This is a very personal subject to me and I ask you to try to refrain from criticizing my dad who I think is doing his best.

I’ve posted before about my TIM brother, but recently I was thinking about how he behaved growing up. We are both in our twenties now, and he is a few years younger than me.

When we were younger, I remember that he often tried to get me in trouble with my parents by making things up and crying. I had forgotten about this, but the more I think about it, the more I remember this was a frequent pattern in our family.

He would be (incorrectly) upset with me, he would whine and cry and tell my parents that I was bullying him. Each time, my mom would immediately take his side and scold me. Each time, my dad would ask us both to tell our version of the story. Usually, my brother was not very good at maintaining his fake story, or he did not even realize that what I had done wasn’t considered bad enough to be punishable (eg I had called him annoying, and my dad would not think it’s worth any punishment for me and would just say “be nice”).

This spilled into other sorts of things when we got older. Instead of getting me in trouble, he would just be very inconsiderate towards me, and construe any questions or verbal discussion about his behavior as an attack on him. Usually mom would come to his rescue. For example, when I hosted him and my mom, he kept everyone up late when I hosted because he didn’t want to stop watching videos on his laptop. When I asked him to put it away for the night, my mom was angry with me and told me I’m controlling his life — but even she admitted she is tired and can’t sleep until he stops. She tried to nicely ask him to put it away, but he completely ignored her like she wasn’t even there. Throughout this, he completely ignored us and let us argue over his actions. Another time, he refused to do something very easy and no effort for me, which I was unable to do, and when I asked him why he refused, he got sullen and hostile. Mom eventually did it instead of him and told me to be nice to him.

He is so mean to my mom, totally ignoring her most of the time. He once said to me that he doesn’t respect her because she always took his side even when he was obviously in the wrong. I found this an appalling thing to think, let alone vocalize.

My brother and I are mutually no contact presently.

My dad has always been my rock. I think if he hadn’t taken the time to realize my brother was lying or exaggerating when we were younger, I would have gone crazy.

Unfortunately, my dad believes in True Trans and knows that I don’t believe in trans ideology at all. Now, my dad thinks I’m against my brother and part of the cohort who wishes to harm people like him. I’ve tried to talk to him about it, but he believes I have fallen victim to the classic technique regimes use to distract from other issues, which is pinning the blame for society’s ills on a marginalized community. I strongly disagree, but it appears to be that my dad genuinely thinks my brother will die if my dad doesn’t believe he’s a woman, so I think he’s intentionally disallowing any questioning thought. He also clearly feels protective of my brother and seems to believe he is in danger of violence from others. Then, whenever the trans subject comes up between me and my dad, he becomes very angry and says harsh things towards me.

I had never thought about my brother’s trans thing in context with our family dynamic, but now that I have, I can’t unsee it. I have felt a distance between me and my dad for years now, and now I’m wondering if it began when he began believing my brother’s trans story and feeling like he needs to protect him from me.

I feel betrayed — how can he believe him after all those years where he was obviously lying or overreacting? How can he think I’m the sort of person to harm anyone, let alone my own brother? How can I close the gap I feel in my relationship with my dad? It feels like a catch-22: if I bring up my brother, my dad will see it as evidence that I’m out to get him. If I don’t, I feel I am just waiting for my brother to keep getting closer and acquiring more and more sympathy from my dad, turned against me.

I feel like Sam and my dad is Frodo and my brother is gollum, when gollum planted the crumbs on Sam. I don’t care what my brother does, but I would do anything to close the gap between me and my dad.

I know some of you might say some mean stuff to my dad, but he was there for me when my mom was not, and I want to have our relationship back to normal. It’s unacceptable for my brother to wedge in between us and if anyone has any advice that doesn’t involve saying anything that could be construed as an attack on my brother/trans people I would really appreciate it 😞