In recent years, several prominent Americans have come out as transgender or gender nonbinary (that is, identifying as neither exclusively a man nor a woman).
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that growing shares of U.S. adults say they know someone who is transgender or who goes by gender-neutral pronouns. Yet Americans’ opinions on whether someone’s gender can differ from the sex they were assigned at birth, as well as their comfort levels with using gender-neutral pronouns to refer to someone, have remained static over the past few years.
Overall, about four-in-ten Americans say they personally know someone who is transgender. And about a quarter say they know someone who prefers that others use gender-neutral pronouns such as “they,” instead of “he” or “she.”
Younger adults, Democrats, and those with more education are generally more likely to know a transgender person or someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns.
