Did you know that globally, only 22% of people support choose-your-own-sex-category sports? Ipsos spins that as "a challenge."

Sports-by-feels may be dragging down the whole LGBT enterprise

Ipsos, one of the world’s leading market researchers, recently published their 2026 LGBT+Pride Survey Report, a survey they’ve conducted annually since 2021. This report provided a whopping global* picture of attitudes toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues, now and over the past five years—19,019 people aged 16 to 74 across 26 countries. Some things stood out to me:

• Of the 15 questions surveyed, support for transgender athletes competing based on their gender identity rather than sex was by far the lowest, averaging only 22% over the 23 countries where this question was asked. From the first report, sports was the one area with markedly lower support for “transgender rights,” at only 32% in 2021, plummeting a further ten percentage points since then. Opposition to sports self-ID is the dominant view in all countries polled.

• While opposition to sports participation by gender identity was very strong, there was equally strong feeling that LGB people (75%) and people who identify as transgender (73%) should be protected from discrimination in housing, employment, and access to businesses such as stores and restaurants. And there was broad agreement (65%) that transgender people faced “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of discrimination, but there was less support for laws banning discrimination against LGBT people (52% on average). Respondents clearly supported basic civil rights for LGB and T people (interesting that they polled the T and the LGB separately for this question), but were a little leery of laws enforcing anti-discrimination, and either they did not see single-sex sports as discrimination against people with trans identities or did not view the ability to choose which sex category one participated in as a civil right.

• Notably, across the board, in the responses to all 15 questions in all countries, support for LGBT issues declined over the past five years, including support for the cornerstone of LGB acceptance—same-sex marriage. It’s ominous that the enormous investment in and singular focus on “trans rights” by LGBT advocacy groups has not only resulted in reduced public support for trans issues, it has also dragged down hard won support for legal same-sex marriage.

• Yet curiously, Ipsos characterized the overall 2026 results as “stabilisation in attitudes towards LGBT rights.” Ipsos spun it this way: “In recent years, we’ve seen evidence of a ‘wokelash’ on many key metrics, and across a number of countries. This latest release reveals a more nuanced picture, with attitudes stabilising on a series of measures, continuing the trends observed in the 2025 Pride report.” A drop in support of LGBT issues across all 15 questions surveyed in every single country does not add nuance or show stabilization—it confirms a universal, global continuation of decreased public support for LGBT issues.

Let’s have a closer look at those cool graphs.

Support for sports participation according to gender vibe has always been low, and has dropped from there

The question was posed as:

To what extent do you support or oppose the following: Transgender athletes competing based on the gender they identify with rather than the sex they were assigned at birth.

The average percentage of respondents who supported participation by gender identity in the 23 countries in which this question was asked was 32% in 2021, 27% in 2024, and 22% in 2026. Those respondents who stopped supporting choose-your-own-sex-category didn’t just switch their response to “Don’t Know,” they actively opposed sports participation by gender identity.

That drop in support was evident in every single one of the 23 countries surveyed on this question, including in countries that were heartily on board with other trans issues. For example, Spain topped the charts in nearly every measure of support for trans issues: In 2021, 50% of Spanish respondents supported sports participation by self-ID; by 2026, that support had dropped to 29%. Countries that were largely supportive of other trans issues, and had started out in 2021 accepting of choose-you-sex-category more than most countries—Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina—dropped precipitously by 2026. The United States started out in 2021 with only 27% supporting and ended in 2026 with 21%. Great Britain respondents registered a mere 24% in support of gender identity-based sports in 2021 and by 2026, that feeble support had fallen to a mere 15%.

This is not a nuanced response. This is a global condemnation. Of men in women’s sports. Not, for the love of god, a trans genocide. (Although by continuing to push for gender identity in sports, trans activists have already dragged down support for all other trans and, critically, LGB issues. In hyperbolic transspeak, that may be the self-inflicted genocide they shout about). Either the public doesn’t view single-sex sports as discrimination against people with trans identities, or respondents don’t think that choosing one’s sex category in sports is a civil right on the order of housing, education, employment, voting. Or, and this is a long shot, they see that sports participation by gender identity comes at the expense of women’s rights to single-sex sports. Or all of those factors.

Sports participation by gender vibe is and always has been a phenomenally unpopular issue with the public. Why that one situation? Why are people really opposed to men in women’s sports, and not as much men in women’s restrooms (Ipsos reported average okay-ness with that of 47%)? Is it because sports has rules and categories to preserve fairness but bathrooms do not? Is it because almost every person on the planet has personal experience with sex differences in sports, but comparatively few have shared the ladies’ with a dude? Is it because sports performance can be objectively measured but feminine mimicry and subsequent creepiness response is squishy?

By continuing to push for self-ID in sports, when public support is very low and scientific support absent, trans activists have sacrificed LGB and T acceptance in all areas

Of course men in women’s prisons is the ultimate trans activist overreach, the ultimate test of how far activists could push the mantra A Trans Woman Is A Woman. But the prison population is small and, thanks to deliberate media suppression, very much out of the public eye. Not so with sports. Virtually every human has some personal experience with sex differences in sports. Sports are avidly followed globally by billions of people. Sports science is one of the most robustly studied fields. For those reasons, sports was always going to be gender identity’s Waterloo, a losing game. Activists didn’t need Ipsos to tell them that. They could have jettisoned sports self-ID to focus on more winnable, public-friendly areas like research, health care, housing, employment. Nope. They went with the all or nothing approach, maybe thinking if they started allowing exceptions to A Trans Woman Is A Woman, say, except for sports and locker rooms where A Trans Woman Is A Man, then maybe a Trans Woman Is Also A Man in prisons and rape crisis centers and bathrooms and hospital wards. And breastfeeding support groups. You can’t sell the idea of a part-time Trans Woman. It’s a full-time fantasy. Martin Rothblatt and company knew that way back, so, damn the public, they pushed for sports self-ID. And predictably, their absurd claim that play-by-feels is a civil right is endangering the whole enterprise.

The first time Ipsos asked this question about sports participation by feels in 2021, public support was only 32%, lower than for any of the other issues surveyed. With continued exposure over the next five years to sympathetic stories about people with trans identities just doing the sport they love and not hurting anyone (gotta love those women who identify as men but continue to have a fabulous career in women’s sports thanks to the fact that there are women’s sports) and in many cases, knowing someone’s dear sweet son who was born in the wrong body and is now playing on the girls’ basketball team, those respondents could have changed their mind and become more accepting of people playing according to their identity. But they didn’t. With five years of relentlessly positive media exposure to sports self-ID, not only did they not become more supportive, more of the few people who had supported men in women’s sports changed their minds and opposed it. The more exposure, the more they educated themselves, the more trans stories they heard and the more trans people they met, the less supportive they became.

This process of public education may be playing out in other areas, bathroom use, for example. Ipsos worded the question this way:

How much do you agree or disagree with the following? Transgender people should be allowed to use single -sex facilities (e.g., public restrooms) that correspond to the gender they identify with.

In 2023 when Ipsos first asked this question, an average of 55% of respondents across 26 countries agreed with this policy. So bathroom use by gender identity enjoyed more support from the get-go than sports self-ID. By 2026, that metric has slipped to 47%. Other than Thailand (I’m throwing out Thailand because the lady-boy phenomenon there is unlike the trans issues in the rest of the world), in every country, agreement with this statement slipped in just three years’ time, sometimes dramatically. The Netherlands and Spain, both very trans friendly places, went from 65% agreement to 56%. Great Britain went from 40% in agreement to 30%.

Again, with all 15 questions, every country, acceptance or support for LGBT issues decreased. The most damning of these is support for same-sex marriage. This is the seminal, decades-in-the-making achievement of the gay rights movement. And most people thought it was a done deal. But since LGB was force-teamed with T which subsequently became almost the sole focus of LGBT organizations’ efforts and resources, lesbian and gay people have paid the price for trans overreach. Ipsos posed the question this way:

When you think about the rights of same-sex couples, which of the following comes closest to your personal opinion? Same-sex couples should be allowed to marry legally; Same-sex couples should be allowed to obtain some kind of legal recognition, but not to marry; Not Sure; Same-sex couples should not be allowed to marry or obtain any kind of legal recognition

On average of the 23 countries polled, those who responded same-sex couples could marry or be legally recognized stood at 74% in 2021, and by 2026 had slipped to 66%. Only one country—Germany—registered the same degree of acceptance for same-sex marriage over the five years. While still generally high, the other 22 countries all showed decreased acceptance of same-sex marriage. Again, we don’t know why respondents answered the way they did but the fact of loss of social acceptance of all things LGBT is undeniable, global, and ongoing.

You would never ever guess how very much the vast majority of the global public opposes men n women’s sports by reading The New York Times

Or the Washington Post. Or virtually any major news outlet. I pay attention to this septic tank, and I was surprised by Ipsos’ findings. The respondents to this question voiced their opposition, anonymously of course, even though, from what they have gathered from the media, they were a bigoted minority. Imagine if The New York Times accurately reported that a dismal 21% of Americans supported self-ID in sports, and 55% oppose it. Imagine if all those respondents knew they were not alone in their views, that they were in fact the vast majority. Might they be more open about their views? Might they demand accuracy by the media and action by political leaders?

As tremendously unpopular as self-ID (and to be clear, that’s men in women’s sports) is globally, here in the US, we are waiting to see if the Supreme Court will decide it’s constitutional to have girls-only sports. Or not. Twenty-three states flout federal law and enforce the spectacularly unpopular, anti-science, anti-woman policy of choose-your-own-sex-category sports. And this is considered both progressive and democratic when it is neither.

I wake up every morning in a state which has erased women’s rights in favor of men who think they are women. A man who claims to be a woman won a lawsuit in which he also claimed he was discriminated against for being denied entry into a women’s powerlifting competition. Girls in my state who filed a lawsuit claiming their Title IX rights were violated because a male was on the roster of an opposing softball team did not even get to court because the court decided they had not proven they were harmed. A 15-year-old girl in Washington who was not informed she would be wrestling a male, and was subsequently sexually assaulted on the mat. Her lawsuit was dismissed because apparently when you sign up to wrestle, you consent to being digitally raped.

This is the water I swim in, and lately, have sort of been drowning in. It came as quite a surprise that very few of my Earthly cohort think this is remotely okay. Huh. Context is everything. Bonus brain gooser: The global organization that compiled the data tried to downplay the very clear message that trans as a product is losing its luster. Double huh.

*Ipsos did not survey Russia, China, India, any country in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, or the continent of Africa, so when I say global, I’m speaking Euro-centrically. Where toilet paper brands are a thing.