(Editor’s note: This article was written by the staff at Liberty Unyielding and reprinted here with permission. It ties in with the excellent post yesterday by Woody Zimmerman).
Jazz Jennings was the poster child for child sex changes, with his very own TV show celebrating Jazz’s sex change. But things aren’t going well for Jazz, who is now miserable. Jazz’s penis was surgically removed at age 17, after Jazz was put on puberty blockers at age 11. Now, Jazz is miserable, and says “I don’t feel like me, ever.” After Jazz’s sex change, Jazz has experienced pain, constant reflux, a lack of sex drive, an inability to orgasm, rapid weight gain, and mental illness. Health providers falsely said that a sex change would make Jazz happy, and falsely told Jazz’s mother that Jazz was at risk for suicide if she didn’t allow Jazz to transition. “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?,” they said.
At PJ Media, Megan Fox writes about Jennings’ sad saga:
Jazz Jennings … was transitioned by his mother at the tender age of five. By the age of eleven, Jazz was on puberty blockers. At 17, even though a minor, Jazz underwent multiple genital surgeries to remove his penis and have it inverted. This process was botched and several attempts were made to remedy it, but the reduced size of Jazz’s penis due to years on puberty blockers made an already brutal surgery even worse.
“Jazz has since suffered from mental illness, rapid weight gain, pain, constant reflux, a lack of sex drive, an inability to orgasm, and anxiety…..Jazz has now broken down (on camera, of course) and spilled his heart to his mother that, despite it all, he doesn’t feel like himself….“I really want to understand myself and be able to read my own soul… I just want to feel like myself. All I want is to be happy and feel like me and I don’t feel like me ever!” Jazz cried.”
As Isabella Maria DeLuca notes, “Jazz Jennings has had numerous ‘sex change’ surgeries and has been on countless hormones. She reveals: ‘I just want to feel like myself. All I want is to be happy and feel like me, and I don’t feel like me, ever.’ This is the sad reality of transitioning.”
It is becoming increasingly obvious that Jazz’s sex change was a terrible mistake, but Jazz’s mother, who supported his sex change, seems blind to it. As Fox observes:
“often, when Jazz struggles, his mother Jeanette is there to criticize how he is feeling, trying to sweep it under the rug. Telling Jazz “I know how you feel” is so disingenuous. Did Jeanette get her genitals inverted and botched? Is she flooded with the wrong hormones all the time? Did she have to try and navigate dating by telling all perspective mates she was born a different sex than she appears? If not, then she DOES NOT know how Jazz feels in any way….Jazz missed his first semester at college because he was so mentally unwell.
Jazz has been used in an unforgivable way as the face of a movement that he didn’t even understand and still might not fully grasp. He’s a show pony, a cause, a public experiment done for the entertainment of some and the political goals of others. His children’s book has been used as a seductive tool to suck other five-year-olds into the same nightmare. It isn’t Jazz’s fault…Instead of coming clean, Jazz’s mother, an oft-vilified character, gaslights Jazz by saying, “You’re your own worst enemy.” That’s not how we see it, Jeanette. While some people are pointing the finger at Jeanette — and it’s understandable why — that’s not where the majority of the fault lies. Jeanette Jennings did profit off the transition of her little boy in many ways, including a hit television show, numerous speaking engagements, and elevation to stardom in the “trans community,” where she is treated like the Virgin Mother of the Christ child. But she is also a victim of a predatory medical industry full of people who lie for billions of dollars.
Marci Bowers is one of those people….a surgeon who performs the disfiguring surgeries they call “life-saving” is also Jazz’s surgeon, and he is one of the major villains in this case. It wasn’t only Bowers but also the rest of Jazz’s medical team, from psychologists who didn’t treat Jazz’s gender dysphoria (if he ever had that at all and wasn’t just a feminine boy) to the school counselors and teachers who encouraged Jazz’s fantasies. It is those people who bear the brunt of the blame. The media also needs to take some responsibility for pushing this on the American people as if it was stunning and brave and not dangerous and experimental.
Back when Jazz was eleven and on Barbara Walters, his mother said, “Jazz is a happy transgender kid, and you never hear those words in the same sentence.” But now, Jazz is anything but happy. The last several years have proven to be monstrous in many ways for Jazz. Jeanette broke down in a recent episode, recounting the discussions she had with medical professionals who told her that Jazz was at risk for suicide if she didn’t allow him to transition. “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?” they said.
This question is repeated to vulnerable parents all over the country when they seek answers to why their child is experiencing body dysmorphia. Instead of treating the underlying illnesses and conditions that could vary from depression to autism to anxiety or more serious events like traumatic abuse, our greatest medical minds prescribe dangerous hormones and surgeries to alter healthy body parts without even asking what’s causing the disconnect between body and mind. They then stop children from experiencing puberty, which is supposed to flood the brain and body with the crucial hormones it needs to fully develop…..One of the reasons Jazz cannot experience sexual desire is because that process was stopped and he was denied the experience of becoming fully human….He was stopped from going through male puberty, but he also didn’t go through female puberty. He has no body hair at all. He has never had to shave his legs. He never developed pubic hair. The idea that kids whose puberty is blocked will then go through the opposite sex puberty when given hormones is false. The things that cross-sex hormones give a person are artificial. Sure, breasts might grow, but they are not functional. They will never suckle a babe.
Sexual maturation can’t happen precisely if puberty was blocked. The hormones required to feel sexual attraction were never released and can’t be duplicated. There are even hormones that are released when we fall in love. Jazz was prevented from having access to those hormones. And orgasm? You need hormones for that, too, and not the kind that come in a syringe….Marci Bowers knew that this would happen. Did Bowers inform Jazz or his parents of this before blocking Jazz’s puberty?“
Yet, as Billboard Chris notes, that this would happen was obvious, as even advocates of child gender transitions admit: “The president of WPATH admits that NONE of the boys who started puberty blockers at the onset of puberty have ever been able to have an orgasm as an adult.”
As Fox notes, “The end result of stopping male puberty in Jazz’s case is the creation of an adult without sexual function….there’s the awful reality of Jazz’s neo-vagina, which needs constant dilation so it doesn’t close up. I remember how painful piercing my ears was and trying to keep those tiny wounds from closing (I eventually gave up). I can’t imagine trying to keep a hole so much larger from closing. Jeanette revealed how reluctant Jazz is to put the dilator in the wound and shocked the nation by saying she threatened to do it to Jazz if he wouldn’t do it for himself more regularly.”
As Gays Against Groomers observes, it seems like admitting to “child abuse on national television” when “Jazz Jennings’ mother speaks about forcing Jazz to dilate and further mutilate their neo-vagina to keep the wound from closing.”
But Jazz’s suffering will be hidden or downplayed by the liberal media and the sex-change industry. As Fox observes,
“the entire transgender machine is dependent on Jazz putting up a good front. You can be assured that Jazz will be forced to say that he doesn’t regret what the machine did to him. His mother will guilt him, control him, and hover until he does what she wants and assuages her conscience. He will put on a happy face to the best of his ability and recite some platitudes about how wonderful it is to be a “woman,” but his eyes tell the truth, and in them is nothing but suffering.
The detransitioners out there have been trying to tell us what’s in store for kids like Jazz. It’s a horrifying future, and it can’t stay hidden forever. If Jazz does somehow manage to escape the machine, there’s a whole community waiting for him that will try to help him come to terms with what has happened. He’s not alone. There are so many kids and adults just like him who were lied to, manipulated, and permanently scarred.“
Progressive officials continue to support childhood sex changes. “Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Rachel Levine promised that medically changing kids’ genders will soon be normalized,” reports Fox News:
Meanwhile, the skyrocketing numbers of sex changes are beginning to lead to malpractice lawsuits. Fox News reports:
“De-transitioned teenager Layla Jane is suing Permanente Medical Group and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the medical providers who performed a double mastectomy on her when she was just 13 years old after beginning to identify as transgender two years before.
Now 18 years old, Jane is accusing the hospital system of “intentional fraud and concealment” involving her gender transition, alleging the doctors pushed her into the procedure and characterized her gender transition as the only way to treat her preexisting mental health problems….Jane’s lawsuit, according to reports from The Blaze, alleged doctors warned her of an increased risk of suicide if she failed to transition to male, adding that they gave her parents a binary option of living with a “live son” or suffering the consequence of having a “dead daughter.”
Jane’s lawsuit noted a series of health struggles brought on by the “permanent irreversible mutilation,” including inability to breastfeed, increased likelihood of an inability to conceive, and endocrine problems.”
Sex-change doctors badger parents into getting a risky sex change for their child by using a manipulative script, asking them “Do you want a live son or a dead daughter?” (if they have a daughter) or “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?” (if they have a son). Nevermind that these claims are “shoddy” and there is no reliable evidence that getting a sex change will reduce a gender-noncomforming child’s likelihood of committing suicide, as experts such as Leor Sapir have pointed out.
As Fox News reports, Layla Jane’s lawyer
“who also represents de-transitioner Chloe Cole [in another malpractice lawsuit], alleged the lines used by doctors at Kaiser Permanente must be scripted since the same “live son” or “dead daughter” binary was allegedly used in both instances.“
These scaremongering claims by doctors were wrong. As the Manhattan Institute’s Leor Sapir notes, Scandinavian authorities “have examined the evidence behind the affirm-or-suicide claim and have found it wanting….there is no good evidence that failing to “affirm” minors in their “gender identity” will increase the likelihood of them committing suicide….that claim is based on a small handful of deeply flawed studies that, at most, find loose correlations between “affirming” interventions and improved mental health. Some find no reduction of suicide at all, and a new study claims to find that puberty blockers actually increase the risk of suicide.”
An Ontario woman who lost body parts due to a sex change is also suing the doctors who rubberstamped her sex change.
Meanwhile, The London Daily Telegraph reports that Britain’s National Health Service says transgenderism is just a ‘phase’ for most kids who claim to be transgender:
Most children who believe that they are transgender are just going through a “phase”, the NHS has said, as it warns that doctors should not encourage them to change their names and pronouns.
NHS England has announced plans for tightening controls on the treatment of under 18s questioning their gender, including a ban on prescribing puberty blockers outside of strict clinical trials.
In light of this finding, NHS is no longer going to give minors sex-change surgery or puberty blockers. It is also cautioning against even social transitioning:
“NHS England says that the interim Cass Report has advised that even social transition, such as changing a young person’s name and pronouns or the way that they dress, is not a “neutral act” that could have “significant effects” in terms of “psychological functioning”.
The NHS describes a staggering 40-fold increase in use of “gender identity services” over the last ten years. Because many using these services are just going through a phase, and will not benefit from a sex change, the NHS will take a different approach to treating minors, noting “evidence that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence” which is a reason that “doctors should be mindful this might be a ‘transient phase.’”
As health and science reporter Benjamin Ryan notes, medical authorities in “UK, Sweden, Finland, and now Norway as well,” are now recommending against “prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to trans-identifying minors.”
Yet, in America, gender clinics are giving teenagers double mastectomies and other sex-change operations in many states. The Biden administration has promoted puberty blockers, even though the FDA says puberty blockers can cause brain swelling and permanent vision loss.
As the New York Post notes, many girls who get sex changes will “struggle for the rest of their lives with the irreversible medical consequences of a decision they made as minors.” They temporarily identify as transgender boys, then get sex changes before realizing they are really just girls.
The number of girls temporarily identifying as “transgender” has skyrocketed. Dr. Lisa Littman, a former professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University, coined the term “rapid onset gender dysphoria” to describe this subset of transgender youth, typically biological females who become suddenly dysphoric during or shortly after puberty. Littman believes this may be due to adolescent girls’ susceptibility to peer influence on social media.
A variety of studies suggest that as many as 80% of dysphoric children could ultimately experience “desistance”— or coming to terms with their biological gender without resorting to transition. Which is why many professionals like Evans think it’s wise to hold off on potentially irreversible medical intervention for as long as possible….All these treatments run the risk of side effects that critics argue are too serious for children to fully understand. In the short term, puberty blockers can stunt growth and effect bone density, while the long-term effects are still unknown since they were only approved by the FDA in 1993. Side effects of testosterone include high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, blood clots and even infertility.
Being “gender affirming” shouldn’t be an excuse for a doctor to commit medical malpractice. But that may be happening in many cases.
The National Review provided a possible example. Doctors affirmed a man’s false belief that he had a female gender identity, and then mutilated his body by giving him a sex change he came to regret.
Plagued by self-hatred, he “heard about transgenderism” in college, and “seized on it as the solution.” A gender-affirming free clinic “immediately affirmed” his female gender identity. He was then given an “incomplete informed consent document to sign.” Later, his doctor told him that he “should really get surgery.” He was given an orchiectomy, but not told that it was castration. After being castrated, he “developed a drug habit” and began “ejaculating blood.” He said that “the gender clinic kept telling me, ‘Oh, it gets better.’” But it didn’t.
He says he was never given an independent psychological evaluation before getting surgery. After surgery, a different therapist diagnosed him with a different condition than gender dysphoria. But by then, he had already been castrated.
Getting a sex change caused havoc in the lives of thousands of people. The National Review gave an example of a woman who transitioned to being a man, and ended up with negative health consequences, “no hair,” and a “body mutilated.”
It’s not just doctors and psychologists who have made mistakes in their zeal to be “gender affirming.” So have judges.
Jamie Shupe gave an example in “I was America’s first ‘nonbinary person.’ It was all a sham.” Shupe is male, as he noted in the Daily Signal. But he wanted in vain to be a woman, due to a condition known as “autogynephilia.” When his therapist expressed skepticism about whether he would actually benefit from trying to change his sex, he filed a “formal complaint” against her, and found a new therapist, who affirmed his new “identity as a woman.” But eventually he changed his mind and declared he was nonbinary, not female:
“When the fantasy of being a woman came to an end, I asked two of my doctors to allow me to become nonbinary instead of female to bail me out. Both readily agreed….To escape the delusion of having become a woman, I did something completely unprecedented in American history. In 2016, I convinced an Oregon judge to declare my sex to be nonbinary—neither male nor female.”
As a result of this ruling, a “nonbinary option” now exists in many states, even though Shupe’s “sex change to nonbinary was a medical and scientific fraud.” The judge’s ruling was not based on any evidence. As Shupe observes, “the judge didn’t ask me a single question. Nor did” the judge ask “to see any medical evidence….Within minutes, the judge just signed off on the court order,” even though he did “not have any disorders of sexual development.” But three years later, “unable to advance the fraud for another single day,” he “reclaimed” his “male birth sex.”
