Questioning

 

In a win for certainty, questioning is on the decline.

The percentage of Gender Census respondents who identify as questioning has steadily and consistently declined over the past four years.

The Gender Census is a global annual online survey of people who have a gender that isn’t exclusively male or female.

The Gender Census asks, “Which of the following best describes in English how you think of yourself?”

Respondents may select as many identity checkboxes as they want.

Because the identity question primarily concerns gender, it’s most likely respondents who select “questioning” are indicating that they are questioning their gender, rather than questioning their sexuality.

Questioning has been included as a checkbox in the Gender Census every year from 2015 to 2025.

Specifically, the checkbox option is, “questioning or unknown,” and its wording has been consistent from 2015 to 2025.

You can click on the images in this article to view larger versions of them. 

I created the graphs in this series using Flourish, a website that allows users to create compelling visual aids.  

 

 

Questioning reached its maximum in 2021, when it received 19.7%.

Questioning has declined every year since.

It fell to its minimum this year, in 2025, when it received 12.1%.

From 2015 to 2025, questioning’s average has been 16%.

During this time, questioning’s range has been 7.6%.

The first Gender Census was held in 2013, and there was no survey in 2014.

 

“Unknown” was a checkbox option in the 2013 Gender Census, where it received 8.1%.

That’s less than “questioning or unknown” has received in any subsequent survey.

This graph shows how questioning has performed in the Gender Census relative to other terms we will discuss over the course of this series.

Pairing Analysis

 

Responses from the Gender Census can be used to determine the percent of respondents who chose one identity term, who also chose another identity term.

This pairing analysis allows us to better understand the relationships between identity terms in the survey.

I first discussed my pairing analysis of the Gender Census in Agender, Genderless, and Gendervoid. 

In that article, I also provided a step-by-step walkthrough of how I calculated my pairing analysis results.

Now, let’s examine the results of my pairing analysis for questioning.

This pairing analysis was conducted on responses from the 2025 Gender Census. 

5,228 people selected questioning in the 2025 Gender Census, representing 12.1% of respondents. 

57% of questioning respondents also selected the checkbox, “A person / human / [my name] / ‘I’m just me.’”

In the discussion and table below, I abbreviate this response as (Person).

The component parts of this checkbox are all responses where someone describes themselves based on a non-gendered descriptor.

(Person) was the fifth most popular checkbox in the 2025 Gender Census.

I discussed the origin and history of the checkbox in Top of the Charts, which was published earlier this year.

Majorities of questioning respondents identified as queer and nonbinary.

This shouldn’t be surprising, because nonbinary and queer were the only two terms chosen by majorities of Gender Census respondents.

Almost all identity terms in the Gender Census have majorities of respondents who selected nonbinary and queer.

57% of questioning respondents selected queer, and 52% of questioning respondents selected nonbinary.

Even though a majority of questioning respondents identified as nonbinary, they were less likely to do so than Gender Census respondents as a whole.

A large minority of questioning respondents, 45%, identified as gender non-conforming.

 

Conclusion

The percent of Gender Census respondents who are questioning has consistently declined over the past four years, and this year it’s at its lowest in the history of the survey.

A pairing analysis of Gender Census responses found questioning respondents were most likely to select, “a person / human / [my name] / ‘I’m just me,’” among the other identity checkbox options.

A majority of Gender Census respondents selected “a person…”

Majorities of questioning respondents also identified as queer and nonbinary.

A large minority of questioning respondents identified as gender non-conforming. 

 

 

 

This article is part of Season 3 of LGBT by the Numbers. 

Season 3 explores the results of the Gender Census, a global annual online survey of people who have a gender that isn’t exclusively male or female.

Join me next time as we continue to explore LGBT identity, by the numbers.