@mattyglesias this makes it sound like being trans is both a choice, and a fad. In reality, it’s neither. The actual number of trans people probably hasn’t changed much over time. Since 2022, anti-trans rhetoric has amplified significantly though, which is likely part of why fewer people are

@mattyglesias Isn’t the most obvious explanation that trans people are telling the truth that pandemic quarantine gave a lot of trans people time alone with their thoughts to figure some stuff out, and that’s a one time effect?

@mattyglesias Or just that admissions committees aren’t assigning as many points. No reason to think these are representative samples. In later charts you can see how wildly non-representative these schools are compared to genpop youth in terms of % who don’t consider themselves straight.

@mattyglesias Yet lesbian and gay identity stays steady. It's almost like they were never really "non-binary or trans" to begin with. They were really just spicy straights and now the fun has worn off.

@mattyglesias Congrats on being one of them about five non-trans pundits to describe this correctly.

@mattyglesias I agree with your comment here, but I think the article's comments about trans ID more broadly are not justified. These data sources don't tell us about trans people who identify as male/female, & I expect those folks to have more enduring gender ID than folks IDing as non-binary

@mattyglesias there's this weird fiat kids from like 17-23 have over the zeitgeist but it's like writing in sand, as soon as a new cohort comes in they are much more likely to upend whatever the last cohort did aesthetically rather than doing anything to change power structures or foreign

@mattyglesias feel like the people living in cities just had a slow-motion nervous breakdown during covid and it’s finally abating

@mattyglesias All it took was 5 years of constant literal hate and denying treatment to teenagers. If something is less socially acceptable it will drop.

@mattyglesias Do we know if the fluctuations in survey data are not just high schoolers having fun with a new survey response option? I've seen a lot of people put down American Indian when they didn't want to answer the race question.

@mattyglesias Crazy that an administration that ran on punishing and villainizing trans people coincides with a reduction in people publically identifying as trans in surveys…

@mattyglesias They were always binary. Science. The fluid part is what they decide to tell a pollster.

@mattyglesias people really want to deny that being a certain race or certain sexual orientation can be popular and some people adjust to that but that is certainly what it looks like in the data!

@mattyglesias Well I know a couple of people that said they were nonbinary on their college app, they were all straight guys mind you🤷🏽‍♀️

@mattyglesias Is this the trans genocide I've heard about?

@mattyglesias I glanced at this article. Am I understanding correctly that the data points are one academy (a high school?), one university, and FIRE, a rather political organization that isn't a pollster?

@mattyglesias thank you for creating a better take than what most people are doing with this today! This has nothing to do with trans identity and everything to do with non-binary identity, which was often claimed by cis/non-trans people. They just got bored of it. Lol.

@mattyglesias I was told social contagion was not responsible for this. Gonna need a better theory.

@mattyglesias ”hello yes could you please tell me if you identify with the group most openly discriminated against over the past year?”

@mattyglesias Almost like it was a social contagion.

@mattyglesias Always have been. https://x.com/RichardDawkins/s...

@mattyglesias I’m unbinary. It’s different from nonbinary but I won’t explain how.

@mattyglesias Almost like we told them that if they don’t fit into one of two boxes they’ll be treated like monsters and hunted

@mattyglesias Can’t wait for “young people do some self-discovery about gender and sometimes don’t stick with what they tried” to become the next “sexual orientation is a choice” from dishonest reactionaries

@mattyglesias Is it that they don’t identify this way or they’re afraid to come out for fear of retribution and punishment in this era of anti-trans hatred being perpetuated by the federal government?

@mattyglesias Nothing makes kids more open about their gender than media and government environment that openly says it wants them dead

@mattyglesias I wish we had data on the average social “fad” to overlay. Would imagine it lines up fairly precisely

@mattyglesias About half of those surveyed in 2022 must have still been around in 2024? So some must have changed their own status rather than just being replaced by new, younger, more sensible students.

@mattyglesias I'm kinda disappointed that you didn't think about this much further or compare it to other sources like the yearly Gallup survey on the US LGBTQ population. https://x.com/jamandabop/statu...

@mattyglesias I qt'd but want to say in my data (which might be different than theirs? It didn't seem like they checked bio sex?) the shift is driven entirely by males, not females. Biological females are still identifying as non-cis, whereas males are reversing.

@mattyglesias Trans ideology is communist induced psychosis

@mattyglesias Compulsion to poll as an “ally” has passed, only with fading social contagion

@mattyglesias Yeah I'm sure it was just a phase and not the extreme violence and violent rhetoric directed at transgenders

@mattyglesias “We mUsT trUSt tHe ChiLdReN!” the activists howled Turns out fads and societal pressures actually ARE real, despite activists refusing to acknowledge them Hopefully this will allow politicians to stop catering to the ridiculous demands of the gender-fringe.

@mattyglesias hold up… so all the fuss from Republicans was over how ~5-10% of kids identify themselves? 😜

@mattyglesias your account should be locked contingent on passing a stats 101 course