Research Supports Why Exposing ‘Trans’ Lies is True Compassion

Strong research data, coming forth over the last few months, has demonstrated that “trans” identity among young people is not the natural thing gender activists wanted us to believe it is. The Daily Citizen has reported on the most recent developments, here, here and here.

Now new data from Washington University professor Ryan Burge strongly affirms this fact. Professor Burge posted his new findings on X and his Substack today:

Burge wanted to “replicate and validate” Jean Twenge’s October finding from the nationally representative Cooperative Election Study (CES) survey showing that trans identity was in free fall among young people. Professor Twenge reported that data supports her conclusion: “It turns out identifying as transgender really is in free fall among the young in the U.S. So is identifying as nonbinary.”

Burge asked, “Has there been a noticeable decline in the share of 18 – 22-year-olds who identify as transgender over the last couple of years?” He replies definitively, “The answer is unequivocal: yes.”

In fact, the number of respondents who identified as “transgender” just years ago have fallen by more than half in many categories. In 2020, 2.5% of all U.S. adults said they were transgender. That number crashed to just 1% in 2024. Burge explains, “The sharpest decline is clearly concentrated among the youngest slice of the American electorate – and the share keeps dropping as older respondents are included.”

Burge found “the biggest drop in raw numbers still comes from the younger part of the sample.” Specifically, of those born in the mid- to late-nineties, 7.5% identified as trans in 2020, but in 2024, only 2.3% did, a decline of two-thirds. Of Americans born in the early 2000s, trans identification dropped from 8.5% to 4.1% over those years.

The decline took place among older adults as well.

Of those born in the 1970s, 1.6% said they were transgender in 2020, but by 2024, that number had collapsed to just 0.3%. For those born in the 1980s, trans identity dropped from 4.8% in 2020 to just 0.9% in 2024. Burge comments, “So this isn’t just a phenomenon limited to the very youngest adults — there were significant declines among people in their thirties and forties as well” (emphasis in original).

Abigail Shrier cogently highlighted the “contagion” nature of girls and young women suddenly identifying as trans in her important 2020 book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. The introductory chapter of her book is bluntly entitled, “The Contagion.” Outlets like Psychology Today were negative on her book.

Burge’s data resoundingly affirms her conclusion. He explains that for young women, trans identity “dropped from 6.9% in 2020 to just 0.3% in 2024.” He adds, “And that’s not a typo – out of 3,914 respondents between the ages of 18 and 22, only six identified as both a woman and transgender”(emphasis in original).

Burge broke his numbers down according to political affiliation, finding that young Republicans were about half as likely as young Democrats to identify as transgender in 2020, 6.9% to 12% respectively.  The decline among both from 2020 to 2024 was stark. But it was notably stronger for Republicans. In fact, Burge’s data showed it “basically vanished” after 2020. In fact, Burge confesses, “I don’t want to stray too far into hot-take territory, but it seems that around 2021 the Republican Party drew a clear ‘bright line’ on this issue – and when that happened, the idea of trans Republicans all but disappeared”(emphasis in original).

This data point supports the wisdom of Alexander Solzhenitzen’s famous 1974 essay, “Live Not By Lies,” written against communist and Marxist lies. As he was being exiled to the United States, the famous anti-communist novelist told his fellow countrymen to refuse, in every instance, to live by the lies of Marxist ideology. Doing so is “the easiest way for us and the most devastating for the lies.” Solzhenitsyn added, “For when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person.”

And this appears to be what happened among conservatives in the United States. When the contagion of transgenderism was called out as false, identification with it among certain groups essentially disappeared.

This is why standing against the lies of transgenderism with full confidence and no apology is the wisest, most compassionate action. We must continue this work for the sake of others who are caught up in the contagion.