America’s ‘Non Binary’ And ‘Trans’ Community Falling Apart At Seams
By The Daily Caller
Eric Kaufmann ignited a virtual firestorm Oct. 14.
“[Trans] identification is in free fall among the young,” the professor wrote on X.
Kaufmann credited, in small part, improved mental health. But, he noted, the “decline in anxiety and depression occurred within trans, bisexual and queer groups as much as among others. So it wasn’t the case that most of those who solved their emotional problems became heterosexual … 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.”
Cutting off your private parts is so five years ago. Duh.
There’s a few problems with the data heralded by Kaufmann as proof of transgenderism’s waning popularity. Kaufmann’s chart demonstrates a declining share of students “not identifying as male or female.” That’s not quite the same as identifying as the opposite sex.
Kaufmann responded to critics in a Substack post.
“The meaning of the term transgender is not fixed to only refer to binary transgender individuals who identify as male or female. Movement organizations and activists include non-binary under their definition of trans.”
Another potentially confounding factor: Kaufmann’s chart displays data from three surveys, two of which exclusively surveyed students at elite schools (Brown University and college preparatory school Phillips Academy Andover). The third survey, conducted by the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), samples “over 50,000 students per year,” mostly at leading research universities, according to Kaufmann.
That survey “involve[s] only a small share of total students – perhaps 1-10 percent of the target pool, depending on the institution.”
Jean M. Twenge, a San Diego State psychology professor, set out to determine if transgender identity really is in free fall.
She determined it is, first analyzing data from the “nationally representative Household Pulse survey,” which asks respondents directly if they identify as transgender.
“The Household Pulse data showed a decline in trans ID among 18- to 22-year-olds in 2024, but I was cautious about drawing conclusions from it as the decline appeared only in a limited time period (July to September 2024) and two of the three survey administrations added an option for nonbinary identification that wasn’t there before.”
It turns out … trans identification really is in free fall among the young. So is nonbinary identity. See below from a nationally representative survey (the CES). @epkaufm was right. 🚨👀 (1/2) 👇 pic.twitter.com/q2W2ZTFunJ
— Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) (@jean_twenge) October 20, 2025
Twenge then discovered a second set of data spanning a longer time period : the Cooperative Election Study (CES). Kaufmann claims the study sample is not representative of the U.S. population; The CCES claims it is designed to be nationally representative of all national adults.
The CES data, as graphed by Twenge, shows a sharp decline in transgender identification among 18- to 22-year-olds, beginning in 2022. Nonbinary identification rose between 2021 and 2023, before declining below 2021 levels in 2024.
With any luck, the next teenage social contagion will be a little less permanently crippling. Might I suggest a bad haircut? Or wearing way too many bangles? Or anything but totally disfiguring your body and mind?
AUTHOR
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