*Editor’s Note: This true account is the final part of a 6-Part series. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.
No, my brother is not a woman. His name is not Melissa. He is simply a guy named Josh who wants the freedom to cross-dress in public. And he should have that freedom. This is America, after all. Whether I like it or not, he does have the right to put on a dress and parade around town. But what he does not have is the right to make the rest of us deny reality by affirming that him donning a dress makes him an actual woman.
Therapists previously viewed many forms of cross-dressing as a temporary way to ease stress and anxiety. This is easy enough to understand. People do all kinds of things to ease stress and anxiety. They drink. They eat too much junk food. They self-harm. But any healthy person understands that we should never take a compulsion being used to ease deeper pain and begin celebrating that compulsion as someone’s primary identity. Yet that’s what’s being done with my brother and everyone else who transitions.
Now, girls as young as 3 who like sports and trucks or say imaginative things like “I’m a fairy…I’m a ninja…I’m a boy” are being told by doctors (and celebrity moms like Charlize Theron) that they need to transition. Now, books like I Am Jazz that erroneously claim girls can be born with a boy’s brain and vice versa are being pushed on every child in public school (my 10-year-old was just told to read it in her school library recently). Pre-pubescent kids across the country are being put on powerful, reproductive-ending hormones to stop the onset of puberty. Teenagers are having their breasts removed and their penises cut off simply because they’re into things that are traditionally associated with the opposite gender.
Gender non-conformity is the very thing scores of people fought against for decades. I personally owe a debt of gratitude to those people. Because of their efforts, I myself grew up a strong, confident female who embraced her many traditionally “masculine” qualities. I am direct and opinionated. I am not afraid of confrontation. I’d rather watch an NFL game than attend a baby shower any day of the week. I majored in criminal justice in college. I worked with gang members in Chicago. A lot of my personal interests and life experiences would not be considered classically “feminine.” But just because I have many qualities and enjoy activities traditionally associated with the opposite gender does not mean I should become that gender. How silly of an idea is that?
Girls can be interested in anything boys like. And vice versa. I made all three of my girls watch a Formula 1 race recently. Why? Because girls should be exposed to race cars…and football…and extreme sports usually dominated by males. This should all be obvious. Boys, likewise, can grow up to be hair stylists and preschool teachers and fashion moguls. Men should be applauded for having classically “feminine” qualities like being nurturing, intuitive, warm, and kind. They should never be told that possessing those qualities might make them transgender.
Even as our culture continues to push a message of female empowerment, we ignore one large caveat: Anyone can be female. Even the dude walking past you right now, (depending on how he feels later this afternoon). Meanwhile, trans men are just beginning an era of sports dominance as they continue to smash one girl’s athletic record after another. Read this article for more details on that.
My brother will say that gender is just a tiny part of who he is. (If so, why change?) But for him to think that he will “still be himself” if he becomes a woman is perhaps the craziest lie perpetuated by the trans cult. My brother is no longer a man named Josh. A man named for my grandfather—a hard-working immigrant who came to America to build a new life. My brother is now a false caricature of a female—a female who requires you to use certain pronouns in order to stay in relationship with him.
Of course he has his same personality and preferences. That’s a no-brainer. But to claim that one’s gender doesn’t ultimately matter in the grand scheme of things shows just how far this madness has come. I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t have married my husband if he weren’t male. And, as a married woman, I wouldn’t be going to lunch with my girlfriend this afternoon if she weren’t female. Tell my mother that it doesn’t matter if the son she raised for almost four decades is now suddenly her “daughter.”
The pain and suffering that my parents and our extended family and friends have endured as a result of this denial of reality could only be labeled cruel and unusual punishment.
We love my brother dearly. We want him to get the professional help he needs. But because the trans lobby has co-opted the American Psychological Association, that is no longer possible. For a therapist to recommend anything other than a gender transition for someone like my brother is no longer an option. While LGBT activists are working to make it illegal for professionals to help someone who wishes to change from homosexual to heterosexual, the professions are moving toward making it virtually mandatory to assist anyone who wishes to change from male to female.
And now that the trans lobby also convinced the World Health Organization to eliminate the mental illness of “gender identity disorder” altogether, we are truly in new territory. According to therapists, my brother no longer has any problem at all. It is only those of us who won’t acknowledge that he is now a woman named Melissa who have the problem.
My brother looks more and more like me with every month that passes. Cross-sex hormones are really quite effective. It’s stunning and disturbing. No family should ever be subject to what my family has experienced.
It’s time someone stands up against the trans cult and says “no more.”
We cannot continue to deny physical reality simply because the therapists, doctors, and now the tech companies have all been co-opted by the trans lobby.
I love my brother. But love does not mean supporting him as he slowly destroys himself. I have a dear friend who’s an alcoholic. I love and support this friend. I do not, however, show my love and support by driving her to bars. Love means speaking the truth. Even if it gets you booted off Twitter. Even if it gets you death threats.
My brother, along with hundreds of thousands of trans people across the globe, are being grossly taken advantage of on their quest for a personal identity. They long for a group to belong to, a meaningful cause to work toward. My brother and his wife (like so many others) believe they have found these things in the LGBTQ community.
The trans cult has embraced them; and they now show their allegiance to this cult by spouting its dogma via lengthy social media diatribes about affirming your child’s preferred gender. My brother leads seminars on diversity and inclusivity even as he gives a decidedly non-inclusive ultimatum to his parents: Either acknowledge I’m Melissa or have limited access to your grandchildren going forward.
My brother keeps saying this is “his” story to tell and his alone.
It’s not.
It’s my story.
It’s the story of my family—a family that’s been ripped apart because of one man’s choice to embrace his True Self. It’s the story of a community in the Midwest where each person was forced to make a decision: either support the transgender madness and win accolades in popular culture or refuse to deny reality and risk being called intolerant and “transphobic.” It’s the story of a country so lost and confused they can no longer even agree upon the very nature of reality itself.
This is your wake-up call, America.
It’s time to take your story back.
