Transgender free fall

Gender ideology holds two wildly conflicting ideas as paramount. First, man and woman are supposedly mere social constructs. Second, a trans man or woman is a very real thing in nature that no one may question. The truth is, trans is a famously elastic psychic creation. It is well documented that “trans” youth tend to strongly desist in their gender confusion as they mature into puberty and young adulthood. A 2024 Dutch study published in the highly respected Archives of Sexual Behavior found that “gender non-contentedness is most common around the age of 11 and that the prevalence decreases with age” appearing “to be associated with a poorer self-concept and mental health through development.”

Now, thanks to research from University of Buckingham’s Eric Kaufmann, the identity itself appears to be declining among young Americans, as World Opinions has noted.

However, some have contested Kaufmann’s findings, here, here, and here, saying there were methodological problems with his data interpretation and conclusion. Professor Kaufmann responded to these critics on X and through his Centre for Heterodox Social Science’s Substack.

The good news is we are not left wondering. Strong confirmation of Kaufmann’s original conclusions emerged.

Another notable research scholar, Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, took great interest in Kaufmann’s original claims and the academic challenges brought by his three critics. She wondered if there might be better, nationally representative data sets that bridge the methodological questions. She wrote two revealing articles detailing what she found.

Professor Twenge’s Oct 16 article asks, “So has transgender identification declined among the population of young adults as a whole?” She concludes, “The short answer: Maybe.” She explains that the Household Pulse Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau included a question about identifying as “transgender” in its nationally representative surveys between 2021 and 2024.

Among 18- to 22-year-olds, identifying as “trans” increased 58% between 2021 and 2023, “then it bobbled a bit” she explains, going down and then up again in late 2023 and early 2024. It then declined significantly (almost by half) in the second half 2024 to nearly 2021 levels of 2%. Twenge observes, “It appears identifying as transgender peaked in early 2024 among younger adults even at the population level.” But she also admits, “It’s hard to say if the late 2024 decline is a blip or the start of a longer trend.”

She explained we need 2025 Census data to confirm a continued decline. But that data is missing. Why? She assumes because of President Trump’s executive order that the U.S. government recognizes male and female as the only sex-based options.

Twenge notes from a research perspective this “is deeply unfortunate, because without that data, we’re in the dark.” She wasn’t in the dark for long though.

Dr. Twenge doggedly kept digging and posted a second article on Oct. 20 with a confidently declarative title: “Trans identification really is in free fall: New data.” It presents analysis from an additional set of nationally representative data; the Cooperative Election Study (CES) conducted each fall by YouGov polling and Tufts University. It documents that use of both “transgender” and “nonbinary” identification by 18- to 22-year-olds have both dropped substantially. In fact, the three different decline graphs she offers mimic dramatic downhill black diamond-worthy ski slopes.

From this data, she concludes,

It turns out identifying as transgender really is in free fall among the young in the U.S. So is identifying as nonbinary. In other words, Kaufmann was right (with what some consider the wrong data, but still right).

She adds, “For now, … it looks like the peak of trans identification is in the past.” The good professor was not done in her “gender ideology has no foundation” case though.

In an October 23 follow-up to both articles, she explains how the CES survey she drew from in her second article, started allowing open-ended answers to the question “What is your gender?” in 2021. She reports, “This did not go as planned.”

To their credit, CES research administrators posted every response they received. Twenge writes, “The anger in these responses in the CES leaps off the page.” Many simply mocked the question: “A piece of layer cake,” “identify as potato,” “vaccinated coffee pot,” and “Attack Helicopter.” Others expressed unvarnished disdain for gender theory: “I have no gender. I am an adult human female,” “My sex is female, I am not a gender believer,” “I am of the MALE SEX,” “Gender is bullsh*t, Sex is real,” and “There should only be two answers to this question” with an uncountable number of exclamation marks following.

Twenge notes these strong responses “are a small window into America’s views on gender.” She is right. Data demonstrates an increasingly strong rejection of gender ideology’s fictions. More of us are realizing our created bodies speak beautiful truths, not destructive lies.