Summary
Debunking Transing the Gay Away presents statistical evidence that the LGB community has doubled over a ten-year period (2013-2023), driven primarily by a rapid increase in bisexual identification. By comparison the percentage of trans people in the UK is less than half of both Germany and the USA.
Debunking Transing the Gay Away
You’re ‘transing the gay away’, scream members of LGB Alliance, the trans-hostile LGB “charity” famed for their 55 Tufton Street address, home of the far right and climate deniers.
However, gender and sexuality are two different things.
Our brains actually process them on totally different structures and timelines. According to major medical groups like the American Academy of Paediatrics, most children develop a solid sense of their gender identity, that internal “Who am I?” feeling, by the time they are just 3 to 5 years old. It is one of the very first ways we learn to navigate the world, and for many, it remains a foundational and stable part of their identity long before they have any concept of romance or dating.
In contrast, sexual orientation—the “Who am I attracted to?” part of life – usually doesn’t begin to emerge until the hormonal shifts of puberty, typically around age 10 or later. While gender is a self-reflective cognitive milestone (identifying which group you belong to), sexuality is a relational one that requires physical and emotional maturation. This nearly decade-long gap explains why a child can be 100% sure of their gender as a toddler, while their romantic path might not start to clear up until their teenage years. Indeed, evidence collected by TransLucent in the past showed that 38% of people who now identify as trans were questioning their gender between the ages of three and nine years old. A further 23% were questioning their gender before the age of thirteen.
Recent statistics prove that over a ten-year period, the number of self-identifying LGB (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual) people has, in fact, doubled – they are not being “erased” – far from it.
Derived from extensive national surveys, such as the Annual Population Survey (APS), show that the share of UK adults identifying as LGB grew from around 1.5–2.0% in 2013 to roughly 3.5–4.0% by 2023.
In 2015, approximately 1.7% of UK adults identified as LGB, representing about 1.1 million people. By 2023, this figure had risen substantially to an estimated 3.8% of the adult population, equating to about 2.1 million people. This increase resulted in an estimated net change of 0.9 million LGB identifiers between 2018, when prevalence stood at 2.2%, and 2023.
This robust acceleration is recognised as a genuine social transformation and consistently validated by large-scale surveys, including the 2021 Census for England and Wales.
The number of people identifying as bisexual doubled in the five years between 2018 and 2023, increasing sharply from 0.9% to 1.8%. In 2023, the proportion identifying as bisexual (1.8%) nearly equalled the proportion identifying as gay or lesbian (2.0%). This rapid expansion suggests that social acceptance is evolving to normalise sexual fluidity and non-monosexuality, challenging rigid binary constructs of sexuality.
The shift is heavily concentrated among the youngest adults, demonstrating a pronounced generational divergence. The 16–24-year-old cohort is identified as the statistical outlier and trendsetter, with recent estimates often around 8–11% identifying as LGB. In 2023, approximately 10.4% of those aged 16 to 24 years identified as LGB, a figure that has more than doubled since 2018 (4.4%).
In contrast, the prevalence rate for individuals aged 65 years and over remained low and relatively stable over the period, at 0.9% in 2023. This disparity strongly indicates a generational cohort effect, in which younger cohorts have matured in environments marked by legislative recognition and greater social safety.
Gender stratification further reveals that men are slightly more likely to identify as gay (2.8% vs. 1.2% for women), but women are more likely than men to identify as bisexual (2.2% vs. 1.5% in 2023). Young women (16–24) specifically show the highest single-group prevalence of bisexual identity, reaching 9.2% in 2023.
The sustained increase is attributed to several structural factors: greater social acceptance and visibility (such as Pride visibility and reduced stigma), favourable legal and policy contexts (like same-sex marriage), and measurement improvements (including the addition of a sexual orientation question in the 2021 Census). Digital community effects also facilitate identity exploration and disclosure, especially for young people and bisexual individuals.
The 2021 Census provided crucial cross-validation, confirming that 3.2% of the population identified as LGB+. The Census also offered unprecedented detail on diversity beyond the traditional LGB labels, identifying significant numbers of pansexual (48,000), asexual (28,000), and queer (15,000) identifiers.
Regionally, identification rates are highest in major urban centres. London, a large metropolitan centre, consistently exhibits the highest regional prevalence, nearly doubling from 2.6% in 2015 to 5.2% in 2023.
The acceleration of LGB identification necessitates that public services and regulators plan for sustained growth in LGB visibility across health, education, and workplace contexts. Data suggests a need to prioritise bi-inclusive mental health support, given the group’s rapid growth among young people.
Despite the demographic growth, statistical advances have not yet translated into equitable lived experiences. LGBT respondents reported an average life satisfaction rating of 6.5 out of 10, significantly lower than the 7.7 average reported by the general UK population. Moreover, the increased visibility is met by ongoing social friction: over two-thirds of LGBT respondents reported avoiding public displays of affection for fear of adverse reactions.
This highlights that while the population is more open and visible than ever, institutional and social safety barriers persist, demanding a policy focus on ensuring equitable experience and full inclusion.
But what of us trans?
The trans community in the UK has seen a significant increase in visibility and self-identification over the last decade, with official 2021 and 2022 census data for England, Wales, and Scotland identifying approximately 282,000 people (about 0.5% of the population) as transgender or non-binary. The ONS has since cautioned that this particular census question had limitations, so this figure should be seen as an approximate order‑of‑magnitude estimate rather than a precise count, though 0.5% ties in quite closely to the Scottish census taken a year later. Much is made of a huge increase in the younger trans community, but the reality is the UK never started collecting data until after 2009.
While the increase represents a historic rise for the UK, it remains a much smaller total compared to the United States, where current estimates from the Williams Institute place the trans population at approximately 2.8 million people (1.0% of those aged 13+), and Germany, where recent surveys and its larger national population suggest a community of between 800,000 and 2.5 million (estimates vary from 1% in medical data to as high as 3% in broader social surveys).
This expansion across all three nations has been driven by younger generations, with nearly half of the UK’s trans population under 35, a trend mirrored in both the US and Germany. Given that gender-critical activists are mainly in an older demographic, this can only be seen as a positive.
The LGBT community keeps growing. Organisations, which suggest LGB kids are being “transed”, are either incapable of checking statistical evidence or are downright lying.
Debunking Transing the Gay Away
Works cited
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