A sharp decline in transgender and queer identification among young Americans—particularly within elite educational institutions—has been documented in a new report published by the Centre for Heterodox Social Science.
The report, authored by Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham and director of the center, presents data that suggests gender and sexual nonconformity may be “going out of fashion” among Generation Z, marking what he calls a “post-progressive” turn that few in academia or media are willing to acknowledge.
Key Findings: Identification Down Sharply Since 2023
Kaufmann’s report draws on data from several large-scale surveys, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) 2025 student survey—which polled over 60,000 college students—as well as internal surveys from prestigious schools like Phillips Academy Andover and Brown University.
According to the FIRE data, in 2025, 3.6% of respondents identified as a gender other than male or female. That figure was 5.2% in 2024 and 6.8% in 2022–2023—representing a nearly 50% drop in just two years.
At elite institutions, the decline is even more dramatic. At Andover, 9.2% of students identified outside the male-female binary in 2023. By 2025, that number had fallen to 3%. At Brown University, the figure dropped from 5% in 2022–2023 to 2.6% in 2025.
Surveys that also included sexual orientation reflected a similar pattern: rising nonconformity from 2010 to 2023, followed by a nearly 10-point swing back toward heterosexual identification in the last two years.
“Whether trans and queer identities will drop to 2010 levels is an open question,” Kaufmann wrote. “But the fact both have declined sharply in just two years is a startling and unanticipated post-progressive development.”
Not a Shift in Politics or Religion
Kaufmann is cautious about drawing definitive conclusions from the data, but he rules out some common assumptions.
“It’s not because the kids became less woke, more religious, or more conservative,” he said. “Those beliefs remained stable throughout the 2020s.”
He does note a correlation with improved mental health, particularly declines in anxiety and depression, which peaked during the pandemic years and dropped off afterward.
“Less anxious and, especially, depressed students is linked with a smaller share identifying as trans, queer, or bisexual,” Kaufmann wrote in a thread on X (formerly Twitter).
However, he clarified that mental health improvements alone do not fully explain the trend. The timing doesn’t perfectly align: mental health began improving after the pandemic, but the gender and sexual identity shifts occurred a year or more later.
“It wasn’t the case that most of those who solved their emotional problems became heterosexual,” Kaufmann said, pointing out that mental health improved across all identity groups.
A Cultural Shift, Not a Moral One
Rather than ideological or psychological drivers, Kaufmann suggests the decline may be best understood as a cultural or fashion-based shift—a trend that rose quickly in the 2010s and early 2020s and is now fading.
“The rapid decline of trans and queer seems most similar to the fading of a fashion or trend,” Kaufmann wrote.
He highlights a reversal in campus dynamics: where freshmen once were more likely to identify as nonconforming than seniors, younger students today are now less likely to identify as trans, queer, or questioning than older students at the same institutions.
“This is a sign that fashions are changing,” he concludes.
A Shift Elite Institutions May Struggle to Acknowledge
Kaufmann suggests that the data may be difficult for progressive institutions—particularly in education and media—to accept, given the intense emphasis on gender and sexuality diversity over the last decade.
Still, he believes the trend deserves serious, open-minded study.
“This is a startling and unanticipated development,” he wrote. “The education and media establishments will be reluctant to acknowledge it.”
What Comes Next?
Kaufmann leaves open the question of where identification trends will go in the future. Will they continue declining to pre-2010 levels—or stabilize at a new normal?
For now, the data suggest a generational cooling on identity-based politics and personal labeling, particularly within elite circles where such trends often emerge first—and fade first.
READ NEXT: Kavanaugh Assassination Plotter Now Identifies As Transgender Woman
