‘Trans’ fad is dying out among American youth, and straightness is ascendant: Study

A new study from the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Heterodox Social Science suggests that gender ideology is falling out of favor and the sex-change regime’s supply of potential young victims might be drying up.

Citing data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s annual campus surveys of undergraduate students — FIRE polled over 60,000 this year — and several institution-level surveys of young Americans, study author Dr. Eric Kaufmann indicated that “the share of young people not identifying as male or female (typically ticking the non-binary or questioning options) has declined substantially since its 2022-23 peak.”

‘The fall of trans and queer seems most similar to the fading of a fashion or trend.’

One of the institutional-level student surveys Kaufmann looked at, the survey conducted annually at the Boston-area Andover Phillips Academy, showed a drop from over 9% of all respondents identifying as “non-binary” in 2023 to 3% total this year.

FIRE survey data and Brown University student survey data similarly showed declines in the share of self-identified “non-binary” respondents — from 6.8% to 3.6% of the total in the first case, and a drop from roughly 5% to 2.6% in the second case.

While the homosexual cohort has remained relatively stable, in the 3-5% range, Andover Phillips data indicated that there has been a rebound in the share of students who identify as straight.

This rebound was similarly reflected in the FIRE data — which indicates that straightness dropped from 80% in 2020 to 68% in 2023, but now sits around 77% — as well as in the General Social Survey’s findings, which reportedly indicated that straightness fell from 95% in 2010 to 71% in 2022, then rose to 81% last year.

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Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

Meanwhile, the category of self-identified bisexuals, which increased from 10% to 17% between 2020 and 2023, has dropped to 12%, according to the Andover Phillips data.

The category for “queer and other” sexual identities, which had jumped from 7% in 2020 to 17% in 2023, has since fallen to 12% of the total.

FIRE data indicates that the “queer and other” sexuality category has fallen from 15% in 2023 to 8%.

Kaufmann suggested that “it appears that trans and queer are going out of fashion among young people, especially in elite settings,” and that the freshman 2028 cohort “was less likely than older students in 2025 to identify as BTQ+.”

“To the extent that the youngest represent the leading edge of new trends, this suggests that trans, bisexual and queer identities are declining in popularity with each new cohort,” Kaufmann added.

The professor indicated that the decline in non-straight identification “does not appear to be the result of a shift to the right, the return of religion, or a rejection of woke culture war attitudes.”

Kaufmann suggested on X that “the fall of trans and queer seems most similar to the fading of a fashion or trend. It happened largely independently of shifts in political beliefs and social media use, though improved mental health played a role.”

Gender ideologues appear to be everywhere losing their battle against common sense and the well-being of young Americans.

For instance, a recent Gallup poll indicated that 66% of American adults think people should be required to list their real sex on government documents and that 69% believe medical transvestites should play on sports teams with members of their own sex.

Pew Research Center polling shows that a majority of Americans now support bans on child sex-change procedures — bans of the kind now in effect in a majority of U.S. states.

This rebuke of the sex-change regime, which is also taking a beating from the Trump administration, appears to be pan-generational. Data published by the Public Religion Research Institute in May indicates that support for so-called “gender-affirming care” has also plummeted among younger Americans. For instance, 66% of young men ages 18-29 think that sex-change interventions, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, should be illegal in most or all cases.

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