1/15 A thread: The LGBT share among young Americans tripled in the last decade to 21%. Trans & non-binary identification may be up as much as 1000%. My new @CSPICenterOrg report shows that this is, as @billmaher suggested, shaped by social trends: cspicenter.org/reports/born-t…
2/Data from @GSS_NORC shows that LGBT identification has been diverging from same-sex behavior. LGBT identity has risen 11 points among Americans under 30 since 2008, but same-sex behavior has only risen 4 points
3/ For example, bisexuals are close to half the LGBT total, and predominantly female. But the GSS shows that the share of bisexual women with exclusively male partners in the previous 5 years increased from 13% in 2008-10 to 55% in 2018-21
4/ We reached 'peak trans' in 2020. @TheFIREorg data on 57,000 undergraduates for 2020-21 shows that in 50 colleges sampled in both years, the non-binary share dropped from 1.5% to 0.85%, a statistically-significant decline, with younger less trans. UK & Canadian data show same
5/ The LGBT surge is socio-political, heavily siloed among very liberal young people. The GSS shows that the heterosexual share dropped about 20 points, to 66%, within the most liberal fifth of young people. It changed far less among others
6/ Political aspect most important for white and college-educated. @TheFIREorg data shows that a very liberal white female student who supports the idea of shouting down a speaker to prevent them speaking has around a 7 in 10 chance of being LGBT
7/ By contrast, almost none of the 1,360 very conservative male students with a Christian affiliation in the FIRE data call themselves LGBT
8/ 52% of students taking highly political majors such as race or gender studies identify as LGBT, compared to 25% among students overall. Those in the social sciences and humanities are about 10 points more LGBT than those in STEM
9/ Census data from the UK & Canada suggest surveys overestimate LGBT share by 2-3x. For instance, 26% of more than 5,000 18-20 year-olds on YouGov’s UK panel identify as LGBT but the census pilot estimates for 16-24 year-olds in 2019 show only 7.6% do ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…
10/ LGBT & the mental health crisis. Derek Thompson shows that 44 percent of US teens feel persistently sad or hopeless, 75 percent for LGBT teens. Besides the pandemic, why? theatlantic.com/newsletters/ar…
11/ The nexus of liberalism, sexuality & mental health needs analysis. A boundary-transgressing liberal culture could be destabilising for some. Very liberal people are *both* more likely to be LGBT & more likely to suffer mental illness psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/unique…
12/ Assuming that becoming ‘very liberal’ involves both innate dispositions & exposure to messages, it's reasonable to assume that a culture which encourages boundary transgression & vulnerability could prompt people to ‘identify’ as sad or anxious, as with LGBT identity
13/ Thus GSS data, along with another study of high school students, finds that liberal and LGBT young people have experienced faster rates of mental health decline than others since 2010, at a time of growing toleration toward LGBT people
14/ In the wake of Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, I find school type does not matter much for LGBT identification. Suggests “grooming” is not occurring, but it's legitimate to debate whether schools are accurately representing the mix of lifestyles in a population /end
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1/ Woke won’t fade away because it is rooted in left-liberalism, the basis of modern western culture.
A thread on my new book Taboo (The Third Awokening in North America), released today:
2/ Woke is a useful analytical concept that describes a distinct phenomenon in the world: the making sacred of historically marginalized race, gender and sexual minority groups. Woke people are emotionally attached to minorities and cold toward majorities.
3/ Despite firms cutting back on DEI and less talk of ‘white privilege’ in the media, woke cultural socialism is not going away. Why? Because young people are a lot more woke. In 20 years they will be the median voter. Generational turnover will mainstream woke.
2/ Canadian attitudes average within 0.3 of a percent of British attitudes (across 30 items) and 1 percent of American attitudes (13 items), despite surveys conducted 1-2 years apart, with different samples and firms!
3/ Like Americans and Brits, of those with an opinion, around 8 in 10 Canadians say ‘political correctness has gone too far’. 61% say they can’t express political views because others may be offended, 55% feel less free to express views on immigration than 5 years ago.
1/ After 20 years, I am leaving a full University of London professorship for the University of Buckingham. In January, I launch a new low-cost online course open to the public on Woke: the Origins, Dynamics and Implications of an Elite Ideology. Sign up:
2/ Why leave? My university’s uncertain financial position played a role, but I was also repelled by cancel culture and attracted by the chance to help build Buckingham as the only ‘free speech university’ in Britain. Still, sorry to say goodbye to good colleagues and students
3/ Whereas the US has some 150 non-leftist research centres, nothing of this kind exists in Britain. In January I will therefore establish the Centre for Heterodox Social Science at Buckingham to pursue countercultural social science and humanities research.
1 / Did woke arise because Marxists turned from class to identity, or did because liberal law accidentally evolved toward equality of result and speech suppression. My review of @RichardHanania and @realchrisrufo’s new books.
2/ @RichardHanania is correct that cultural Marxists played little role in the rise of affirmative action (equal results for identity groups) and claims that speech has to be suppressed to remove ‘hostile environments’ for minorities
3/ @realchrisrufo is correct that the program of the Black Panthers, Weathermen and cultural Marxist radicals like Freire and Giroux is informs and corresponds to that of Antifa, BLM, Critical Race Theory in schools and DEI in organizations
1/ American academics tacitly support censoring their colleagues. A thread on the recent @TheFIREorg report authored by Sean Stevens, Nate Honeycutt and myself thefire.org/research-learn…
2/ It's true that American professors are more tolerant of controversial speakers than their students. Most oppose no-platforming. This is positive news.
3/ But young faculty are as intolerant as students, suggesting that tomorrow’s professoriate will be more culturally socialist and less culturally liberal. They are much less opposed to suppressing speech than older colleagues
1/ Why school indoctrination is working, and will make the Republicans unelectable in a generation. A thread, based on my new @ManhattanInst report with @ZachG932
2/ @jburnmurdoch@FT showed that younger generations are diverging from older ones by not becoming more Republican as they age. Why might this be?
3/ Indoctrination. Virtually all of over 1,500 18-20 year-olds polled had heard at least 1 of 8 critical social justice (CSJ) terms from adults at school. 90% heard a critical race (CRT) concept, 74% a gender one