If We Are Not Counted... We Don't Exist!

When we were trying to pass the Connecticut non-discrimination law we heard from law makers... Well how many trans people are in the state. All we could do is shrug our shoulders because nobody counted us.

We’ve been tracking the number of Americans who identify as transgender – soon, there will be no reliable way to measure them

The Conversation

By Jody L. Herman & Andrew Ryan Flores

August 28, 2025

Researchers have traditionally had a difficult time tracking the number of Americans who identify as transgender.

But over the past decade, our work has become easier, largely thanks to federal data. In 2014, for the first time, the federal government included a question on transgender identity in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System. It subsequently added gender identity questions to other surveys, like the National Crime Victimization Survey. Since 2016, we’ve been able to use federal datasets to estimate the number of people who identify as transgender at the national and state levels.

Our recently published analysis suggests that 2.1 million U.S. adults identify as transgender. In our prior study, published in 2022, we found that 1.3 million U.S. adults identified this way. In our new report, we also found that 724,000 youth age 13 to 17 identified as transgender.

But as you guest, that all has changed under Trump,

This information is important. It allows policymakers, educators, judges, the media and others to understand the size and characteristics of this population, as well as who will be affected by public policies, such as nondiscrimination laws that aim to protect transgender people or bans on transgender people’s use of public bathrooms. The U.S. Supreme Court has even cited our estimates in decisions that impact transgender people.

But our work is about to become a lot harder, if not impossible.

At the directive of the Trump administration, federal surveys will no longer collect data about gender identity. Questions that aim to identify transgender respondents will be removed, while binary sex questions with only “male” or “female” response options will remain.

Though data sources are being erased, the transgender population will not be. And yet it will likely be at least a decade before we can publish updated figures on the estimated number of people living in the U.S. who identify as transgender.

If you are not counted we don't exist.

It is not just legislators who need out information... but researchers who are trying to understand our community needs the information. The Williams Institute wrote back in February,

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBS) were removed. In addition, the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS) data and documentation were deleted, Census data became inaccessible, and datasets related to tracking HIV/AIDS in the U.S. and globally were no longer available. At the same time, questions about sexual orientation and gender identity have been removed from some federal surveys going forward.

 Health Policy Watch writes about the cuts to healthcare...

Influential conservatives have long sought to curtail the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) – and the actions of four nurses in Mozambique may have inadvertently given them the ammunition to do just that.

Deeply uncomfortable with the sexual dimension of HIV transmission, the powerful Heritage Foundation, which authored the conservative Project 2025 blueprint for a Donald Trump takeover, argues that PEPFAR should be “restructured as a development rather than an emergency assistance program”. 

Right-wing organisations and politicians have also claimed the plan is being used to “promote abortion, LGBT ideology, and comprehensive sexuality education”, a school sex education programme.

The Trump administration has politicized healthcare for us and unfortunately diseases are an equal opportunity infector and doesn't care about politics! The population that are seeing the greatest increase in HIV/AIDS is the Black and Latino communities and surprisingly elders in Long Term Care facilities! So their attack on us, is not only hurting us... but also everyone in the US. 

Yet far-right conservatives in the US and Africa are deeply ambivalent about PEPFAR, largely because they believe that HIV is a sexually transmitted “lifestyle disease” – the inference being that most of those with HIV have themselves to blame.

The Heritage Foundation spelt this out in a 2023 paper, arguing that, “except in cases of rape or maternal transmission, HIV/AIDS in the US and in developing countries is primarily a lifestyle disease (like those caused by tobacco) and as such should be suppressed through education, moral suasion, and legal sanctions”. 

In their hatred of us they're cutting programs that count us, treat us, and protect us, it not only hurts us the trans and greater LGBTQ+ community but it hurts everyone!