The Rapid Collapse of Gender Ideology
In the past year or two, evidence has quickly been mounting that the gender insanity that swept over our culture in the past decade is in rapid retreat.
The latest evidence comes from three different surveys.
One survey of nearly 60,000 students from 250 of the top American universities, showed that the number of students identifying as “non-binary” has fallen precipitously in the past two years.
According to Eric Kaufmann, who published the results, “just 3.6% of respondents identified as a gender other than male or female. By comparison, the figure was 5.2% in 2024 and 6.8% in both 2022 and 2023. In other words, the share of trans-identified students has effectively halved in just two years.”
Think about that for a moment: the number of “trans-identified” students has halved…in just two years! I can’t think of any other issue on which opinions have transformed so dramatically and so quickly.
Meanwhile, two other surveys, from Andover Phillips Prep School and Brown University, have found the same thing. These surveys both surveyed more than 50% of the student population of each institution. Both of them showed drastic decreases in students identifying as non-binary over the past two years.
Kauffman summarizes the findings in this way: “This is a stunning reversal in the culture that will reverberate through society and politics in the coming years.”
Indeed.
Have We Reached Peak Madness?
A few years ago, it seemed as if the tsunami of gender madness (and it’s hard to call it anything else!) was going to sweep away the last remnants of cultural sanity. Survey after survey showed the number of young people identifying as “transgender” shooting through the roof.
Leading educational, cultural and governmental institutions and leaders nearly tripped over themselves in their eagerness to telegraph their complete and total acquiescence to every demand of the transgender ideologues.
President Biden passed several sweeping executive orders on the issue, mandating that government, military, and publicly funded schools all accommodate transgenderism.
These executive orders treated “discrimination” based upon so-called “gender identity” as being on the same level as that based upon sex. This resulted in absurd situations, such as athletes identifying as transgender competing against members of the opposite sex, or individuals identifying as transgender being given carte blanche access to opposite-sex spaces such as change rooms and bathrooms.
The concerns of girls and women who felt deeply uncomfortable changing in the presence of biological men, or competing against biological men with massive physiological advantages, were dismissed as “transphobia” or “hate.”
The Trump Administration Reverses Course
However, one of the first things that the Trump administration did was revoke these executive orders.
On Trump’s very first day in office he signed a sweeping executive order stating, among many other things, that for federal institutions, “‘Sex’ shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. ‘Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity.’”
That executive order notes that gender ideology, “replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true.”
Celebrities Speaking Out
Meanwhile, more public figures and celebrities are openly standing up against the transgender madness. This includes celebrities who are otherwise extremely progressive in their political and social views.
The most prominent of these is Harry Potter author JK Rowling. In numerous public statements and posts, Rowling has taken an unequivocal stance against those who argue that biological men who claim to be transgender should be treated exactly the same as biological women.
While Rowling’s stance on transgenderism is, in a way, old news, what is notable is just how strong her statements have become over the past two years. And, how the efforts to silence and marginalize her seem to be backfiring.
When several of the actors from the Harry Potter movies, including Emma Watson,attacked Rowling, she not only didn’t back down, she doubled down.
Noting that Watson was arguing that biological men should be given access to women’s-only spaces, Rowling pointed out that Watson will “never need a homeless shelter. She’s never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I’d be astounded if she’s been in a high street changing room since childhood.”
“Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who’s identified into the women’s prison?”
Growing Backlash Within Progressive Circles
Many people noted that Hollywood actress Keira Knightley’s recent response to a question about Rowling suggested a sea change on the issue of transgenderism. Asked by a reporter about Rowling’s views on transgenderism, Knightley simply laughed the question off. “We’re all going to have to figure out how to live together,” she responded. In other words, Knightley isn’t going to engage in the moral theater in which she is expected to condemn Rowling to prove her progressive bone fides.
Rowling has especially condemned the effort to advance transgender ideology in schools and among young people.
“There are no trans kids,” Rowling wrote in a recent post on X. “No child is ‘born in the wrong body’. There are only adults like you, prepared to sacrifice the health of minors to bolster your belief in an ideology that will end up wreaking more harm than lobotomies and false memory syndrome combined.”
One of the most encouraging results of Rowling’s courageous stance, is that it seems to have carved out a space for other celebrities to speak their true feelings.
Recently famed author Malcolm Gladwell apologized for not speaking out against the movement to allow individuals identifying as transgender to compete in women’s sports. Specifically, Gladwell apologized for not speaking out on a 2022 panel that he hosted, in which one of the panel members opposed allowing men in women’s sports.
Gladwell now says that he was “ashamed” and “cowed” into silence on the issue. However, he recently noted, in reality probably the overwhelming majority of the audience at the panel supported the commonsense view that men and women are different.
Catholic Hospitals Reassert Biological Reality
Unfortunately, in the headlong rush into gender insanity, many U.S. hospitals and medical systems have become complicit, pushing gender-confused individuals towards dangerous and irreversible medical and surgical interventions.
Recently, the U.S. bishops took strong action to ensure that Catholic hospitals in the country remain bastions of sanity. Rather than enabling mental illness, Catholic hospitals are instructed to respect the inherent givenness of the body and biological sex.
A few days ago, the U.S. bishops gathered at their annual plenary in Baltimore. There they voted to pass the seventh edition of the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services“ (ERD). The ERDs guides decision-making at Catholic healthcare facilities.
The newest edition of the ERDs includes updated language on the topic of transgenderism. The new Directive 28 prohibits “medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the body in its form or function. … [including those] that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics of a human body).”
Compassion Without Compromise
Meanwhile, Directive 29 states that Catholic health care services and providers “‘must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria’ and to provide for the full range of their health care needs, employing only those means that respect the fundamental order of the human body.”
The Catholic Health Association (CMA) welcomed the updated ERDs, and specifically the language on gender. Sr. Mary Haddad, President and CEO of CMA, said that the policies on transgenderism in particular “are consistent with Catholic health care practice that does not allow for medical interventions that alter sexual characteristics absent an underlying condition.”
“Catholic providers will continue to welcome those who seek medical care from us and identify as transgender,” added Sr. Haddad. “We will continue to treat these individuals with dignity and respect, which is consistent with Catholic social teaching and our moral obligation to serve everyone, particularly those who are marginalized. Catholic health care will also continue to advocate for the right of everyone to access high-quality health care.”
In other words, the Church will continue to do what She has always done: Love and support individuals, including those suffering from psychological illnesses and moral confusion, while standing strongly in support of truth.
The Real-World Consequences of Gender Ideology
It’s important to remind ourselves that these seemingly abstract discussions about gender and gender ideology have very real, life-altering impacts.
When children in schools are continually surrounded with propaganda telling them that they might be “born in the wrong body,” or that there is something especially “courageous” about coming out as transgender, you can bet that it increases the likelihood that they will suffer from gender confusion.
For some of these children, this gender confusion will be catastrophic and life-altering. Some of them will end up pursuing the medical route. They will take powerful hormones that will impact their bodies permanently, even rendering them infertile for life, or undergo surgeries that permanently mutilate their bodies.
Recently, media reported that 21 hospitals and health systems nationwide have ceased offering transgender “services” for minors, due to Trump’s executive orders on the issue. Transgender surgeries of minors have stopped. Amazing.
A Sudden Shift Into The Light
One of the most interesting things about the sudden shift away from gender madness, is that this shift is not following any drastic shift in overall political viewpoints. As Kauffman points out, the same surveys that showed the percentage of students transgender-identified dropping by half in just two years, also show that a fairly stable percentage of students identify as progressive.
What this suggests is that gender ideology isn’t just retreating in response to conservative opposition, but rather because it goes too far even for radical leftists.
When celebrities like Rowling speak out, they are helping push back against the madness and changing the cultural narrative. And when the U.S. bishops unambiguously defend moral and biological sanity, they are ensuring that the Catholic Church remains a bastion of sanity.
The result, in both cases, is that untold thousands of vulnerable individuals are protected from this pernicious ideology. The sudden collapse in the numbers of students at universities identifying as “non-binary” is one of the most encouraging pieces of news in recent memory. Every percentage drop represents thousands of real boys and girls who are being given the opportunity to live a more authentic life by embracing their given biological sex.
This is a victory well worth celebrating.
Human Life International
As president of Human Life International, Fr. Boquet is a leading expert on the international pro-life and family movement, having journeyed to nearly 90 countries on pro-life missions over the last decade. Father Boquet works with pro-life and family leaders in 116 counties that partner with HLI to proclaim and advance the Gospel of Life. Read his full bio here.
The Blessed Virgin Mary and the Incomparable Value of Human Life