Identifying as transgender and queer appears to be “going out of fashion among young people, especially in elite settings,” according to a new report from the Centre for Heterodox Social Science.
The report, authored by Eric Kaufmann, director of the centre and professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, found that transgender and queer identification has dropped sharply among young Americans in Generation Z since 2023. Kaufmann analyzed troves of data from recent surveys about gender and sexuality, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) survey, and surveys from elite institutions like Andover Phillips Academy in Boston and Brown University.
“Whether trans and queer identities will drop to 2010 levels is an open question. But the fact both have declined sharply in just two years is a startling and unanticipated post-progressive development that the education and media establishments will be reluctant to acknowledge,” Kaufmann wrote of his research in an article published to UnHerd on Tuesday.
Analyzing raw data from the most recent FIRE survey, which polled over 60,000 students in 2025, Kaufmann found that just 3.6 percent of respondents identified as a “gender” other than male or female. That figures compared to 5.2 percent in 2024 and 6.8 percent in 2022 and 2023.
“In other words, the share of trans-identified students has effectively halved in just two years,” he wrote.
Kaufmann found that surveys at Andover Phillips Academy and Brown University showed and even more pronounced trend. At Andover, 9.2 percent identified as neither male or female in 2023 but crashed to just 3 percent in 2025. At Brown University, that percentage has dropped from 5 percent in 2022 and 2023 to 2.6 percent in 2025.
Hellbound and Down 