A new analysis, pulling from the FIRE College Free Speech survey and campus polls, shows the share of undergrads identifying as something other than male or female has fallen to about 3.6% in 2025, down from 6.8% in 2022 and 2023. That is not a blip, that is a slide. Even elite schools that once bragged about double-digit nonbinary numbers are reporting sharp reversals. Brown University’s nonbinary share reportedly went from 5% in 2022–2023 down to 2.6% this year. The Andover survey showed a similar drop. Whatever you want to call it, the trend line points down. (Fox News)
Now, critics are swinging at the methodology, arguing about weighting and samples, and claiming the decline is exaggerated. Fine, debate it. I welcome that. But the broader pattern appears across multiple samplings, and even the pushback pieces are engaging the same core data because it is too big to ignore. The cultural tide shifted, and students are voting with their identities. (Them)
You know what? This is what a fad looks like when the subsidies, social pressure, and status points dry up. In May I wrote that the trans trend would cool within five years, a cultural correction in progress. It is arriving on schedule. Not because people suddenly became hateful, but because the political machine took its boot off the scale, and the market for identity labels lost its speculative froth. (disruptarian.com)
How we got the spike
We had the White House turning Pride into an official state pageant on the South Lawn, complete with speeches about “LGBTQ families” as a new national standard. The point was obvious: moral validation by the state. That is gasoline on cultural kindling. (AP News)
Meanwhile, DEI directives became the new HR religion in Washington. Biden signed equity and DEIA executive orders, and agencies cranked out plans, trainings, and hiring targets. When the federal government signals that identity boxes are career currency, institutions follow. That skews incentives. It does not create truth, it creates paperwork, metrics, and a lot of people repeating whatever words get them through the next mandatory training. (The White House)
At the same time, local governments flirted with compelled speech. New York City’s human rights guidance made refusal to use a person’s declared pronouns a rights violation. California even tried forcing nursing-home staff to use preferred pronouns by statute before a court slapped it down as a free-speech violation. Silencing speech is like putting duct tape over a smoke alarm, the fire still burns, you just cannot hear the warning. (NYC Government)
This was the atmosphere: state-sponsored celebration, institutional reward structures, and speech codes. Of course identification numbers bubbled up. When you pay bonuses in points for compliance, people line up for points.
What a correction looks like
Then two simple things happened.
First, institutions backed off a bit, or at least lost some of their aura. Political support for mandatory DEI began to wobble. A new administration came in promising to shut the DEI spigot at the federal level, and even where programs stayed, the cultural excitement faded. When the checks and applause slow down, performative identity cools. Inflation is like watering down your whiskey, same glass, less kick, and that is what happened to prestige around these labels. (The White House)
Second, students got tired. Constant identity policing is exhausting. You start to feel like the school hall monitor is living in your head. The 2025 FIRE data shows fewer freshmen leaning into “trans or queer” than seniors, a flip from 2022–2023. That is not just statistics, that is a mood on campus. (Fox News)
And remember, this is not a judgment about individuals who are trans, or who will always live that way with dignity. It is an observation about a social wave that had a hype cycle. Think of it like the Fed playing Monopoly with real people’s lives; when easy cultural credit floods the system, valuations go crazy. When the spigot tightens, assets reprice. Identity markets are not immune to human incentives.
The Disney piece and the subsidy economy
Let’s talk about the corporate side for a second. Big companies leaned in hard, Disney being the poster child. Whether out of conviction or PR risk management, they wrapped themselves in the new orthodoxy while enjoying a long history of state and local subsidies and carve-outs. Independent trackers tally billions in public support flowing to Disney over the years across multiple states. You do not need a federal task force to see the pattern; the corporate welfare receipts are public. Paying taxes while your government bankrolls a media giant’s special deals is like handing the town drunk your wallet and hoping he buys groceries instead of whiskey. (subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org)
As for DOGE, both the federal and Florida versions have been loudly “exposing waste,” including money aimed at DEI and LGBT-branded programming. Some of those claims are contested, and verification is ongoing, but the political signal has been loud enough: the subsidy era for certain cultural campaigns is no longer a guaranteed win. When the political tailwind switches to a headwind, boardrooms stop using social signaling as a shield. (ABC News)
Why this matters for liberty
Here is the thing: social freedom thrives when the state is neutral and individuals make choices without coercion. What we lived through was not neutral. It was a top-down push, complete with public-sector incentives, corporate subsidies, and speech rules that tried to turn contested beliefs into mandated slogans.
When governments police pronouns, they are not protecting people, they are training citizens to fear conversation. When the White House runs culture from the lawn, the message to dissenters is simple: sit down. When HR says your career depends on ritual affirmations, you are not “learning,” you are complying. Dealing with government paperwork is like waiting for dial-up internet in 2025, it is painful, unnecessary, and you know it will freeze halfway through.
So yes, the drop in trans-identifying students looks like a fad cooling off. Not because people stopped caring about their friends, but because the push stopped being cool and started being costly. Once the spectacle calms down, people rethink. They find their own words again. They stop announcing a new label every term and get back to the business of being a student, or a worker, or a parent.
A simple proposal
I am not asking Congress to micromanage identity. I am asking government to get out of it. No compelled speech, no tax-funded culture campaigns, no corporate welfare for studios that lecture the country from behind a subsidy. Let people live how they want, and let ideas compete without the referee wearing a team jersey.
Five years ago, I said this cultural correction was coming. It is here. The lesson is old and simple: freedom scales, propaganda does not. Take the boot off the scale and people step off the stage.
If you want to respect individuals, protect their rights. If you want to respect society, stop bribing it.
That is the whole play.
Sources
- Fox News report on campus identification declines and FIRE data, Oct 15, 2025. (Fox News)
- Eric Kaufmann at UnHerd summarizing declines and data sources, Oct 14, 2025. (UnHerd)
- Critique of Kaufmann’s methodology and debate over weighting. (Them)
- NYC Commission on Human Rights, pronoun guidance under NYCHRL. (NYC Government)
- California appellate ruling striking down pronoun-use provision for nursing homes. (Washington Blade)
- White House Pride event materials and coverage, June 10, 2023. (AP News)
- Biden equity and DEIA directives: EO 13985 and EO 14035. (The White House)
- Good Jobs First Subsidy Tracker, Walt Disney subsidies. (subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org)
- Florida and federal DOGE efforts targeting waste and DEI spend, ongoing verification. (ABC News)
- Prior Disruptarian prediction: “Trans Will Cool Off in 5 Years.” (disruptarian.com)
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