This month, the student newspaper of the University of Michigan released the results of its annual “sex survey.” It revealed a shocking result: Nearly half of biological women in the survey, which included 2,866 respondents, identify as LGBTQ.
Of the respondents who identify as women, 26.3 percent identify as bisexual, 6.4 percent identify as lesbian, 4.7 percent identify as queer, 2.8 percent identify as asexual, 2.4 percent identify as pansexual, and 1.5 percent identify as “other.”
Additionally, 6 percent of respondents identified outside the male-female binary. Based on previous surveys, we can safely assume that the vast majority of these respondents are female. According to the 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey, the largest survey of its kind, 79 percent of people who identify as nonbinary are female.
Factoring this in, we can estimate that about 48 percent of biological women in the survey identify as LGBTQ. (Though this excludes women who identified themselves as men.)
Of course, this survey is by no means scientific, as it was administered by college students who used advertising methods that disproportionately reached a certain segment of the school. We can see this in the fact that 58 percent of respondents identify as women (and roughly 63 percent of respondents are biological females.) It is highly probable that conservative students were less likely to answer the survey given that it asked overtly sexual questions.
Still, the survey shows that LGBTQ identity among women is extremely high at this particular campus. In contrast, 75 percent of respondents at Michigan who identify as men say they are heterosexual.
Broader Trends
Other surveys have also shown high rates of LGBTQ identity among young women and political liberals.
A 2024 Gallup survey, for instance, found that nearly 30 percent of Gen Z women identify as LGBTQ.
In addition, according to a 2021 Gallup survey, 30.7 percent of Gen Z liberal adults identify as LGBT while 6.6 percent of Gen Z conservative adults identify as LGBT. Notably, Gallup provided these numbers to me upon my prompting and did not otherwise make them publicly available. (Perhaps because the stark difference in LGBTQ identity across political lines was an uncomfortable finding.)
Presumably, Michigan’s distinctly high rate of LGBTQ identity among women is due to the fact that the student body is overwhelmingly liberal.
What This Means for DEI at Michigan
This extremely high rate of LGBTQ identity among women at the University of Michigan has important ramifications as the university reckons with its DEI program amidst growing backlash.
With so many students identifying their entire personhood with a category steeped in liberal ideology — such as pansexuality, asexuality, transgenderism, or genderqueerness — it’s hard to believe that such students will allow DEI to go away quietly.
DEI at Michigan has long promoted and catered to LGBTQ identity and ideology. For example, this year the university announced a “Queer and Trans Task Force” for “LGBTQIA2S+ students, staff, faculty, and alumnx” as part of its DEI 2.0 Strategic Plan. Additionally, a number of professors who were hired under DEI programs study LGBTQ-related topics.
The university’s regents were expected to possibly vote on restructuring Michigan’s DEI office at their December meeting, prompting a protest from 500 DEI supporters. Ultimately, the regents took a moderate approach by opting to eliminate diversity statements for faculty hiring and promotion instead of cutting the programs.
Regent Jordan Acker did suggest to the New York Times that such DEI reform could possibly occur in the future, saying, “[I]t is our obligation as a board to make sure as much taxpayer and tuition dollars go into direct student support as possible.”
Acker, a Democrat, has faced three incidents of antisemitic intimidation over the past year, including last week when people threw mason jars filled with urine through the window of his home and vandalized his wife’s car with the phrase “Free Palestine.” In an interview with Fox News this summer, Acker blamed DEI for campus antisemitism. One data point showing that Acker is entirely right came last week when the University of Michigan fired a DEI administrator after she allegedly said that “wealthy Jews” control the university and that Michigan’s DEI office doesn’t work with Jews because they are “wealthy and privileged.” (She denies the allegations.)
Even with Acker possibly considering some restructuring of DEI programs, it will be an upward battle to dismantle DEI at this incredibly woke school.
Beyond having nearly half of female students identifying as LGBTQ, take a look at what John Sailer of the Manhattan Institute discovered about the academic focuses of Michigan professors who were hired through a DEI program:
• Professor Jessica Kenyatta Walker studies “critical food studies” and has taught about the “racialization of food in the United States.”
• Professor Adi Saleem focuses on “triangulating the Jewish-Muslim dyad with a third variable: queerness.”
• Jennifer Dominique Jones has taught courses titled “Black Queer Histories” and “Black Intimacies.”
This ideology runs deep, and it will take more than just a policy shift to uproot it.
