The Washington Post announces that the Number of teens who identify themselves as gay or bisexual is in ‘free fall’.
Young teenagers are less likely to identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual than they were a few years ago, according to a new analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
The decline is particularly striking among ninth-grade girls, according to Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University who published her analysis of the 2025 data on her Substack “Generation Tech.” In 2021, 30 percent of ninth-grade girls identified as lesbian or bisexual. Last year, 17 percent did.
“It really does look like a free fall,” Twenge said. “But what’s causing it is unclear.”
OK. I don’t have a prior commitment to how many ninth-grade girls would be lesbian or bisexual; I would hope that 100% of them are happy being whoever they want to be. It’s weird, though, that conservatives are pumping their fists at the news.
Online, conservative activists celebrated the news as a win brought on by the Donald Trump administration.
Amazing what happens when you cut the Department of Education and USAID,Terry Schilling, the head of the American Principles Project, wrote on X.
Wow, Terry, are you happy that more 15 year old girls are declaring themselves heterosexual? That’s kind of creepy. Also are you really cheering on cuts to education and USAID?
My first reaction was doubt: it’s in the Washington Post, Jeff Bezo’s bought and paid for propaganda outlet. I begin with some mistrust of that newspaper.
My second reaction was, the CDC? Really? The institution that has been savagely cut and politicized? I think the Republican hacks who have taken over would only allow information that favors conservative biases to be released. Last year the former head of vaccines there resigned over funding cuts and criticisms of the science by political apparatchiks. It’s not a happy place right now.
But at least the WaPo includes some more sober assessment.
Jody Herman, senior scholar at the Williams Institute, a research center at UCLA on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy, questioned whether the data revealed a meaningful shift in behavior.
“The study doesn’t provide confidence intervals to determine whether the differences are actually significant,” she wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “The narrative around a decline in LGBT identity among youth has been around for a while now. We’ll continue to look at trends over time in our work, but the evidence provided so far for a decline leaves more questions than answers.”
But let’s assume the observation is accurate, that fewer ninth-grade girls identify as lesbian. The real question is why.
Are teenagers actually becoming straight again? That makes no sense. These are individuals who are in the process of discovering their sexuality; it’s not as if ten year olds were biased towards gayness and then ‘straightened up’ when they were 15. This is a shift in the proportion of a cohort. It’s more that a cohort that has always been shifting and changing are showing a gradual firming up of their commitment to heterosexuality, which has always been the case. I personally went from a general indifference to sex in early adolescence to a solid preference by the time I was in high school. This observation of percentages is not significant.
A better explanation is that we’re currently living in a state of intolerance and bigotry.
“They probably are just keeping it to themselves bc Republicans are fucking crazy,” was one theory posted to X.
“The chances are more likely that, rather than ‘becoming straight,’ people don’t feel as safe identifying themselves again,” came another.
I favor the “Republicans are fucking crazy” theory myself. This is not a good time to honestly express yourself, because the fucking crazy Republicans are running roughshod over schools, education, and science. Be safe. Keep your feelings close to your chest until you get a chance to shut these fools down. But don’t be afraid to be who you are in private.
It’s dangerous to identify as anything among freedom-hating Republicans.
Is any information given on geographic differences? I would imagine it’s more risky to identify as not straight in places where they’re going after trans kids even if you aren’t trans, because they may come after you next.
Why only high school girls? I’d like to see what that graph looks like over the following four years of their lives, as well as the graph for boys.
Since high school is when people are figuring out their sexuality and what they want and like, it seems reasonable for girls at least to look at bisexuality – not abandoning the idea of hetero relationships, but testing the waters of learning their basic sexual identities where it’s safer, with girls who are their friends. Many will settle into the hetero side of things once they get older and decide what sort of future relationships they want. Many will not. Many will remain open to any partner(s) they love.
That Rethuglicans are crazy only explains the shift in the reporting to the data collectors.
For certain horrendous, brutal oppessive, evil values of “works” here..
@ ^ Cap’n Obvs & so very much wish this was not true.
Isn’t “theocratic monomania” a disease that the CDC should be looking into?
And, perhaps more importantly, shouldn’t someone have compared this “trend” to comparable “trends” in the 1970s-90s, to validate whether it’s actual or reported identity? Being old enough to have been paying attention to the difference — and legally/professionally required to be paying attention for a substantial part of it — there’s also the question of to whom students externally identify.† Put another way, their identifications to peers (and, somewhat ickily, nonpeer potential partners) almost certainly differ from those to parents… or researchers, especially when those researchers have Official Standing.
† Really, now: You don’t think that those of us required to make decisions on/take actions on “conditions incompatible with military service” had any concept that the information we were getting was different, do you?
@1 Recursive Rabbit astutely wrote: It’s dangerous to identify as anything among freedom-hating Republicans.
I reply: That statement hints at what I think is likely the main point. The figures the CDC is pushing and the bigots that cheer about them are bound to be complete BULLSHIT. And, just reflect the ugly reality that LGBTQ youth being (to use an old and bad phrase) ‘pushed back into the closet’ and not counted as LGBTQ which distorts the statistics badly.
Our society is run by hateful, nasty barbarians!
I think that a lot of right-wingers think of LGBTQ+ identity as like a rival/enemy religion that one can convert and de-convert from. That’s why they’re celebrating – to their way of thinking, this means more people are converting to the true heterosexual faith.
Wonder how these polls would go if they gave the option of “I don’t feel safe answering this question.”
WaPo – The surprising geography of American left-handedness (2015)
Assigned – Why transness isn’t like left-handedness (2025)
Assigned – Wave of anti-queer extremism is charted in new report (Sep 30)
I wish we had such surveys more often – in particular, I’d like to see how the numbers would change from immediately before to immediately after the fine frat brothers at Cornell revealed their recent contribution to heterosexual chivalry.
Here is what one guy says about this survey.
Julian is a self described demographer/sociologist at Vanderbilt.
Basically, this survey doesn’t show much.
It certainly doesn’t match the headline.
Whatever.
I never take anything seriously coming from the Trump regime anyway.