'Trans' fad is dying out among American youth, and straightness is ascendant: Study



A new study from the University of Buckingham's Centre for Heterodox Social Science suggests that gender ideology is falling out of favor and the sex-change regime's supply of potential young victims might be drying up.

Citing data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression's annual campus surveys of undergraduate students — FIRE polled over 60,000 this year — and several institution-level surveys of young Americans, study author Dr. Eric Kaufmann indicated that "the share of young people not identifying as male or female (typically ticking the non-binary or questioning options) has declined substantially since its 2022-23 peak."

'The fall of trans and queer seems most similar to the fading of a fashion or trend.'

One of the institutional-level student surveys Kaufmann looked at, the survey conducted annually at the Boston-area Andover Phillips Academy, showed a drop from over 9% of all respondents identifying as "non-binary" in 2023 to 3% total this year.

FIRE survey data and Brown University student survey data similarly showed declines in the share of self-identified "non-binary" respondents — from 6.8% to 3.6% of the total in the first case, and a drop from roughly 5% to 2.6% in the second case.

While the homosexual cohort has remained relatively stable, in the 3-5% range, Andover Phillips data indicated that there has been a rebound in the share of students who identify as straight.

This rebound was similarly reflected in the FIRE data — which indicates that straightness dropped from 80% in 2020 to 68% in 2023, but now sits around 77% — as well as in the General Social Survey's findings, which reportedly indicated that straightness fell from 95% in 2010 to 71% in 2022, then rose to 81% last year.

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Meanwhile, the category of self-identified bisexuals, which increased from 10% to 17% between 2020 and 2023, has dropped to 12%, according to the Andover Phillips data.

The category for "queer and other" sexual identities, which had jumped from 7% in 2020 to 17% in 2023, has since fallen to 12% of the total.

FIRE data indicates that the "queer and other" sexuality category has fallen from 15% in 2023 to 8%.

Kaufmann suggested that "it appears that trans and queer are going out of fashion among young people, especially in elite settings," and that the freshman 2028 cohort "was less likely than older students in 2025 to identify as BTQ+."

"To the extent that the youngest represent the leading edge of new trends, this suggests that trans, bisexual and queer identities are declining in popularity with each new cohort," Kaufmann added.

The professor indicated that the decline in non-straight identification "does not appear to be the result of a shift to the right, the return of religion, or a rejection of woke culture war attitudes."

Kaufmann suggested on X that "the fall of trans and queer seems most similar to the fading of a fashion or trend. It happened largely independently of shifts in political beliefs and social media use, though improved mental health played a role."

Gender ideologues appear to be everywhere losing their battle against common sense and the well-being of young Americans.

For instance, a recent Gallup poll indicated that 66% of American adults think people should be required to list their real sex on government documents and that 69% believe medical transvestites should play on sports teams with members of their own sex.

Pew Research Center polling shows that a majority of Americans now support bans on child sex-change procedures — bans of the kind now in effect in a majority of U.S. states.

This rebuke of the sex-change regime, which is also taking a beating from the Trump administration, appears to be pan-generational. Data published by the Public Religion Research Institute in May indicates that support for so-called "gender-affirming care" has also plummeted among younger Americans. For instance, 66% of young men ages 18-29 think that sex-change interventions, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, should be illegal in most or all cases.

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The universities preaching that America is structurally racist now say they need international students to survive. Sad but true.

President Trump on Monday floated a proposal that has conservatives buzzing. Just before meeting with the president of South Korea, while discussing trade negotiations with China, Trump suggested that the deal might include allowing 600,000 Chinese students to attend American universities.

Instead of winning hearts and minds, universities would be exporting American self-loathing. Why should taxpayers fund that?

I’ve learned not to sprint ahead of Trump’s negotiations. He often uses public remarks as part of the bargaining table — dangling outrageous possibilities to shove the other side into error. And inconveniently for his critics, it usually works. Still, this one deserves a closer look.

Universities built on sand

As a professor at Arizona State University, the nation’s largest state school, I see firsthand how fragile higher education has become. Universities increasingly depend on international students to prop up their budgets. They reorient themselves not around local students but around foreign ones, reshaping programs and communications to make sure outsiders feel at home.

ASU boasts 195,000 students. Yet when the semester began, the university’s homepage highlighted international arrivals, not Arizona students. The welcome-back email did the same. Arizona families — the taxpayers who actually fund the place — were treated as an afterthought.

Administrators justify this by pointing to economic contributions, diversity, and talent. But native students notice the slight. Parents notice it too. The message is clear: Tuition dollars matter more than the citizens who built these schools. ASU may call itself the “New American University,” but more often it presents itself as the “No Longer American University.”

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A house of cards

Here’s the truth: Many American universities cannot survive without international tuition checks.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick admitted as much on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, saying the bottom 15% of U.S. colleges would simply shut down without that revenue. Universities have operated like Ponzi schemes, built on the illusion that enrollment growth never ends. But as American students tire of being hectored with radical political agendas, growth slows and the budgets collapse.

The U.S. already hosts about 270,000 Chinese students, not counting tens of thousands more from India, South Korea, and elsewhere. ASU alone has 16,000 international students, down from 18,000 last year. Trump’s proposed deal would more than double the number of Chinese students nationwide overnight.

What are they learning?

Even if you grant the economic benefits, the bigger question — maybe the biggest — is: What sort of education would these 600,000 students receive?

We could introduce them to the greatness of the American experiment, the sweep of Western civilization, and the biblical truths that shaped both. We could even present the gospel to hundreds of thousands of students who may never have heard it before. That would be a noble exchange.

But that isn’t what happens on most campuses.

Drop them into a humanities classroom and they’ll be steeped in anti-racism, DEI dogma, LGBTQ activism, “decolonizing the curriculum,” and the thesis that America and the West are irredeemably wicked. Instead of winning hearts and minds, universities would be exporting American self-loathing — either by turning foreign students into residents who despise their host country or sending them home as ambassadors of contempt.

Why should American taxpayers fund that?

A higher-ed reckoning

Universities like ASU showcase international students while sidelining their own. They rely on foreign tuition to mask fiscal rot. And in exchange, they sell a curriculum that treats America as racist, the West as evil, and Christianity as oppressive.

No “economic benefit” offsets that catastrophic formula.

If American universities want to survive, they must first clean their own house.

  • Admit the harm caused by their reckless anti-America, anti-West, anti-Christian curriculum.
  • Abandon DEI dogma, corrosive identity politics, and “decolonized” philosophy.
  • Value American students — the citizens and taxpayers who fund these schools.
  • Reorient higher education toward the people of the states and communities that built it.
  • Teach again that we are created by God, equal in worth, and capable of knowing truth, goodness, and beauty.

Only then can we discuss whether more international students make sense. Until then, it is rich with irony: The same universities that teach contempt for America now admit they need foreign students to survive.

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