A new report from the Pew Research Center found 42% of Americans know somebody who is trans compared to 37% in 2017 when the study was last conducted. An additional 26% of respondents said they know somebody who goes by gender-neutral pronouns such as ‘they/them’, compared to 18% in 2017.
Over 50% of those under 30 said that they knew someone who identified as trans or gender non-conforming. There were also political disparities among respondents, with 48% (up 11% since 2017) of Democrats saying they knew a trans or gender non-conforming person compared to 35% (up 25% since 2017) of Republicans.
Democrats were also more likely to agree that someone can identify with a different gender to that which they were assigned at birth. Overall, 54% of respondents said: “Someone can be a man or a woman even if that is different from the sex they were assigned at birth.”
In response to the findings, the Pew Research Center highlighted that while “governments…have moved toward putting more legal protections in place for transgender people and formally recognising non-binary identities”, there are still “a record number of state-level bills have sought to limit definitions of gender to the sex people are assigned at birth.”
