Large numbers of young Americans identify as LGBTQ, but there are signs that this number could trend downward in the near term, as both high school and college students are identifying as LGBTQ in fewer numbers. Identification is falling fastest when it comes to bisexuality, the most common sexual identity.
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Gallup found last year that a full 23 percent of young Americans ages 18 to 28 identify as LGBTQ. When it comes to women, 31.4 percent identify as LGBTQ — among whom nearly two-thirds identify as bisexual.
Those on the right have long suspected that much of this bisexual identification emerges out of young women’s desire to capitalize on the social status and victimhood conferred by having an LGBTQ identity. (RELATED: Being Gay Isn’t So Hot Anymore)
“Everybody wants to be a victim,” wrote Ann Coulter earlier this year. “This is the same impulse that leads perfectly normal heterosexual coeds to claim they are ‘bisexual’ or ‘queer.’”
In an era when LGBTQ identity confers status, bisexual identity is the easiest one to adopt in order to reap the social benefits.
Perhaps the decreasing identification with bisexuality among high school and college students indicates that the social status conferred by bisexuality is falling.
The writer Jean M. Twenge wrote last week that the newly released data from the CDC’s Youth Risk Survey showed that bisexual identity had dropped by half among 9th grade high school girls. Whereas 26 percent of 9th grade girls identified as bisexual in 2021, only 13 percent did so in 2025.
LGB identity more generally fell among high school students, with the most pronounced falls corresponding with younger teens. For ninth graders, who are generally 14 to 15 years old, LGB identity fell from 17 percent in 2023 to 11 percent in 2025. Among 10th graders, the number fell from 17 percent in 2023 to 14 percent in 2023 percent. For 11th and 12th graders, the decrease in LGB identification was smaller but still noticeable.
An October 2025 report by Eric Kaufmann of the Centre for Heterodox Science likewise found that the share of college students identifying as LGBTQ fell by 10 percentage points between 2023 and 2025. Kaufmann found that “other” and “queer” sexualities experienced the largest declines, followed by bisexuality.
In an era when LGBTQ identity confers status, bisexual identity is the easiest one to adopt in order to reap the social benefits. After all, it hardly makes any demands on a person. A woman who identifies as bisexual need not forgo having a husband and biological children with him. She can simply go on living a normal life. By contrast, a lesbian woman signs herself up for only ever having a stranger’s baby, or no children at all. A nonbinary woman, meanwhile, signs up for having to try to look androgynous.
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Take Kate Brown, who served as Oregon’s governor from 2015 to 2023. Brown’s bisexual identity made her special to progressives. When she was sworn in as governor, Time’s headline announcing her inauguration read: “Oregon’s Kate Brown Becomes First Openly Bisexual U.S. Governor.” She used her identity to prop herself up as a heroic inspiration to people. “If I can be a role model for one young person that decides that their life is worth living because there’s someone like them in the world, it’s worth it,” she said in 2016. (RELATED: Explosion of Female Bisexuality)
And yet Brown’s identity requires virtually nothing of her. She has been married to her husband for 30 years. All she needs to do is continually insist that she is attracted to women even while she is married to her husband. (One notes that heterosexual people do not typically announce an attraction to people other than their spouse.)
Former Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema likewise claims a bisexual identity, and likewise does nothing as a result of it. She was previously married to a man and then carried on an affair with another man, and she has not publicly dated a woman. (RELATED: As Bisexuals Get Older, They Act Straighter)
Brown and Sinema are not alone. The Pew Research Center found in 2015 that a full 84 percent of people who identify as bisexual are in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex, while 7 percent aren’t in any relationship at all.
In a world where LGBTQ identity confers fewer social benefits, we can assume that bisexuals will often be the first to drop their identities, as they were the easiest to adopt in the first place and they don’t have much impact on one’s life.
Alternatively, maybe bisexuality just isn’t good enough anymore for the Left.
Some claim bisexuality isn’t woke enough because it implies that there are only two sexes to be attracted to. For example, a person was quoted in the guide “Trans Bodies, Trans Selves” as : “Bisexual assumes there are only two genders, which is inaccurate. I am attracted to queers and fags of all genders, so ‘pansexual’ is how I identify.” It indeed seems that the concept of “pansexuality” exists entirely to push back against bisexuality’s perceived deficiencies. When singer Demi Lovato explained in 2021 why she identifies as “pansexual,” she said: “I identify as pansexual, I’m attracted to human beings, and it doesn’t matter what you identify as.” (Since that interview, Lovato readopted “she/her” pronouns and married a man.) (RELATED: Hypocrisy and Harm: The Dark Binary of the ‘Non-Binary’ Identity)
Some groups, however, have tried to push back on this perception that bisexuality is problematic. The youth-focused LGBTQ group the Trevor Project claims, for instance, that bisexuality means “the capacity to form attraction and/or relationships to more than one gender” and that “the current definition is not specifically binary.” The group further counsels that people of “any gender” can identify as bisexual.
Whatever the case, we can expect fewer bisexuals in the coming years. Whether this really means much can be debated, given that most people who identify as bisexual live like they’re straight.
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