Hey TWIBsies! Let’s talk about the fact that everybody’s ignorant as hell.
We know that a shocking number of Americans have hangups about transgender people (in particular, women and girls) playing sports on the correct teams. Never mind that we know trans athletes possess no inherent superiority in sport as compared to their cis competition. Forget that one of the most prominent figures in the crusade against trans athletes, a woman most famous for being a fifth-place loser, has admitted that barring trans people from sports is just a stepping stone to removing us from public life entirely.
These bright lights just have some reasonable concerns, I’m sure!
What you might not know is that these concerned individuals, besides not knowing the first thing about trans people, don’t even know how many of us there are… and they are overestimating by a lot. A poll performed by YouGov and published by The Bulwark (sampling 1,417 American adults between October 10 and October 14, 2026) found that 51% of respondents strongly opposed “transgender student athletes [playing] on sports teams that match their gender identity.”
Sure, whatever. You’re buffoons, that’s a given. The next question is what really baked my noodle:
What share of athletes currently competing in NCAA sports do you think identify as transgender?
If you aren’t aware, the National Collegiate Athletic Association regulates sport at over 1,100 schools across America, and represents over half a million student athletes. Out of those 500,000+ students, how many do you think are trans? Well, the NCAA banned trans student athletes in February of last year to appease God-King Trump, so we can reasonably deduce that the answer is a big fat fucking goose egg.
Before that ban went into effect, however, NCAA President Charlie Baker testified to Congress that there were fewer than 10 student athletes in the organization. We’re talking about 0.001% of all collegiate athletes across the United States, and one university in Canada for some reason, openly identifying as trans.
Yet the results of this YouGov poll say, and I quote, “15% of American adults think that between 1% and 5% of NCAA athletes are transgender, and 14% of Americans think between 6% and 25% of student athletes are trans.”
Are you kidding me? 28% of respondents said “less than 1%,” which is close, but this ain’t horseshoes. Maybe you just don’t know that the NCAA has fully banned trans athletes, sure, but the number of respondents who truly believe that there could be more than 100,000 trans athletes must have pudding between their ears! Trans people only account for approximately 1% of the entire population of the United States, and you think more than 10% of us are playing college ball? What is wrong with you?
I don’t want to be mean about it, but like… damn. The last page of the poll data sure makes it sound like the sample is reasonably representative, but I can’t help but wonder if YouGov specifically targeted voluntary lobotomy patients. What percentage of respondents were in full possession of a frontal lobe?
Sorry, folks, I don’t really have any good news to balance this one out! I’m going to spend the weekend weeping over the state of the average American’s intellect. I hope yours is more productive!
