How Can Flagship News Reporting on LGBTQIA+ People in the US be This Bad?

 

 

 

On October 8th, 2026, I opened the Washington Post app to see how the day's list of bad news would be presented. One of the first stories I saw was titled, "Number of teens who identify themselves as gay or bisexual is in 'free fall.'"

The article was a great example of horrible reporting. And I don't mean, "Wow, these facts are horrible!" I mean, "Wow, that violates so many rules of valid journalism!" 

Let me break it down for you.

First, let's look at the subheading of the article. It reads, "Conservatives have trumpeted the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but researchers say the reasons for the decline are unclear." That subhead and the article title together seem to say that medical researchers at the CDC have released an important new study, showing that there has been a plunge in the number of gay and bisexual teens. Conservatives are elated! But "researchers" are befuddled and say the reason is a mystery.

I'll break this down for you in full, but first, let me just cut to the chase and rewrite that title and subhead for you: "One single psychologist who writes pop pieces about generational differences speculated about some online data in a Substack post! Her conclusions were strangely uninformed, but we're framing this as a major discovery, and homophobic fans of conversion therapy are elated."

OK, now let me explain what the blog post itself says, then how the article frames it, and finally what this all means for LGBTQIA+ people and the US.

The blog post itself is titled, "Younger teens are now much less likely to say they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual (especially girls -- and yes, that goes for sexual behavior, too)." The author is Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University who regularly speculates on hot topics about generational differences in the media and on her blog. Other Substack posts of hers include, "Gen Z really does have a work ethic problem. Or maybe we all do?" and "Is immigration behind the decline in reading scores?" (to which her answer is no, instead it's young people spending too much time scrolling social media on smartphones).

So, what does she have to say in her Substack piece that the Washington Post has presented as a major discovery? Basically, she looks at the recently uploaded data from the 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (the YRBSS). YRBSS data have been collected every two years from youths in grades 9-12, to further the CDC goal of improved health and wellbeing. Students are asked about topics like drug use, experience with being bullied, and sexuality. Twenge looked at what the students reported in response to the survey sexuality questions, and found this:

 

The number of students reporting that they identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual went up for years, peaked during lockdowns for 9th and 10th graders, and in 2023 for 11th and 12th graders, and since then has fallen--dramatically so for students who were in the 9th grade in 2025 (the red line). But breaking down that decline, Twenge found that there was little decrease in students identifying themselves to researchers as lesbian or gay. It was mostly a decline in students saying they were bisexual, especially among girls:

There's the graph just showing what percentage of high school girls identified themselves to researchers as bisexual over the same time period.

So, Twenge concludes, "While 26% of 9th grade girls identified as bisexual in 2021, only 13%--half as many--did in 2025." She says that this is a mystery, and nobody knows why this is happening! Her take is that it is a mysterious generational effect: "These trends are especially striking given the relative stability of identifying as LGB among young adults ages 18 to 24." (Gen Z shows little change in reported sexual orientations, but the oldest members of Generation Alpha were in 9th grade when this study took place, and Twenge's interests focus on generational differences.)  

Before I discuss the problems with the YRBSS data and explain why the reported drop isn't inexplicable at all, I want to note something Twenge herself mentions. While only 13% of 9th grade high school girls in 2025 told the CDC they identified as bisexual, and another 4% said they were lesbian, the percentage of sexually-active girls in the 9th grade in that year who reported having had at least one same-gender sexual partner was 29%. That is, quite a large number of 9th grade girls in 2025 told researchers that they had a sexual relationship with another girl, but didn't identify themselves as lesbian or bisexual. 

And that's just the percentage who disclosed their sexual activities to the CDC.

America has a long tradition of people having same-gender partners but not identifying as LGB+. Basically, the more homophobic the time period, the greater the risks of coming out of the closet and being open about one's sexuality. So you can track the political climate for queer folk by how many people having relations that aren't heterosexual self-label as gay, lesbian, queer, homophile, etc.. The climate has gotten worse for LGBTQIA+ people, so the gap between how people feel and whether they proclaim that to the world has gotten larger again. No mystery there.

There's another possibility that Twenge doesn't consider. Excluded from her data are students who said "I have another identity"--that is, a sexual identity other than the YRBSS survey options of straight, lesbian, gay, or bisexual. As someone who teaches large numbers of first-year college students, I can tell you that there has been a big recent move toward students identifying themselves as "sexually fluid," or as saying that labels themselves are counterproductive as they limit both the way others see you and what you see as possible for yourself. And refusing to self-label is particularly understandable as it is also self-protective in an age in which LGBTQIA+ young people feel unsafe.

But there are other really vital factors that Twenge doesn't mention at all. And those have to do with the YRBSS itself. Notice, for example, that Twenge is only reporting on LGB identity. What about trans youth?

Oh! The YRBSS no longer asks young people any questions about their gender identities.  

There is an elephant in the room that is going unmentioned in Twenge's Substack post, and in the Washington Post news piece based on it. And that is that the CDC today is nothing like the CDC as it existed for decades before. The Trump administration has made massive changes and fired huge swaths of career scientists. It has changed the CDC into an organization that kills vaccine mandates, cancels research that was supposed to close health gaps between privileged and marginalized groups, and declares that there is no such thing as a trans person, calling that intolerable "gender ideology."

Shortly after Trump was inaugurated for the second time, the CDC took down all the years of YRBSS data that had been publicly available for researchers to study for decades. The supposed reason was that it was intolerably flawed and biased by woke DEI political ideology, including a recognition of trans people and of gender identity as a concept. A Trump administration executive order issued on day 2 of his 2025 administration had declared that there is no such thing as gender, only sex, and that sex is a binary determined at the moment of conception that can never be changed. To believe anything else was proclaimed "unscientific" and in defiance of biological truth. 

The YRBSS has produced a huge amount of data on many topics, but the CDC tried to throw all of those years of data away. A major emergency rescue effort was immediately organized by researchers who use YRBSS data to download and archive those masses of data before they were removed. And after they were taken down, a court ordered the data restored to the CDC website. They are there--complete with a CDC banner stating that "Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from truth. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology due to the harms and divisiveness it causes. This page does not reflect reality and therefore the Administration and this Department reject it."

The CDC continued to collect YRBSS data in 2025. But numerous questions had been changed, and the question about gender identity removed.

Young people today are intensely aware of the negative attitudes of this presidential administration and conservative state legislatures toward LGBTQIA+ youth. Queer and trans youth today have to be much more cautious than young people a decade ago needed to be. So when a government agent comes and asks them to declare their sexual identity, far fewer of them are going to trust the government and respond openly. They're not fools; they see the risks and act accordingly.

Maybe Twenge is unaware of what happened to the YRBSS. But that is a high level of ignorance for someone presenting herself as a scientific expert on this topic. The changes in the survey questions and the hostility of this administration and the larger society today are key to interpreting LGBTQIA+ youths' responses! And while she was just writing a Substack post for a small audience, you would really hope that the Washington Post, in turning this minor online piece into a national news story, would have discussed the YRBSS takedown and question changes. . . but no. 

As a trans person, I've gotten depressingly used to terrible reporting on trans youth in US news today. Stories in which the voices of actual trans people and our organizations are completely missing. Stories that treat the transphobic opinions of the leaders of anti-LGBTQIA+ political organizations and the reports of medical experts as the two equally-weighted, sole sources of information. Flagship mainstream news stories that accept as a premise that trans middle-schoolers present a threat to their cis classmates. News articles and videos hosting debates over whether a 17-year-old can actually know what their gender is, or if gender identity even exists. Media reports on the "dangers of puberty suppression" that fail to mention that these drugs are used all the time on large numbers of cisgender children without any controversy.

And this has an impact. With this as our media atmosphere, 27 of the 50 US states have passed bans on trans youth accessing gender-affirming care. Laws ban teachers from treating trans students respectfully. School districts forbid schools from letting bullied and scared trans youth access a gender-neutral, single-stall restroom where they could be safe. Many schools that had GSAs--"Gay/Straight Alliances," student support groups for LGBTQIA+ students--now ban them. 

We live in an era of "polarization," by which we really mean the generating of intergroup hatred for social media profit and personal and political power. In the LGBTQIA+ community, trans people have in particular been made a punching bag. As the November election in the US approaches, we are again bombarded with Republican political ads making wild and bigoted claims about Democrats putting "men in girls' bathrooms." The president is referring to a South Carolina candidate for office, Dr. Annie Andrews, by altering her first name to start with a T so it becomes a transphobic slur. And her response? She aired a political ad saying she opposes medical transition care for trans youth and "biological men in women's sports." 

Americans young and old who are trans, nonbinary, intersex or otherwise variant in their sex or gender are exquisitely aware of what is happening. Republican politicians attack them; Democratic ones abandon them.  

This context has given rise to a split, within LGBTQIA+ communities themselves, and among Americans generally. On the one hand, there have been trans people and our allies saying, "They're coming for us first, but that's just because we are the easier targets in a highly transphobic society. Look at what the organizations attacking us say in their own literature! They mean to take LGBQ people down next." On the other have been people who have brushed off the attacks on trans people as affecting a group that is either too small to get too worried about when everything is on fire, or as fine with them because they are transphobic too. (This includes groups like the Log Cabin Republicans, who this summer happily jettisoned support for trans people's rights in their ongoing campaign of respectability politics.)

What this article shows is that warnings from the trans umbrella community have been valid. 

At this point there has been so much terrible reporting from flagship news sources like the New York Times and the Washington Post on trans youths and adults that it no longer gets much attention. And now we see what comes next: a flimsy excuse to feature a report that seems perfectly designed for rightwing virality. "Even that liberal rag the Washington Post is reporting that the rise in LGBT identity was just a fad generated by trans groomers and woke enemies of our timeless wholesome values!" 

I did that unwise thing and read the comment section for the Washington Post article. It was full of gloating transphobes claiming that the article proved that being LGBT was a sick fad that had been pushed on America's children by adult LGBT groomers and woke teachers and administrators. But children could be cured, as this article proved! Many credited Trump. The Post article itself included a pretty bizarre such claim: "'Amazing what happens when you cut the Department of Education and USAID,' Terry Schilling, the head of the American Principles Project, wrote on X." How cutting American aid to hungry children living in refugee camps in other parts of the world is supposed to cure American youths of LGBTQIA+ identities is very much an open question. . .

That the Washington Post article doesn't ask that questions is more evidence of the terrible quality of the article.

What we are left to conclude is that publishing an article that meets the basic quality standards of news journalism was not the goal. Clickbait is almost certainly part of the goal. But the shifting of the Overton window on queer and trans rights by the billionaire class that has purchased America's media platforms is another. It started with mainstream news reports delegitimizing and stigmatizing trans people. But it's coming for LGB folks as well.

Be prepared! And remember: we the people continue to hold the power in our hands to change all this.

On Sex/Gender Checkboxes

Day in and day out, sex and gender minorities are boxed in by being confronted with sex/gender checkboxes. This starts the moment we are born, when a binary sex must be checked on our birth certificates: “male” or “female.” For individuals who are born with visibly intersex bodies, this requirement causes a crisis. Families and doctors make hasty decisions about which box they'll force us into, and we have to live with the consequences all of our lives. Having checked off a binary “M” or “F,” those with authority over our infant bodies often feel that trying to reshape our bodies conform to the box they've picked is unavoidable. Thus, genital surgeries are routinely performed, despite the deep unhappiness so many intersex people voice about the results as adults. Great pain might be avoided if parents were allowed to acknowledge our physical truth on birth certificates which included an intersex checkbox, or if the gender marker requirement were simply removed.

For people who are trans gender, gender transitioning is made traumatic in large part due to the checkboxes we must face daily. Binary gender markers are everywhere: on our drivers' licenses and passports, on loan applications and job applications, and on websites everywhere (from Facebook to shopping sites to online radio stations). Once you've checked off one box, changing it is bureaucratically and legally difficult—and sometimes there's no way to change it at all. This leads to all sorts of hassles and embarrassment, as we're “outed” in odd contexts. Worse still, if the gender we're living in doesn't match the marker on our ID, we're subject to being banned from flying, arrested by bigoted police officers, and denied employment.

For folks who don't identify with a binary gender, the world of checkboxes constantly denies our very existence. We go institutionally unrecognized, with no way to even try to say “I am here!”

Sex and gender minorities have some protection in institutional settings that bar discrimination on the basis not only of sex, but of gender identity or expression. But often, such policies are adopted with no follow-through on what it really means for a university or company or city to protect gender identity and expression. Unaware of our needs, administrators think only of ensuring that trans people aren't being kicked out just for gender transitioning. While this is certainly important, there are many more needs that must be addressed. And central among these are that sex/gender checkboxes protect the rights of sex and gender minorities.

I have written a Best Practices guide that is under discussion at my university. It lays out a plan for rewriting sex/gender checkboxes that is meant to address the needs of intersex, trans gender, and gender variant people, in this case, in a university setting. There are some inevitable compromises in it between institutional desires for simplicity and brevity, and our desires as individuals to have our identities recognized in all of their fullness and uniqueness. But I wanted to share it here so that other people who are looking for a guideline to use in seeking to better the way institutions around them limit sex/gender choices would have something to start with. It doesn't address the problem of birth certificates, for example, since universities don't issue them. It does, however, address the question of how sex and gender and sexuality should be measured in research in some detail.

Please feel free to share and employ at will.

Best Practices for Identification of Sex/Gender

Compiled by Dr. Cary Gabriel Costello

I. Foundational Principles

Institutions which commit themselves to protecting against discrimination on the basis of sex and of gender identity or expression (GIE) must give individuals the right to self-identify their sex/gender.

Whenever data are gathered about sex/gender, the rights of GIE minorities (intersex individuals, trans men, trans women, and individuals with alternative gender identities) must be protected.

II. Definitions

“GIE minorities” include intersex individuals, trans gender individuals (trans men, trans women, and individuals with alternative gender identities), and people with variant gender expression.

Intersex Persons

While it is common to believe that sex is binary—that is, that all people are born either male or female—in fact, sexual characteristics exist as a spectrum. There is a great deal of variation in chromosomes (XX, XY, XXY, XYY, etc.), hormones (relative levels of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone), secondary sexual characteristics (breasts, hair distribution, etc.) genital configurations, and gonads (ovaries, ovotestes, testes). Intersex people are individuals whose sexual characteristics fall toward the middle of the spectrum. Approximately 1 in 150 people are intersexed according to medical diagnostic criteria. Most are very private about this status, though some are public about it.

Trans Gender Individuals

Individuals whose gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth are deemed trans gender. A trans man was assigned female at birth but identifies as male; a trans woman was assigned male at birth but identifies as female; a genderqueer individual may identify as neither male nor female. Trans gender individuals often transition to their sex of identification, though they may do so in different ways. Some transition socially by changing name, pronoun, and dress. Others also take hormones (testosterone or estrogen/progesterone) to alter their bodies. In addition, some get surgery to change their chests or genitalia. Because surgery is quite expensive, may not be covered by insurance, and because it carries serious risks, many trans gender individuals in the U.S. do not seek or are unable to access surgical transition services.

Variant Gender Expression

People of any sex or gender may have an atypical gender presentation—male femininity, female masculinity, or androgyny.

III. Best Practices in Collecting Data about Sex/Gender

The best practices for collecting data about sex/gender depend on context. If collecting data about sex/gender serves no purpose for the individuals from whom it is collected, then eliminating the question is the best practice. If data are being gathered to protect the rights and well-being of individuals, then individuals should be given self-identification options that allow GIE minorities to self-identify. These options include a shorter form for ordinary uses, and longer forms to be employed in research contexts.

Eliminating Unnecessary Requirements for Individual Sex/Gender Identification

There are many institutional contexts in which people are routinely asked to identify their sex/gender based on common marketing practices or institutional tradition rather than an intent to protect the individuals from discrimination on the basis of their sex/gender. (For example, this is a common requirement in registering to use website services.) In this situation, the best practice is simply to eliminate the unnecessary requirement of declaring sex/gender.

Standard Best Practices Short Form for Sex/Gender Identifications

In contexts in which data is collected order to ensure equal treatment and respect for all, information about sex/gender should be collected in a manner that protects GIE minorities. The goal in implementing sex/gender categories for general data collection is to protect the rights of all people, whatever their physical sex status or gender identity, including intersex individuals, trans men and trans women, and individuals with alternative gender identities. Thus, the inappropriate single question (“Sex: Male__, Female__”) should be replaced with a three-stage approach.

1. Gender identity: Woman __, Man __, Alternate Self-identification (please write in) ______________.
2. Do you have an intersex condition (disorder of sex development)? Yes__, No__.
3. Are you trans gender? Yes__, No__.

In order also to ensure nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, best practices add a fourth question unrelated to GIE:

4. Sexual orientation: Heterosexual __, Lesbian__,  Gay__, Bisexual__, Queer__, Pansexual__, Asexual__, Alternate Self-identification (please write in) ______________.

AVOID poor practices which undermine individuals' identities instead of protecting them. A common poor practice is to use a single additional checkbox: “Male__, Female__, Transgender___.” This is inappropriate for several reasons. First, it does not allow intersex individuals a way to identify themselves. Secondly, it discriminates against trans men and trans women by framing trans gender identification as incompatible with “real” male or female status. And thirdly, it does not allow for recognition of the distinct needs and identities of individuals who identify as neither male nor female.

Best Practices Long Forms for Research Contexts

Data about sex and gender are often collected in the course of research. If data are to be analyzed along the dimensions of sex and/or gender, two sets of needs must be met. The first relate to the rights of research subjects, who must be protected from harm, including the harm of discrimination on the bases of sex, gender identity or gender expression. In conducting research with human subjects, researchers will inevitably recruit research subjects who are intersex, trans gender, or variant in their gender expression, and are ethically obliged to treat them with respect. The second issue relates to the need of the researcher to have research questions carefully worded in a manner that subjects will understand and respond to in a reliable and valid manner.

Many scientific studies today continue to use “sex” as an independent variable, and measure this in a binary fashion. This is a methodological flaw, as well as discriminating against GIE minorities. It does not allow the researcher to measure what actually accounts for observed variance in the dependent variable: is it physical sex status, internal gender identity, gender-conformity or nonconformity? Just as a study that uses religion as an independent variable is improved when it not only identifies subjects as “Christian,” but allows the subjects to identify a more specific denomination, asks them how religiously observant they consider themselves, and inquires as to how often they attend church, increasing the sophistication of sex/gender questions improves study results. The following measures are suggested:

1. What gender do you identify with? Man__, Woman__, Other (please write in the identity)________________.
2. What sex category were assigned at birth? Male__, Female__.
3. As far as you know, were you born with an intersex or sex variant body? Yes__, No__.
4. Please indicate how masculine or feminine you are in your dress and manner on the following scale: (1) very masculine, (2) moderately masculine, (3) a bit masculine, (4) androgynous, (5) a bit feminine, (6) moderately feminine, (7) very feminine.

In order also to ensure the study is not discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, and to gather better data, best practices suggest that subjects also be surveyed on their sexual identity. Problems are often raised by the traditional method of asking subjects if they are “heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual.” For example, people who are gender transitioning or who identify as neither male nor female are often unable to use these sexual orientation categories to classify themselves. Furthermore, it is well established that there is a difference between how many people identify their sexual orientation and the sexual activities in which they actually engage. This may be addressed through questions such as the following:

1. To whom are you attracted, sexually and romantically? (1) only men, (2) mostly men, (3) a bit more toward men than toward women, (4) equally toward men and women, (5) a bit toward women than men, (6) mostly women, (7) only women.
2. With whom have you been sexually involved? (1) only men, (2) mostly men, (3) a bit more men than women, (4) equally men and women, (5) a bit women than men, (6) mostly women, (7) only women.
3. Are the people to whom you are attracted (1) very masculine, (2) moderately masculine, (3) a bit masculine, (4) androgynous, (5) a bit feminine, (6) moderately feminine, (7) very feminine.
4. Consider the idea of a partner who identifies as neither male nor female, but as some other gender such as “genderqueer.” Do you find that (1) very appealing, (2) moderately appealing, (3) a bit appealing, (4) I feel neutral about it, (5) a bit unappealing, (6) moderately unappealing, (7) very unappealing.

Researchers who choose specifically to study GIE minorities should consider them a vulnerable subject pool for IRB human subject protection purposes. In cases of studies recruiting intersex, trans gender, or gender-variant subjects, procedures should be set in place to protect these vulnerable subjects, and the questions asked about sex and gender carefully designed to accord all subjects with full respect for persons. Confidentiality should be strictly protected, data collected in a location where subjects will not be at risk of having others see or overhear their responses, and information sheets listing appropriate support groups and links to mental health resources distributed to those recruited to participate.