Headline Roundup • October 22nd, 2025
Survey Suggests Nonbinary Identification Falling in US; Some Question the Data
Summary from the AllSides News Team
A report from Eric Kauffman indicated that fewer college-aged Americans identify as nonbinary, or neither female nor male, in 2025 than in 2021. Some critics have questioned the methodology of his analysis.
Decline of Trans Identity: Eric Kauffman (Lean Right bias) wrote about his own report published for the Centre for Heterodox Social Science, titled, "The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity among Young Americans." His report included survey results from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which polled over 60,000 undergraduate students; Andover Phillips Academy, a private boarding school that polled about 750 of its high school students; and Brown University. Kauffman wrote that though 6.8% of students "identified as a gender other than male or female" in both 2022 and 2023, only 3.6% of respondents identified that way in 2025, according to his analysis of FIRE's raw data. Kauffman noted that mental illness among teens has also fallen in this time frame, writing, "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."
Criticism of the Report: Them (Lean Left) called Kauffman "a notorious 'anti-woke' academic, once known for denouncing 'anti-white ideology.'" Them cited Jacob Eliason, a data scientist who criticized Kauffman for using raw data rather than weighted data from the FIRE study. When using weighted data, which Eliason claimed more accurately represents a full target population, he found an increase from 2% to 9% of students identifying as neither male nor female in the time frame. Them also highlighted that Kauffman's use of Brown's study failed to account for the changing political climate at the university, noting that Brown "agreed to adopt the government's strictly binary view of 'biological sex' for all policy purposes and to refrain from providing gender-affirming care through its medical program."
What Do Other Studies Show? Jean M. Twenge, writing for Persuasion (Center), highlighted that though Kauffman's report title references a decline in trans identity, the surveys he referenced asked about "not identifying as male or female," which Twenge noted "is not the same as identifying as transgender." Twenge found a study from the Cooperative Election Study that confirmed Kauffman's conclusion, showing a decline from about 5% to about 2% of 18- to 22-year-olds who identify as nonbinary from 2022 to 2024. She wrote that there is not yet survey data from 2025, so there is no evidence yet to show if this data trend will continue or if the 2024 results were a "blip."
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Right-wing media outlets worked themselves into a froth this week over a new report claiming that bisexual, transgender, and queer identities are on the decline among college students. One problem: the report’s basic data analysis is so flawed that one data scientist called it “dead on arrival.”
The report, titled “The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity Among Young Americans,” was authored by Eric Kaufmann, a professor and founding director of the University of Buckingham’s Center for Heterodox Social Science. Kaufmann is a notorious “anti-woke” academic, once known for denouncing...
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A surprising shift is taking place in the gender and sexual identities of young Americans. Data from my new Centre for Heterodox Social Science report, “The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity among Young Americans”, shows that since 2023 both trans and queer identification have dropped sharply within Generation Z.
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...
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A firestorm erupted last week when the British professor and commentator Eric Kaufmann made a bold claim: Identifying as transgender is “in free fall among the young.”
But as journalist Benjamin Ryan rightly pointed out, the surveys Kaufmann referenced didn’t measure identifying as transgender. Instead, they measured identifying as nonbinary (note the chart says “not identifying as male or female,” which is not the same as identifying as transgender). Another journalist, Erin Reed, criticized Kaufmann’s analysis for not using survey weights. Kaufmann has since responded to both critiques.
