The transgender social contagion among the young may be fizzling out and there are numbers to back it up.
A report released recently concluded that the number of young Americans identifying as trans or nonbinary has dipped in the last few years. This represents a major reversal, given that transgenderism had been an exploding social phenomenon among young Americans since 2020.
The report by social science professor Eric Kaufmann, titled “The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity among Young Americans,” shows that across three separate surveys, the number of young Americans who identify as nonbinary or transgender has dropped since its peak in 2023.
The study found that since 2023, the “transgender share” of university students in America has halved and went from 7% to 4% of the population. It also found that students who identified as “not heterosexual” dropped by “10 points” in that period.
The numbers were produced by surveys conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Higher Education Research Institute, and the Andover Phillips Academy.
Most people who identify as trans or nonbinary are teenagers or young adults. A 2022 study by the University of California, Los Angeles, Williams Institute found that almost one-fifth of those who identified as trans were between 13 and 17 years old. It couldn’t be clearer that young people were far more susceptible to this obvious social contagion than anyone else.
After all, young people are more likely to be in schools that promoted transgenderism as a socially praised lifestyle choice. Social media spreads disinformation about gender transitions far and wide, often away from parental supervision.
The issue was “new” enough that many young Americans bought into the promises of gender transition activists. America’s elite institutions promoted it relentlessly as an issue of mental health and suicide prevention. President Joe Biden’s administration tried to foist gender transitions for children on the whole country. Those who opposed the politically correct message on this issue were censored by the most powerful cultural gatekeepers.
For instance, in 2021, Amazon censoredWhen Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, a fact-based book by scholar Ryan T. Anderson critical of the trans movement. Amazon only recently lifted that ban on his book after President Donald Trump came back into office.
YouTube censored a Daily Signal video featuring a doctor critical of transgenderism and called it “hate speech.”
So, what explains the cultural reversal on this issue?
Just a few years ago, it seemed as if the “normalization” of gender transition was headed toward inevitability. The Left certainly behaved that way, even as they did their best to literally silence anyone who disagreed on the issue.
There are probably many reasons the cultural tide has turned. It’s noteworthy that the decline in young people identifying as trans seems to have started petering out around the time Twitter, now X, was acquired by Elon Musk at the end of 2022. There’s no doubt that social media supercharged the problem.
There have certainly been a few high-profile people, including some liberals, who publicly refused to accept the extreme demands of the gender ideology movement.
But maybe the strongest explanation is that despite the attempts to shut down dissent, most Americans simply didn’t buy the Left’s dogma on this issue. That enough people had the courage to plant their flag in the truth revealed the majority.
The data seems to back up what certainly feels like a significant vibe shift.
Detransitioner Chloe Cole wrote on X that “entire culture is shifting and waking up to the horrors of gender ideology.”
Conservative commentator Matt Walsh declared the reversal on gender ideology the most significant conservative cultural victory, ever.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote that he’s happy the social contagion is in decline, but noted that the “doctors, Democratic politicians, and public health professionals who pushed these lies on kids did permanent, irreversible damage.” He demanded they be held accountable.
Gender ideology may be on the wane, but I’m not willing to declare victory yet.
There are now countless young Americans who’ve already had their lives damaged by this poisonous ideology, as Cotton said. Many have done permanent damage to their bodies and may never be able to have children, among other tragic outcomes.
Also, it’s clear that trans ideology is still very much holding sway among the institutional Left. Neither they nor their patrons in the Democratic Party are showing signs of abandoning it. They may be changing their message for public, popular consumption, but the policies haven’t changed.
And on top of everything else, it seems that there is a dangerous, militant wing of trans activists who are willing to do violence to silence opponents and get their way regardless of what the rest of the country thinks.
The battle isn’t over. The fever of gender ideology appears to be breaking, but a great deal of work remains to be done. The sooner Western societies return to embracing the truth over postmodern “my truth” the better. Our future depends on it.
Originally published at The Daily Signal.
Jarrett Stepman is a contributor to The Daily Signal and co-host of The Right Side of History podcast. He is also the author of the book The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.
