Fewer Young People Identify as Trans
Fads come and go.
Hopefully, this fad is over, and we can return to normalcy.
The Centre for Heterodox Social Science released data showing that fewer young people identify as trans and queer.
The numbers decline more when asking people in lower grades, too, which means it’s likely to stick.
From Eric Kaufmann at UnHerd:
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which conducts a large annual survey of US undergraduates, polled over 60,000 students in 2025. My analysis of the raw data shows that in that year, just 3.6% of respondents identified as a gender other than male or female. By comparison, the figure was 5.2% in 2024 and 6.8% in both 2022 and 2023. In other words, the share of trans-identified students has effectively halved in just two years.
This trend is especially marked in elite institutions. Andover Phillips Academy in suburban Boston surveys over three-quarters of its students annually. In 2023, 9.2% identified as neither male nor female. This year, that number has crashed to just 3%. A similar story emerges at Brown University: 5% of students identified as non-binary in 2022 and 2023, but by 2025 that share had dropped to 2.6%.
Why the sudden change?
Mostly mental health!
The trans fad rose quickly when the states forced people to stay home and remain isolated.
Even for hermits like me, the isolation can take a toll on a person’s mental and emotional health. Cabin fever is a legit feeling:
It’s tempting to speculate about the reasons behind the rise and fall of trans and queer identities. Mental illness among American teens, for example, has fallen since 2021-22 — a pattern confirmed in the FIRE data from 2023-25. My analysis indicates that changes in mental health over time, especially depression, made a significant difference to the trajectory of trans and queer identities over this period.
But the drop in mental health issues encompassed all social groups, including trans and queer youth. The post-pandemic decline in mental illness did not immediately trigger a drop in sexual and gender nonconformity; that shift came a year or two later, suggesting other forces are also at work. And while social media use may be in retreat in the world as a whole, Pew finds no change in the online behaviour of young Americans through to 2024. This does not seem to be what’s driving the retreat from alternative gender and sexual identity either.
As I said, it is primarily mental health. Kaufmann mentions “other forces are at work.”
Well, one force could just be societal norms. What I mean by that is fads come and go, whether it’s clothing, hairstyles, or even language.
Does everyone remember the early ’90s? Yes, the grunge era, which is probably my favorite (Alice in Chains forever!!). The casual look of those artists infiltrated the mainstream, and designers began creating haute couture centered around the flannel aesthetic.
The thing is, when something saturates the market, it becomes uncool.
When everyone is trans or queer, it’s no longer cool to be trans or queer because it doesn’t make you different. You’re the same as everyone else.
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Comments
It is important to make such queries.
Queries, not Queeries just to be pedantic – we already have too many of the latter…
Pedantic, not pederastic just to be homiletic
“Trans” people rebuild transmissions.
You’re talking about GENDER DYSPHORIA, a mental illness associated with mass shootings and systemic violence
Sweeney over Mulvaney. No brainer.
I think the author’s nailed it. Trendy edgy rebellious fad goes mainstream and becomes uncool. Nothing says uncool more than mom (or an AWFL) with purple hair.
The feminist social movement is in decline, meaning men are becoming more dominant, a more humane and natural state of affairs. The tipping point of the decline of feminism was the Hamas use of rape as a weapon of war, and the total silence from the feminists. The Trump and Charlie Kirk movements are reinforcing the return of masculinity.
Bring back the suit, tie and hat look that was predominant after WWII.
“Why the sudden change?
Mostly mental health!”
Nah, I don’t think so.
It didn’t take psychiatric innovations, pharmaceutical breakthroughs, novel educational strategies, or even extra fluoride in our drinking water.
All it took was a new president.
Under Biden, being a mental misfit was celebrated, coddled, lionized, and rewarded. Concerned rational adults were nationally shamed, economically oppressed, and often socially cancelled, to the point of actual severe legal penalty (like having their kids taken away).
Under Trump, the based portion of the country regained its voice without further fear of persecution, pointed out that the mass hysteria “had no clothes,” and turned an actinic “reality spotlight” back on the attention junkies. And this is the result: the townswomen stop dancing, the nuns stop laughing, the tulip market corrects, the Earth leaves its spacial pocket of non-causality, and The Men Return.
I’m old enough to remember the beginning of the Space Age — the Sputnik-inspired academic panic aimed at our educational system. For a decade or two, the kids that got all the attention were the ones who excelled academically. What kind of kids and what kind of country did we have then?
Yeah, positive reinforcement for POSITIVE behaviors.
It’s not rocket science.
As doomed as nose rings.
That and brightly colored hair, multiple tattoos, and other facial piercings is considered human aposematism to me.
DO NOT ENGAGE.
Gender is sex-correlated attributes (e.g. sexual orientation).
Trans indicates a state or process of divergence.
The transgender spectrum includes both homosexuals and simulants.
The first flag is albinophobic. The second flags is an attempt by politically congruent (“=”) interests to socially distance sims from homos who are both trans.
This is the same semantic space occupied by Progressive sects that perform human rites to relieve “burdens”. Particularly those who use the fetus technical term of art to socially distance abortionists and good Persons from victims of the wicked solution.
I hate to be “that guy”, but the celebration may be premature. People who identify as neither male nor female tend to classify themselves as “non-binary”, not transgender. Remember that trans people insist they are actually the opposite of their biological sex, so they will still usually check Male of Female on surveys. Here’s breakdown of the flaws in Kaufmann’s report: https://benryan.substack.com/cp/176219918
That being said, I think there’s still reason for cautious optimism. Fewer people identifying as non-binary is still progress for the general mental health of the populace.
The fad seems to be fading.
When kids are getting this agenda pushed on them by their teachers, blue-haired Karens and elected septuagenarians how long could it possibly remain cool?
So it was a social contagion like bulimia and when everybody’s does it it’s not cool anymore? This is my stunned face but unfortunately a lot of those kids were egged on by adults including parents to cut off body parts and take irreversible hormones destroying their lives forever. Any doctor performing that surgery should be in prison for medical experimentation
Soon we’ll start to hear about all the woke celebrities who forced transgenderism on their kids as the ultimate virtue signaling being sued by their mutilated children
“No! More! Wire! Binders! Ever!”
I accidentally posted this as a reply to another comment, when I meant to put it on the main thread. Reposting to make sure it’s seen.
I hate to be “that guy”, but the celebration may be premature. People who identify as neither male nor female tend to classify themselves as “non-binary”, not transgender. Remember that trans people insist they are actually the opposite of their biological sex, so they will still usually check Male of Female on surveys. Here’s breakdown of the flaws in Kaufmann’s report: https://benryan.substack.com/cp/176219918
That being said, I think there’s still reason for cautious optimism. Fewer people identifying as non-binary is still progress for the general mental health of the populace.
“The Center for Heterdox Social Science” might better be named “The Center for Confirming Our Current Biases and Beliefs”, and thus more accurately named.
How could anyone trust any “research” coming from or paid for by this outfit?
The thing has to be an elaborate joke dreamt up by three undergrads with a sophomoric sense of humor.
But it worked, didn’t it?