If you’ve been on social media recently, you might have stumbled upon some headlines claiming that there’s been a steep decline in people who identify as trans across the country. Specifically, these headlines reference two specific studies that some have been using to bolster a longstanding hypothesis: that fewer young people are identifying as transgender. The message, if you read between the lines, is that transness was just a fad pushed by liberals, and that the end of “woke” has also meant the end of trans people. At first, I approached these studies with genuine curiosity, given that there are several reasons why fewer people might be openly identifying as trans now than just a couple of years ago. Namely, the fact that the government has made life for trans Americans extremely difficult and sometimes even dangerous. But when I took some time to look through the studies, I quickly found some serious limitations — and I think they might be worth nipping the “Transness is fading” narrative in the bud. The first analysis that’s been referenced ad nauseam was conducted by “liberal national conservative” professor Eric Kaufmann, per Vox. According to the holy internet, there are more than a few reasons I’d examine his “research” with a discerning eye. In his recent report, entitled “The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity among Young Americans,” he claims that trans identity “peaked” in 2023 and then dramatically dropped from 7% to 4% of university students. The other data many are citing came from Tufts University’s Cooperative Election Study, which found a roughly two-point drop in people who identify as trans.Let’s start with Kaufmann’s report, which raises some pretty big questions off the bat: First, the people polled in the studies he references appear to be university students from Ivy League schools or large research universities, which is hardly representative of the overall U.S. population. Second, and more important, the surveys asked whether students “identified as neither male nor female,” which is specifically measures nonbinary identity rather than trans identity. A gentle reminder: Nonbinary people can identify as trans, but not all trans people identify as nonbinary. A trans woman, for example, is a woman. Meanwhile, a nonbinary person doesn’t identify as either a man or a woman. The surveys, according to Kaufmann’s report, asked people whether they identified as male, female or nonbinary, but not whether they identified as cisgender or trans. About one-fourth of trans people identify as nonbinary, per the Williams Institute, meaning that a majority of trans people do not consider themselves to be nonbinary. Here, we see a clear gap in Kaufmann’s comprehension about trans people, who he claims “are going out of fashion.”The Tufts University study at least seems to understand a bit more about gender expression; they asked college-aged students if they identified as trans and they found a drop from 5.5% in 2021 to just over 3% in 2024, per Vox. However, several researchers have criticized this survey for not including a margin of error. The percentage points are so close together that the data could be totally insignificant. But let’s say that fewer young people are identifying as trans — can you blame them? Just consider conservatives’ persistent attacks on the trans community, which have been ramping up for the past several years. In 2023, a staggering 94% of trans Americans surveyed by the Trevor Project reported feeling less safe than they did in previous years. The attacks have only gotten worse, most recently epitomized by a cruel Supreme Court decision that will force trans people to get their gender assigned at birth on their passports. Like all studies, these have their caveats. But this research appears to have a clear political agenda of queer erasure behind it. Most surveys that focus on the overall American population show a continuing rise in people who identify as trans. That includes a Gallup poll that saw an increase from 0.9% in 2023 to 1.3% in 2024 for people who identified as trans, as well as a Williams Institute survey that showed that trans identity among people aged 13-27 is still growing. There will always be a Kaufmann in academia using charts, strategically chosen population samples, and an occasional 10-dollar word to try and diminish the queer existence. But we know the truth — and hope that our political climate will evolve into one that allows more trans people to identify freely.