This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
I saw a lot of my high school friends for the last time in March of 2020 — not because they died from COVID-19, but because they transitioned genders. The names of the people I cared about were no more; those were “dead names.” I watched them step away from lunch tables and afternoons at the park so they could inject themselves with cross-sex hormones.
One of my best friends feigned sadness when she told me she would be missing from my graduation party, as well as most of our other favorite summertime traditions, because she was having &#8220;top surgery.&#8221; In the years since I graduated high school, I have seen over a dozen of my former classmates change their names and their genders. The people I grew up beside abandoned their identities.
Sometimes I will pass them on the street, and I find myself squinting to remember their faces before they were modified by testosterone or their names before they abandoned the ones their parents gave them. It’s been a few years, so we’ve all grown and changed, but the wounds of transgenderism leave a deep scar.
I first met my friends when I was 14. After growing up in a small, Christian elementary school, switching to the local suburban high school felt like entering a whole new world. We had a massive theater for the drama department, two enormous art classrooms, and a huge band room, each of which appealed to my artistic inclinations. My friends were in the same classes as me; we took drawing and photography, learned creative writing, and auditioned for the school play together. After school, we would walk to the park or get ice cream. 
I was 15 when my friends suggested I join the GSA Club. The GSA, the national network of Gay and Straight Alliance clubs for school-aged children, only met a couple of times a month. When I informed my friends that I wasn’t gay, they told me that I was. One of my girlfriends took my phone, added me to the GSA group chat, and proudly told me, “You’re bisexual. I am, too. That’s why we get along so well.” 
I never attended a GSA meeting, but for the next few years, I was told multiple times that I wasn’t straight. Older generations often think of peer pressure like an Archie cartoon, where a group of larger, scarier teenagers encircle a weaker kid and convince him that if he doesn’t smoke a cigarette, he’s a loser. Peer pressure surrounding gender ideology is different because the pressure comes from a deceptive misinterpretation of love. I was told I was bisexual because it gave me the freedom to date anyone I wanted. I was told I was asexual because it gave me the space to have relationships without physical connection. Eventually, one of my friends tried to tell me I was nonbinary as an explanation of why I liked skateboarding and rock ‘n roll. 
I never bought into the lies of gender ideology, but over time, almost every single one of my friends did. Everyone, at the very least, identified as bisexual, and eventually nonbinary. Multiple people asked to be called by different names or different pronouns. At 16, I watched one of my best friends start taking testosterone, excitedly posting daily blogs about how exciting the journey was. These same kids were on SSRIs, went to weekly therapy sessions, and had self-harm addictions. I watched friends go in and out of mental health facilities, then claim that the only cure was to start taking cross-sex hormones or change their birth certificates.
The <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2824336#google_vignette">reported rates</a> of depression for transgender individuals is 63% compared to the normal 13%, and their rates of suicidal ideation are also comparably higher. My friends explored transgenderism because they hoped that changing their gender would fix their mental health problems, but it only made them worse.
During the 2020 pandemic, when most people were struggling to get doctors&#8217; appointments for cancer treatments or <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/andrew-cuomo-to-defend-nursing-home-covid-policy-as-congress-demands-accountability-for-13000-deaths?author=Ashe+Schow&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Andrew+Cuomo+To+Defend+Nursing+Home+COVID+Policy+As+Congress+Demands+Accountability+For+13%2C000+Deaths">hospice care for nursing home patients</a>, one of my best friends was able to get a double-incision mastectomy. All of our friends celebrated the surgery, and when my friend posted pictures of her chest afterward, I saw how transgenderism had ruined the once-healthy body of someone I loved.
The pandemic radicalized a lot of young people, and, thankfully, I was one of them. In the months I spent isolated from my friend group, I ditched all of my liberal inclinations. I paid attention to the news, did my own research, and crossed the Rubicon when I started listening to Michael Knowles each morning.
One afternoon, I posted a photo of myself in a MAGA hat. That marked the end of most of my friendships. The people I had spent years having lunch with, riding bikes with, and playing Mario Kart with were now flooding my inbox, calling me a Nazi and a pedophile sympathizer. Some people blocked me; others sent me paragraphs-long messages asking me why I hated them and wanted them dead. I was removed from group chats, uninvited from parties, and scrubbed from former friends’ social media feeds. 
My experience is not unique. Nearly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sociological-contagion-and-the-growing-non-binary-movement">40% </a>of Gen Z claim they are on the LGBT spectrum. At the same time, a <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/09/28/gen-z-men-conservative-poll">growing percentage</a> of Gen Z is identifying as conservative, surpassing their millennial counterparts in some studies. There is a massive political divide within my generation. Those who identify as liberal are extremely far to the left, while those who identify as conservative are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gen-z-isnt-lost-were-looking-for-a-conservatism-that-works">further</a> to the right than previous generations.
A portion of the divide is a product of gender, as Gen Z women are much more likely to be liberal. However, some of the divide is a product of age, with younger Zoomers being more likely to identify as conservative. Regardless of where the lines are drawn, the end result is the same: Young Americans are more polarized than they have ever been. Politics is tearing apart teenagers and children. Our culture is suffering under the weight of dangerous factions such as gender ideology.
I miss my friends. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t think of an inside joke or remember a good day we spent together — listening to Smash Mouth in the film lab or when the power went out in history class. But my friends are gone. They changed their names, and they changed their bodies. They have injected themselves with hormones. They have chopped off their own body parts. Thankfully, the number of young people identifying as LGBT is <a href="https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/young-adults-identifying-as-lgbtq-has-dropped-21-since-2023/">declining</a>, but the effects of the transgender hysteria will harm young Americans for years.
***
Brooke Brandtjen is a writer and journalist from Wisconsin who focuses primarily on culture, politics, and religion. She is a senior contributor at New Guard Press, a publication she joined while attending Hillsdale College.

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I Watched My Friends Change Their Names, Bodies, And Identities Almost Overnight

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I Watched My Friends Change Their Names, Bodies, And Identities Almost Overnight