania’s girls are not going away. Neither are the parents defending them, the women seeking accountability, or the growing number of Pennsylvanians who refuse to surrender biological reality to political ideology.
Governor Shapiro, this issue is not going away. Neither are we.
