For the first time in more than a decade, measurable data confirms what many of us have watched unfold in real time: the so-called “trans” explosion wasn’t a biological awakening—it was a social contagion. A fad packaged as science, reinforced by institutions that traded reason for ideology.
Professor Eric Kaufmann’s new report, The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity Among Young Americans, pulls the mask off the movement. Across tens of thousands of survey responses—from Ivy League campuses to national datasets—the transgender and “queer” share among young people has fallen by nearly half since 2023. The trend isn’t political, religious, or social-media driven. It’s psychological. As mental health improves, identity confusion collapses.
Data now exposes the trans movement as a cultural fever breaking, and shows how those who built their lives around it are trapped in a fight they can’t afford to lose.
Kaufmann’s research confirms what reality-based thinkers have suspected for years: the numbers were inflated by ideology, not biology. After a decade of relentless indoctrination, the “trans” and “queer” boom has finally hit a wall.
Across seven major surveys—including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute (HERI), Brown University, and the CDC—the pattern is identical: trans and queer identification surged between 2015 and 2023, then plummeted.
At the height of the movement, FIRE’s nationwide college surveys showed nearly 7 percent of students identifying as transgender or non-binary—today that number sits under 4 percent. The same collapse is evident across elite prep schools and Ivy League campuses, where FIRE and Andover surveys show “non-binary” identification falling from roughly 7–9 percent in 2023 to around 3 percent in 2025. At Brown University, the share of students identifying as non-binary peaked around 5 percent in 2023 and has since fallen to 2.6 percent.
Sexual identity trends mirror the same trajectory. Across surveys from Andover Phillips Academy, FIRE, HERI, and Brown University, the share of students identifying as “queer,” “pansexual,” or “asexual” has fallen sharply since 2023. Meanwhile, heterosexuality—once framed as oppressive or outdated—is rebounding. In the FIRE surveys alone, straight identification climbed from 68 percent in 2023 to 77 percent in 2025, and in the national GSS survey, it rose from 71 percent to 81 percent within the same period.
Even more telling is the generational pattern. FIRE’s longitudinal data show that today’s freshmen are significantly less likely to identify as trans or queer than the seniors above them. The youngest students—the ones who grew up through the pronoun wars and TikTok activism—are quietly rejecting the ideology altogether. Kaufmann calls it a “post-progressive correction.” I call it winning.
These numbers are not a blip. They’re a mass retreat from a social fantasy that sold confusion as authenticity. No political event, religious revival, or social media shift explains it. The only consistent factor is mental health: as anxiety and depression fall, so does gender confusion.
And when more of us sound the alarm, stand firm on reality, display moral courage, and fight like hell to save our children—we win.
The data may be shifting, but belief systems don’t die that easily.
Helen Joyce captured this perfectly when she compared the parents who transitioned their children to “Japanese soldiers on Pacific islands who didn’t know the war was over.” They can’t surrender because doing so would mean facing what they’ve done—that they permanently altered their child’s body in service to a demonic ideology. To live with that requires absolute conviction, no matter how much evidence piles up against them.
And even as the numbers fall and society begins to wake up, these true believers can’t. Their self-worth is tethered to the movement’s survival. To question it would be to confront irreversible harm—physical, psychological, and spiritual. The only way to preserve their sanity is to double down.
That’s why this fight won’t end cleanly. It’s not about truth anymore—it’s about self-preservation.
Kaufmann’s research exposes what the DSM and its disciples refuse to admit: if gender identity were innate, it wouldn’t collapse by half in two years. Biology doesn’t obey social trends.
Kaufmann’s summary doesn’t just mark a cultural shift—it marks the collapse of a lie. The numbers prove what common sense already knew: gender confusion was never a biological revolution. It was a poisonous trend. The fever is breaking, and what’s left is the wreckage. All we can do now is help the wounded and reform the field.
Soad Tabrizi is a licensed marriage and family therapist in eight states, with a private practice based in Orange County, CA (www.soadtabrizi.com). Soad is also the founder of www.ConservativeCounselors.com.
