All Eyes on S.9

The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act

March 3, 2025

Today, the US Senate is poised to vote on Senate Bill 9, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. It passed in the House of Representatives in January, with two Democrats in support. On Thursday, a cloture motion was presented to the Senate, for it to be considered today at 5:30 ET.

This straightforward legislation would define sex accurately under Title IX and prohibit the inclusion of male athletes in female-only athletic competitions. It has the support of the radical feminist nonpartisan groups Women’s Declaration International USA and the Women’s Liberation Front, as well as many other groups that champion women’s rights, including the explicitly partisan group Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender (DIAG) and the nonpartisan group Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS).

It previously passed in the House of Representatives in 2023. On the day it did, I published an article titled, “Why Progressives Should Support the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” where I explained:

In the 1960s and 1970s, second-wave feminists, who leaned to the Left, fought hard for women’s rights. They opened rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters (run by women) for women fleeing male violence. They won many property rights for women, which allowed women to leave oppressive marriages. And they fought for abortion access.

There’s a very good reason why second-wave feminists had to fight for women’s rights: it was because women didn’t have those things before. And the reason women didn’t have those things before was because they were women. Today, all of that is being thrown out the window because of the absurd fallacy of “gender identity.”

One of feminists’ most stunning accomplishments was the enactment of Title IX, which was designed to end discrimination against women in the educational arena. Its implementing regulations permit the separation of the sexes under certain circumstances.

The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023 is a powerful piece of legislation that would bolster Title IX by explicitly protecting women and girls in athletics, and political progressives should support it. So why aren’t they?

Our society has been taught a vicious and unscientific lie: that some men can be women, and that some women can be men, on the basis of their “gender identity.” Democratic Party leadership, at the state and federal levels, is one of the greatest perpetrators of this lie.

…

I hear from rank-and-file Democrats, some more progressive, others more moderate, every day who are appalled at what the Democratic Party is doing to women’s rights at the altar of gender ideology. But most Americans never hear their voices because the left-leaning media shuts us out. Issues around “gender identity” are always framed as a battle between the Big Bad Christian Right and a “small marginalized community.” In reality, that’s not what’s going on. There are liberals and progressives all over this country who want to take a stand for the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls. The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act is one way to do that.

…

Fellow progressives, if you want to regain your credibility with voters of both sexes, you should support the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act and do so boldly. If you don’t, you need to tell American women why you don’t think we are fully human.

Not a single Democrat voted yes on that day in 2023, and the bill did not proceed to the Senate. But now it has and the Senate Democrats have an opportunity to demonstrate to voters across the political spectrum that they care about women and girls as a sex class.

That was in 2023, and my evidence that rank-and-file Democrats support female-only sports was anecdotal at that time. But now we have data to back it up. In January, polling was released by the New York Times and Ipsos showing that fully 79 percent of voters (including 67 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Independents) support this sensible approach. And we know from post-election polling that one reason Kamala Harris lost the presidential election was that she was “focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.”

As DIAG posted on X yesterday:

I was watching a football game when I first saw a “Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you” commercial last fall. I nearly fell out of my chair. I thought, “that’s it; it’s over.” And it was.

Yes votes from seven Democrats will move the bill to the Oval Office, where it will surely be signed. Even one yes vote from a Democrat will change the national conversation and force Democrats (and the media) to confront the issue.

I spent Thursday Feb. 20 and Friday Feb. 21 with Australian TERF extraordinaire Sall Grover at the US Capitol. We visited every Senate Democratic office and provided materials, including the Democratic Women’s Declaration and the global Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights. We explained that we are leftist feminists who support women’s sex-based rights and encouraged them to vote yes on the bill if it comes to a vote. In late 2023 and early 2024, WDI USA sent copies of my book, The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls to every member of Congress and each of their legislative directors.

It’s not as though they don’t know.

A complete list of Senators’ phone numbers is available here. If either or both of your senators are Democrats, please call them today if you haven’t already. You can find your senators here, and you’re welcome to send them this post if you’d like.

Senate Democrats, it’s time. America’s women and girls are counting on you.

This post is free and shareable. If you are not already a paid subscriber and would like access to content that delves deeper into the movement to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls and to stop the abolition of sex, please consider becoming one today.