Gen Z says it’s much gayer than older generations

Nearly 30% of young adults today identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and/or queer, according to a new national study, dwarfing the percentages of people in older generations. The study by polling firm PRRI is the latest in a series of national surveys in recent years that have found a striking number of U.S. adults overall identifying as LGBTQ, with the increase primarily attributed to Gen Z.

In Philadelphia, Gen Zers and experts attribute the notable shift not to an actual increase in numbers but to evolving cultural attitudes toward gender and sexuality.

“I think that every generation has been as queer as Gen Z,” said Wes Allen, 18, a trans and queer freshman at Temple University. “Gen Z is the first generation to openly embrace it and talk about it.”

Allen said that his generation can thank previous ones for fighting against the idea that being queer was something to be hidden and demonized. As acceptance and basic rights have expanded in the last few decades, more people feel comfortable identifying as LGBTQ, he said.

Other young adults said they had different understandings of how gender and sexuality work, seeing it as more of a fluid category than their elders.

Even as surveys suggest younger generations are more queer, experts have also noted a backlash against expanding LGBTQ rights. In 2023 alone, 84 anti-LGBTQ bills became law in 23 states, a marked increase from the year before, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Many of these laws restrict health care for trans youth and limit school curriculums related to gender and sexuality, CNN found.

Some young people told The Inquirer they felt able to freely express themselves but simultaneously afraid of the increasingly hostile national climate.

The January PRRI survey of more than 6,600 representative participants found that 28% of young adults age 18-25 identify as LGBTQ. That’s compared to 16% of millennials, 7% of Gen X, and just 4% of baby boomers. PRRI is a nonpartisan research organization, and the LGBTQ question was part of a broader look at Gen Z’s “views on generational change and the challenges and opportunities ahead.” The latest findings are higher than a Gallup Survey from February 2023 that found nearly 20% of Gen Z identified as LGBT.

Surveys like this can sometimes miss the nuances with which people actually live, said Jenn Pollitt, assistant director of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Temple University. People can describe themselves however they want, and the identifiers they choose may not actually align with their orientation or their behaviors. A survey has no way of telling the difference.

“I’m always just careful with identity, because I think people assume if I’m identifying this way, it means this is who I’m having sex with, and this is my gender. Oftentimes, it doesn’t tell the whole story,” Pollitt said.

Some young people described seeing sexuality and gender not as fixed identities, but dynamic, evolving over time based on community and circumstance.

Tal Newman, 18, discovered online queer communities on TikTok during the pandemic. They told their family they were queer, feeling that they were almost behind the curve.

“I felt bad that I had discovered something so important to my identity so late in life — even though 15 isn’t really that late,” Newman, a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh, said.

They now identify as nonbinary and a lesbian. Despite being grateful for the online communities they found during the pandemic, they’ve also grown skeptical of the pressure created by “microlabeling” in those communities.

“I see people stressing out about labels, and I just think they don’t matter that much,” Newman said.

Allyria Vazquez, 22, a trans woman, learned what it meant to be nonbinary when she moved to Philadelphia from Florida for her freshman year at the University of the Arts. Soon after, she began performing in the Philly nightlife community under the name Allyria Everlasting. The scene was “so trans, so gender expressive,” she said, that it made her feel comfortable rethinking her own identity.

Vazquez’s journey also included coming out as a trans woman to her family in Florida, a step she approached with apprehension. It ended positively.

“They were like, ‘We still love you, we still support you. You could call us every once in a while, that would be nice,’” Vazquez, who works as a program coordinator at LGBTQ advocacy center Galaei, joked.

Others also described coming out at an early age, with relatively little strife — a far different story than the freighted coming-out stories of many queer elders.

“After eighth grade, I’ve just been out,” said Jack Kleiner, 24, a Temple senior who identifies as transmasculine and nonbinary. “There hasn’t been a single coming-out moment for me.”

Pollitt said she has seen that to be true among a broad range of her students, many of whom have been out since early high school or middle school. That has changed her perspective. An “elder millennial” herself, Pollitt identifies as queer, and when she first began teaching, she wasn’t sure whether she should share that publicly. But each year, more of her students vocally did themselves.

“They modeled that it was safe for me, too.”