The last couple of months have been very hectic, hence the lateness of my recent posts. That being said, recent times have been rather monotonous, as is usually the case when it’s GCSE season. Every day, I do some biology and Latin, I try to fit my piano and violin practice in, and then I relax by cooking/baking, creative writing or watching telly with Mother Dearest! In fact, we’ve been on quite a roll with our telly-watching – I’m rewatching the X-Files for the third time so my mum can see it with me; we started watching the first season of American Masterchef, but dropped it because it was so predictable and cheesy and American! And we’ve also been watching a very interesting reality show called I Am Jazz. As far as I’m concerned it’s more of a documentary than a reality show.
I Am Jazz is a show that follows the Jennings family, in particular their youngest child, Jazz. Jazz was born a male named Jaren, but according to her parents, began expressing that she was actually a girl as soon she form sentences. At the age of just three, Jazz began her “transition”; she grew her hair long, wore girls’ clothes, and went by she/her pronouns. At 11, she was implanted with her first puberty blocker and began taking oestrogen. This blocked male puberty from taking place in her body and initiated the start of female puberty instead. These procedures had irreversible mental and physical consequences on Jazz. Should she ever decide that she isn’t transgender, remove her puberty blocker and go off oestrogen, her body wouldn’t form properly, she would look an odd mix between male and female, and would never be able to have children. All these life-changing decisions were purportedly made by Jazz, but I can’t help but notice the pressuring and coercing of her creepy mother, who is always encouraging Jazz to take the next steps in her transition earlier than Jazz seems ready to.
I think that Jazz Jennings is an interesting case. I am happy to call her by she/her pronouns and respect her decisions, because from what I have seen she’s a very reasonable and likeable girl. Through watching I Am Jazz, I’ve come to the conclusion that she has been forced from an incredibly early age through a lot of potentially damaging and irreversible medical processes by her virtue-signalling, attention-demanding parents, who while claiming they want a safe and private life for Jazz, continue to take her to public speaking events, allow and encourage her to have her own YouTube channel despite numerous death threats in the comments, and of course, allow cameramen to follow them around their daily lives and have all this information about their daughter online for anyone to see.
Watching I Am Jazz has certainly been an eye-opening experience. It’s made me pity Jazz more than I’ve ever pitied anyone before. It’s all very well and good to watch conservative commentators casually label parents of transgender children as child abusers, but to actually see this happening for yourself, and to understand that this really is one of the worst forms of child abuse out there, is frankly horrifying.
On a lighter note, my stepdad Andy picked me up with my stepbrother William from drama class on Saturday. It was actually a really good class that morning; we were visited by professional ballet dancer and actor Gary Avis, who taught a really interesting and insightful lesson on how to express character emotions and miens without speaking (he is an expert on this considering there are no words in ballet performances), and how to find the right balance between subtlety and obviousness when doing so.
Andy took us around the towns nearby to drama, and we got a really delicious lunch in the pub. I got steak & ale pie with mash and peas, and Andy and William both got grilled chicken and chips. We mooched around the shops for a bit, then came home, and William and I shared some leftover broccoli mac’n’cheese that I had made the night before. We only needed half the 1-serving dish each because we were so full from our pub lunch!
broccoli mac’n’cheese 
a kiwi and pineapple smoothie I made 
my pub lunch 
