*Editor’s Note: This true account is Part 5 of a 6-Part series. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
Our country understands that Scientology is a cult. But we still don’t seem to understand how much the transgender movement mirrors cults like Scientology. Scientologists call people who seek to “impede the progress of Scientology” suppressive people. Likewise, my brother and his wife deem people who don’t fully embrace Melissa “unsafe.” This would include both sets of their children’s grandparents. Why are these sweet, loving grandparents being called “unsafe”? Because they refuse to affirm my brother as Melissa and use she/her pronouns. In other words, they are impeding the progress of the transgender movement.
Calling everyone who doesn’t support the trans movement “unsafe” or worse yet, “transphobic” is beyond ignorant. People like me who strongly disagree with trans ideology do not have a “phobia.” I am not afraid of trans people. I love them. I am related to them. Anyone who mocks or threatens someone whose lifestyle they disagree with is obviously wrong. Trans people should never be made fun of or bullied in any way. They are dealing with enough as it is.
But all of America is now blindly embracing the trans cult and silencing those who won’t get on board. They tell us we’re guilty of “hate speech” if we “misgender” someone. I am told I am hateful even though I have nothing but love for my brother. I am sad that he believes this is the answer to his identity crisis when any thinking person can see it’s another dead end.
A girl recently commented to me in an email how unfortunate it is that I’m not “getting along with my sister.” I do not have a sister. I have not had a sister during the 40 years I’ve been alive on this planet. Yet a few years from now, if we continue on the same track we’ve been on, I will likely be considered the mentally ill one for refusing to acknowledge I have a sister named Melissa.
My brother, on the other hand, will be sitting pretty. Quite literally. In his dresses, with his heels and makeup, playing the part of some old, outdated female stereotype that you would think had been long since eradicated from such a progressive, forward-thinking, equality-minded country.
Transgenderism reinforces everything feminists have spent their entire lives fighting against. It promotes ridiculously outdated gender stereotypes (being a woman means putting on a skirt and heels). Yet now, even life-long feminist icons are having their social media accounts suspended for saying things like, “A man cannot be a woman.”
Sheila Jeffreys, a lesbian feminist scholar and former professor of Political Science at the University of Melbourne writes in Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism that sex reassignment surgery is actually “an extension of the beauty industry offering cosmetic solutions to deeper rooted problems.”
Amen to that.
Jeffreys argues that the “vast majority of transsexuals still subscribe to the traditional stereotype of women” and that by transitioning medically and socially they are constructing a “fantasy” of what a woman should be and are inventing “an essence of womanhood which is deeply insulting and restrictive.” Jeffreys believes trans woman are either “homosexual men who don’t feel they can be homosexual in the bodies of men” or are “heterosexual men who have a sexual interest in wearing women’s clothes and having the appearance of women.” (For more details on the latter, read Dr. Ray Blanchard’s work on autogynephilia.)
Feminists have fought their entire lives to help real women who are being oppressed, tormented and abused by men. Now they’re being told to roll over and let a bunch of men join the group.
This is part of why the original LGB community held off as long as they could before allowing the “T” in. Transgender individuals have a far greater likelihood of being diagnosed with mental illnesses when compared to their gay and lesbian counterparts. It was only after the trans lobby grew large enough to have a financial impact on LGB efforts in Washington that they were invited into the fold. Now even some gay and lesbian leaders are speaking out against the trans movement. They’re deeply troubled by what they see happening, especially as it concerns children being told to transition at increasingly younger ages after just a few visits to a therapist. Of course these gay and lesbian dissenters are having their voices silenced by the mainstream media and have had to join forces with conservatives to sound the alarm.
No empowered female could ever champion transgender ideology. It’s an insult to women the world over to suggest that because someone who has a penis puts on a dress and heels, it automatically makes him a woman. Any real woman knows we are not our clothes or shoes. We are not our hair or makeup. Outer beauty has nothing to do with us being female.