In a first-person essay published May 14, 2026, Brooke Brandtjen, a Wisconsin-based writer, says she lost contact with friends and classmates after some began identifying as transgender and pursuing medical transition around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brooke Brandtjen, a Wisconsin writer, says she last saw many of her high school friends in March 2020, attributing the break not to COVID-19 deaths but to what she describes as friends “transition[ing] genders,” adopting new names, and distancing themselves from her.
In an essay published by The Daily Wire, Brandtjen writes that in the years after she graduated high school she witnessed “over a dozen” former classmates change their names and gender identities. She also says some friends began using different pronouns.
Brandtjen further claims that at least one friend started taking testosterone when they were 16, and that during the pandemic a close friend obtained a double-incision mastectomy (which she refers to as “top surgery”). She describes those experiences as part of what she characterizes as a rapid shift among her peer group.
The essay presents these accounts as a personal narrative and does not provide independent documentation for the number of classmates involved or the medical timelines described.
