Most Americans Don't Support Top Trans-Activist Goals, NYT Poll Finds
A Times opinion poll found that the majority of Democrats think women's sports should be restricted according to sex, not gender identity, and that minors shouldn't have access to transition drugs.
As Donald Trump prepares to re-assume the presidency on Monday, a New York Times/Ipsos poll finds that the majority of Americans, including most Democrats, are opposed to some of the key liberties that transgender activists have fought for in the face of advancing Republican opposition.
Compared with a 2023 Washington Post Poll, the new Times poll suggests that Americans have recently shifted dramatically toward opposing access to gender-transition treatments for minors under age 15 in particular and toward opposing allowing natal males who identify as female to participate in women’s sports.
The transgender movement has increasingly lost the battle on these two fronts. About half the states have banned minors’ access to gender-transition treatment and a bit more than half have imposed restrictions on sports participation according to sex rather than gender identity.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted almost entirely along party lines, 218 to 206, to restrict participation in girls’ sports by sex and not sex and gender identity in K-12 schools that receive federal funding. The measure is not expected to gain traction in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to break a filibuster.
However, the new Times poll suggests that the nation’s Democrats might nevertheless largely support Democratic senators breaking rank and supporting such an effort to keep natal boys who identify as female from participating in girls’ sports.
A review paper published by Dr. Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic in December found that even prior to puberty, boys do have at least a slight advantage over girls athletically, and that this difference widens dramatically after male puberty’s onset. Research suggests that even treatment with estrogen and anti-androgen medications does not erase the athletic advantage conferred by a male puberty, Dr. Joyner found.
Trump promised during his campaign to enact severe measures to restrict access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria in minors. He will probably pull strings through executive orders that have facilitated insurance coverage of such medications, targeting what’s known as Section 1557 under the Affordable Care Act.
The president-elect has also pledged to ask Congress to ban federal funds for paying for such treatment; this would probably include Medicaid, which covers a substantial proportion of American minors. And he wants to go so far as to ban these medical interventions nationally. Such a sweeping measure would surely have to wait to see how the Supreme Court rules in the spring in U.S. v Skrmetti, the case that heard oral arguments in December over the constitutionality of Tennessee’s ban on pediatric gender transition treatments. Beyond that, Trump has even promised legislation that bans federal funds from going to hospitals or doctors who provide gender-transition treatment to minors.
Again, the Times poll suggests that the majority of the public might indeed support at least some of these legal measures, at least in their intended outcomes if not necessarily their methods. The poll was conducted from Jan. 2 to 10 among 2,128 adults. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. The poll defined a transgender person as “someone who does not identify with their sex at birth, like a person born male who now identifies as female.”
The Times Poll
Accommodating trans people
Asked about society’s accommodations of transgender people, just under a majority of the respondents thought “society has gone too far in accommodating” this population, including 77% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats. Only 21% of the overall group thought “society has not gone far enough in accommodating” trans people, including 16% of Republicans and 39% of Democrats.
Sports participation
Asked about natal males who identify as female and whether they should be permitted to compete in women’s sports, the overwhelming majority—79%—of the respondents said no, including almost all Republicans (94%) and two thirds of Democrats (67%). Such opposition from Democrats in particular is remarkable, given the blowback that Representatives Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Seth Moulton (D-MA) incurred from the left after making statements in the immediate wake of the election that were disdainful of girls’ sports remaining open to natal boys who identify as female. That said, the Times poll asked about women and not girls specifically. It is possible Democrats would have more nuanced answers based on the age of the children and type of sport.
Pediatric gender transition treatment
As we learned from a research letter out of Harvard published in JAMA Pediatrics earlier this month, when puberty blockers are prescribed to minors to treat gender dysphoria, this can start as young as age 8, but such prescriptions are most commonly given between the ages of 10 to 15. Cross-sex hormones are prescribed to gender dysphoric minors as young as 12, but they’re mostly used by those age 14 and older.
The New York Times poll broke down its question about pediatric gender-transition treatment according to age brackets. The poll asked whether the respondents thought “doctors should be able to prescribe puberty blocking drugs or hormone therapy to minors,” including: those age 10 to 18; just those age 15 to 18; or no minors should receive these drugs for transgender care.
By the time natal girls are 15, most of them are likely either finished with puberty or in a later stage. So prescribing puberty blockers to them is not likely to serve much of a purpose. Natal boys might still be the middle to later parts of puberty. So puberty blockers might prevent some additional masculinizing changes. But blockers are also used for boys who identify as female to suppress their testosterone while they’re on estrogen.
A sizable majority of the poll’s respondents—71%—said that no minors should have access to blockers or hormones for trans care, including close to all Republicans (90%) and a majority of Democrats (54%). Among the 26% of the overall group who said that minors should have such access, only 10% of the overall group thought children as young as 10 to 14 should access these drugs, including just 2% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats.
These findings follow a Washington Post-KFF poll published in May 2023 that found similarly mixed support for the aims of transgender activists and their allies.
Americans are largely supportive of law barring all sorts of discrimination against trans people, such as in housing, the workplace, in health care settings, and in schools and the military.
The poll result regarding sports suggests that over the past couple of years, Americans have increasingly soured on natal males who identify as female participating in female sports. About 62% to 65% said they were opposed to such participation in the 2023 WaPo poll, compared with 79% in the new Times pol
Whereas the 2023 WaPo poll found that 42% of respondents thought that 15 to 17 year olds should have access to cross-sex hormones, just 26% of the new Times poll respondents thought that 15 to 18 year olds should have access to blockers and hormones.
I am an independent journalist, specializing in science and health care coverage. I contribute to The New York Times, The Guardian, NBC News and The New York Sun. I have also written for theWashington Post, The Atlantic and The Nation. Follow me on Twitter: @benryanwriter and Bluesky: @benryanwriter.bsky.social. Visit my website: benryan.net
Is there any chance you'd consider writing something about the democrats' insane "genital inspection" fearmongering during debate on the House bill? It really boggles the mind how they all got up and repeated the same lie over and over again. Do you think they are lying, or are they just so in thrall to the activist groups that they just believe everything they say?
"A review paper published by Dr. Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic in December found that even prior to puberty, boys do have at least a slight advantage over girls athletically, and that this difference widens dramatically after male puberty’s onset. "
Prior to puberty of adolescence boys have a marked advantage in most sports and sports-related activities where speed, strength, explosiveness, fast reaction times, sturdiness, eye-hand coordination and aim matter.
This is documented by youth records in numerous sports (base/softball, track & field, soccer, swimming, tennis, etc) as well as the results of extensive physical fitness testing of kids doing sports-related activities (running, jumping, kicking, throwing, climbing ropes, one-arm hangs, pull-ups, etc).
Prior to puberty of adolescence, girls only match or exceed boys in sports and sports-related activities on land where flexibility, balance, and fine motor skills with the toes/feet and fingers/hands matter most.
Water activities are different to land ones, though. Before puberty of adolescence, girls sometimes do better or the same as boys in some swimming races (depending on the stroke and distance) in pools and fresh water (as opposed to salt water). There are two reasons for this: 1) even before female puberty of adolescence, girls have more body fat than boys and they also have an extra layer of fat directly under the skin all over their bodies which gives them extra buoyancy, which helps compesate for their lower muscular stength and explosiveness; 2) even before male puberty of adolescence, boys have denser, heavier bones and a slightly different center of gravity than girls - which gives them a disadvantage in buoyancy in pool and fresh water. In salt water boys do better than in pools, lakes, rivers.