Jump to content

Type keyword(s) to search

S04.E04: Big Trouble in the Big Apple


  • Reply
  • Start Topic

Recommended Posts

23 hours ago, Bridget said:

had students of every personality type, social and economic class, along with many who are foster kids, self-harm, have suffered from sexual abuse, are homeless, and others dealing with horrible home lives and other issues that impact them daily, including students who identify as homosexual or are transgender.

I have already commented  similarly as well.  The way she talked to her father was totally out of line – she is one lucky child and does not realize how lucky she is.  I will say it again, there are kids that get abused, in every way, and killed by their parents.  Anybody that has supportive loving parents should be very grateful because every parent does not love their child and every child does not have supportive loving parents.

  • Love 5
Link to comment
On 1/25/2018 at 1:57 PM, Dobian said:

A lot of people do the Grand Canyon experience by going to Las Vegas and setting aside one day to take the tour bus to the Grand Canyon, take pics, then back to the strip for dinner and a show.  ;-)

i did that several years ago. It is not the best way to see the Grand Canyon, you are only there a few hours. A couple of years later I spent 2 days at the GC and stayed overnight in a cabin by the rim. Now that is the way to visit the Grand Canyon.

  • Love 4
Link to comment
On 1/26/2018 at 11:41 PM, doodlebug said:

No, her own tissue is her own tissue, nothing foreign about it.  The problem is that her vagina is going to be created artificially from tissue that was not embryologically destined to be a vagina.  Also, it is going to be sutured in place. Cutting and sewing means scar tissue and scar tissue doesn’t stretch like natural tissue.  Just like therapy has to be done after knee surgery to loosen the joint and keep it functional; the new vagina needs to be dilated and stretched in order to allow it to function.  If Jazz were a biological female born without a vagina (it happens), she’d have to do the same thing if a surgical vagina were created.

That's a lot of cutting and pasting and sewing. Will she eventually get pleasure from it? This sounds painful and I'm not sure what she expects the outcome to be. 

Link to comment

I feel sorry for Jazz..she was made the spokes person for transgender teens by her mother, and now, if she had a change of heart, how could she possibly admit it to the world. Her mother needs to back off, and Jazz needs to be out of the spot light until she decides just who she really is at this point I think.

  • Love 7
Link to comment
9 hours ago, CousinAmy said:

That's a lot of cutting and pasting and sewing. Will she eventually get pleasure from it? This sounds painful and I'm not sure what she expects the outcome to be. 

People probably wouldn't have these surgeries if there wasn't the possibility of enjoying the results.  However, human sexuality is very complicated and just as not every heterosexual with genitals they were born possessing enjoys sex the same way or to the same degree; there is variation amongst transgender men and women as to how much pleasure they get and how they achieve it.  As noted multiple times in this thread, many, if not most, transgender people never have 'bottom' surgery, and, yet, many, if not most, are sexually active.  Of course, having surgically constructed or repaired genitalia adds an extra layer and any major surgery of this time runs the risk of being unsuccessful, either due to complications, or simply not meeting the expectations of the person undergoing the procedure.  Will Jazz have a satisfying sex life after the surgery?  I am sure she and her doctors hope so; that's why she is being sent for counselling as well as discussing various preoperative and postoperative steps that will be needed to maximize the chances of a good outcome.

  • Love 7
Link to comment
On 1/28/2018 at 10:22 AM, doodlebug said:

People probably wouldn't have these surgeries if there wasn't the possibility of enjoying the results.  However, human sexuality is very complicated and just as not every heterosexual with genitals they were born possessing enjoys sex the same way or to the same degree; there is variation amongst transgender men and women as to how much pleasure they get and how they achieve it.  As noted multiple times in this thread, many, if not most, transgender people never have 'bottom' surgery, and, yet, many, if not most, are sexually active.  Of course, having surgically constructed or repaired genitalia adds an extra layer and any major surgery of this time runs the risk of being unsuccessful, either due to complications, or simply not meeting the expectations of the person undergoing the procedure.  Will Jazz have a satisfying sex life after the surgery?  I am sure she and her doctors hope so; that's why she is being sent for counselling as well as discussing various preoperative and postoperative steps that will be needed to maximize the chances of a good outcome.

Since they seem to be talking about the peritoneal tissue (from her abdominal?) I wondered how that is going to substitute for vaginal tissue? It's taking tissue from one part of the body and giving it a purpose that it was not designed for. Does it somehow "become" vaginal tissue after the surgery?

Link to comment
7 hours ago, CousinAmy said:

Since they seem to be talking about the peritoneal tissue (from her abdominal?) I wondered how that is going to substitute for vaginal tissue? It's taking tissue from one part of the body and giving it a purpose that it was not designed for. Does it somehow "become" vaginal tissue after the surgery?

No, it doesn’t morph into another form, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be functional.  Burn victims get skin grafts from other parts of the body, people have fat from one part injected into others.  There’s a procedure called a TRAM flap that uses abdominal skin and fat to build a new ‘breast ‘ after a mastectomy.  This is what plastic surgery is all about.

  • Love 2
Link to comment

Don't remember exactly who said what, but just adding my 2 cents worth.  

 

First, as a geneticist, i can tell you for sure, there is no way to say "puberty started a year earlier".  Also, just because a sibling undergoes puberty at a particular age, does not at all suggest another sibling is going to experience the identical schedule.  There is no evidence to suggest age of puberty onset is determined by a single gene.  So it is multi-allelic, which means all kinds of things (modifiers) can contribute to variation.  Secondly, the statement (no matter how forcefully made), that puberty begins in the brain, is misleading.  There ARE neurosecretory cells in the brain that do release hormones and hormone releasing factors, so I am not arguing that,  but that is a far cry from suggesting puberty is an innate program regulated almost exclusively by the brain.  The fact is we really don't know all that much about the neurohormonal program.  We don't know how testosterone interacts with those cells or what the interplay over time is.  To suggest otherwise is just, forgive me, annoying.  It implies some superior knowledge that does not (yet) exist.  

 

This is evident in one other fact we occasionally discuss, namely Jazz has many male features that appear to be growing more pronounced, despite being a flawless trans girl:  her lack of a q-ratio curve, for example.  She complains of having a large midriff and no waist, often.  This suggests the female pattern of tiny waist, wide hips (the ratio being the "Q-ratio") may be genetically determined apart from fetal differentiation of sex.  In other words, how a woman (or man) is built may relate to factors that interact with hormones but are not solely due to hormones alone.  Her facial features are becoming more masculine.  Her brow line for example, is heavier and more pronounced than it was and more pronounced than normally seen in a woman.  I mention these things because they should be considered in decisions Jazz makes, to be more and more feminine (see SRS below).

 

That is the reason I personally am fascinated by this.  It is, unbelievably, a human experiment on public display!!!!! Think of what might happen if a researcher wrote a grant proposal that said, "we will program a 3 year old child to become the gender opposite that determined by sex chromosome contribution, using synthetic hormones at puberty and hormone blockers (for endogenously derived hormones) prior to, and during that time."  The world would accuse that researcher of playing God, of being Dr. Frankenstein, or Hitler.  But the parents are able to make these decisions with absolutely no external over-sight or regulation!  

 

I suspect the enormity of it all is weighing on Greg and he is in an untenable situation:  either capitulate to his wife and child, and allow irreversible mutilation, or put an end to it all (by refusing the surgery), and at least minimize the criminal liability that I suspect will begin ten years or so down the line.  His insistence that Jazz is not yet mature enough stems from his observation, I believe, that he is allowing something to happen to her, that she has no understanding of, but that he DOES understand. Years from now, Jazz accusing him (you KNEW and you let it all happen anyway!!!!) must be haunting his dreams.  

 

There is so much research, reported in peer-reviewed literature, that shows that people who have SRS commit suicide at rates that exceed those of trans people who do not have the surgery.  Why is this never ever discussed?  Do Jeanette and TLC believe the ONLY acceptable end to the series is Jazz, shiny new "beautiful" vagina installed, married to a cis heterosexual man, with three children (from ova donated by Ari) in tow?  How about the end of the series being, Jazz decides to go into intensive therapy for 5 or 10 years, and contemplates what she wants to devote her life to?  Without having SRS?

  • Love 21
Link to comment
2 hours ago, doodlebug said:

No, it doesn’t morph into another form, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be functional.  Burn victims get skin grafts from other parts of the body, people have fat from one part injected into others.  There’s a procedure called a TRAM flap that uses abdominal skin and fat to build a new ‘breast ‘ after a mastectomy.  This is what plastic surgery is all about.

is peritoneal tissue able to "feel" as vaginal tissue does?  

Link to comment

@Impatient  Thank you so much for your thoughtful remarks.  Agree with you 100% (even though I don't have the education or training you have, but can see the common sense of it anyway).  Please keep providing input!

  • Love 3
Link to comment
11 hours ago, Granny58 said:

is peritoneal tissue able to "feel" as vaginal tissue does?  

Once again, this is new territory and it's not like this surgery is so very common that we know for certain what will happen.  As Impatient noted above, every individual is unique and there is not one answer for everyone.  That's part of the beauty of human physiology, but it can make predicting outcomes very difficult.  Impatient is also correct in that Jazz' mother seems obsessed with 'fixing' Jazz and that her assertion that Jazz must undergo the procedure lest she become suicidal ignores the very real research in this area which seems to indicate that those who undergo surgery are perhaps even more likely to become suicidal than those who don't.  Jazz' perception that she won't have depression or negative emotions if only she has the surgery is not based in reality and another indication that she needs a lot of assessment and counselling before undergoing such a major procedure.  I also agree that the development of 'masculine' or 'feminine' features is not purely based on the presence or absence of testosterone or estrogen and Jazz has, over time, developed a more masculine appearance.  Of course, human variation makes it hard to discern how much is genetics and how much is hormonal but she does exhibit more typically male features than her mother or sister.  We all know plenty of genetically female women who have broad shoulders or narrow hips or lack the defined waist that most women have; maybe if Jazz had been born genetically female, she'd still have these things.

First off, does every woman have the exact same 'feel' in her vaginal tissues that every other woman does?  Probably not, so we can only speak in generalities.  Just as some are more sensitive to sound or touch or have better eyesight; there is probably a bit of variation to 'normal' vaginal sensation.  In general, the interior vagina, the part that is being suggested to be constructed from peritoneal tissue doesn't have a lot of sensation anyway.  When we talk about vaginal sensation, we're often talking about the tissues at the external vaginal opening and those are presumably going to be constructed from skin, not peritoneum.

The natural vagina doesn't sense hot or cold, it also has few pain fibers.  I've delivered thousands of kids and sewn thousands of vaginal tears, the woman cannot feel the needle doing the sewing during an interior vaginal wall repair.  She is aware of the exterior tissues that perhaps have been torn, she is aware of the swelling and pressure on those tissues from the birth and from trying to visualize the vagina so the tear can be repaired; but the vagina itself is not what hurts.  The vagina does have pressure fibers and awareness when the walls are being stretched which is what one feels with intercourse as well as with childbirth and with using tampons.  There are more pressure fibers near the vaginal opening than up higher which is why a tampon isn't really noticeable once its high enough in the vagina.  The pain of childbirth comes from dilation of the cervix and uterine contractions, its not vaginal pain.

Peritoneum also has fibers that can sense pressure, however, whether those fibers can regenerate well enough to give that sensation with intercourse with a neovagina is probably not a sure thing for everyone.  However, more sexual pleasure is generated from other parts of the anatomy than the vagina; so it is only a tiny piece of a very large puzzle.

Edited by doodlebug
  • Love 16
Link to comment

Doodlebug, that is so true and I confess I never really thought much about it:  the vagina does NOT have a great deal of nervous innervation.  I should have thought about that (tampons really are undetectable after insertion).

The peritoneum, on the other hand, is very well innervated.  I wonder if Dr. Ting or Dr. Bowers have addressed that in their discussions with Jazz and her family?  By the way, to those who think it is disrespectful to call Marci Bowers by her first nae, I couldn't disagree more strongly.  For the longest time, doctors insisted on being called by their formal noames,, but sociologists quite rightly pointed out that this creates a barrier between doctor and patient.  Makes it harder for empathy tp exist between them.  if I were Marci bowers, I would want my patients to use my first name.  

  • Love 1
Link to comment

Watched this episode this morning, and have spent time pondering.  Since I'm not keeping up the flashbacks to prior episodes cloud my memory.  

To the posters who are scientists and that most definitely include medical doctors, how offended you must have been by Jazz and Noelle.  I don't know how much Jazz has influenced Noelle, but she wasn't so arrogant when we first met her.  She was comfortable in her own skin and maybe Jazz gave her confidence.  

Just so weary of anyone not 100% on board with Jazz are "haters" and now Noelle is on board.  Jazz learned that from her mother IMO.  But now it seems that Greg is being cast into that very wide net.  

This show needs to end.  Jazz has been told she's an experiment.  Or an avenue for her mother to be famous .... "I've spoken all around the world!".  It's all become a sad spectacle.  

  • Love 2
Link to comment
2 hours ago, Impatient said:

By the way, to those who think it is disrespectful to call Marci Bowers by her first name, I couldn't disagree more strongly.  For the longest time, doctors insisted on being called by their formal noames,, but sociologists quite rightly pointed out that this creates a barrier between doctor and patient.  Makes it harder for empathy tp exist between them.  if I were Marci bowers, I would want my patients to use my first name.  

I think it's more a case of she feels the need to say the entire name every frickin time she refers to her Dr. Why not just say, "My doctor says..." but she says it like she's trying to impress the listener that DOCTOR MARCI BOWERS is her doctor. That's what bugs the shit out of me, the incessant name dropping, not that she calls a doctor by their first name.

24 minutes ago, Maricopa said:

She doesn't want therapy? At $100+/hour I'd die for free therapy!

I know, right?!?

  • Love 4
Link to comment
13 hours ago, Impatient said:

I suspect the enormity of it all is weighing on Greg and he is in an untenable situation:  either capitulate to his wife and child, and allow irreversible mutilation, or put an end to it all (by refusing the surgery), and at least minimize the criminal liability that I suspect will begin ten years or so down the line.  His insistence that Jazz is not yet mature enough stems from his observation, I believe, that he is allowing something to happen to her, that she has no understanding of, but that he DOES understand. Years from now, Jazz accusing him (you KNEW and you let it all happen anyway!!!!) must be haunting his dreams.  

 

There is so much research, reported in peer-reviewed literature, that shows that people who have SRS commit suicide at rates that exceed those of trans people who do not have the surgery.  Why is this never ever discussed?  Do Jeanette and TLC believe the ONLY acceptable end to the series is Jazz, shiny new "beautiful" vagina installed, married to a cis heterosexual man, with three children (from ova donated by Ari) in tow?  How about the end of the series being, Jazz decides to go into intensive therapy for 5 or 10 years, and contemplates what she wants to devote her life to?  Without having SRS?

I agree with this so much. It's obvious that he is starting to wake up to the situation. I think Greg has always followed Jeannette's lead because he trusted her and because he wasn't around the house as much. I have noticed when the family talks about how girly and feminine Jazz was as a small child, it is always Jeanette telling the stories of little Jazz doing this or putting on that. I have never heard Gregg talk about noticing anything different about Jazz back then. Gregg was probably at work all day and since Jeanette spent all day with Jazz he just believed whatever she said. From everything I've heard Jeanette self diagnosed Jazz on her own, then took her to a therapist and had her officially diagnosed and the rest is history. And until this season that's the way its always been. Jeanette and Jazz would make decisions when he wasn't around and overrule him and he would just give in, because he wasn't in the loop with them.

I bet he is kicking himself right now. He probably wishes he had been paying more attention back then.

Edited by janedi
  • Love 2
Link to comment
45 minutes ago, gingerella said:

I think it's more a case of she feels the need to say the entire name every frickin time she refers to her Dr. Why not just say, "My doctor says..." but she says it like she's trying to impress the listener that DOCTOR MARCI BOWERS is her doctor. That's what bugs the shit out of me, the incessant name dropping, not that she calls a doctor by their first name.

I know, right?!?

I wonder if it's sort of "product placement" in exchange for agreeing to be on the show? They agree to reference her by name in full x-number of times? Or refer to her as DMB?

It's so noticeable and seems so overly emphasized it's made me wonder even since last season if it's contractual basically.

  • Love 4
Link to comment

@onatrek, I would agree with your theory were it not for the glaring fact that Jazz and her mother are a doctor's worst nightmare. You'd think she would have watched the show before she agreed to be on the show, and we've been seeing this teen who is nowhere near ready for this surgery for at least two seasons now, so at the least DMB had one full season to watch now how dysfunctional Jazz and her family are. But yeah, it's either your theory or mine, I think.

  • Love 2
Link to comment

I don't think so Gingerella.  Marci bowers herself, has fathered children (no other verb that would be less charged:  sired?  Produced?), has been married to a woman as a man, and then later as a woman.  Her own story is far from routine.  And I would imagine Jazz and her family seemed refreshingly "normal", compared to some of the drama I am sure her other patients bring to her.  

  • Love 1
Link to comment

Jeanette's mom fascinates me.  She is obviously a smart woman.  But 2 things about her always distract me:  the wig, of course.  But more than anything, the crossed eyes.  Can she see anything?

I agree that the other kids are starting to express how ridiculous this whole fixation on all things trans is.....

They should be in family therapy.  Together.  ALL of them

  • Love 2
Link to comment

Just wanted to add I think Greg is feeling manipulated by Jeannette.  When she revealed Marci booked an OR for a tissue expander, Greg looked to be experiencing controlled fury.  He is more vocal now with the doctors, he is more prominent in all these discussions.  He is clearly considering possible outcomes.  He is not allowing Jeannette and Jazz to steamroll him as he has n the past. 

I hope he pushes for them all to get FAMILY therapy.  It is the single-most important thing he could do for ALL his kids.

 

Is Dr. Ting trans?

  • Love 1
Link to comment

I really enjoyed Griffin and Sander in this episode.  And Ari too, who was being very subtle in trying to encourage Jazz to occupy her mind with things non-transgender.  

When they were in New York and met up after the Doctor's appointment they all agreed there had been too much discussion of vaginas and they would go ride on the carousel together.  And there they are on the carousel and the first thing we hear from Jeanette?  Imagine jazz on this carousel with a tissue expander in place.  

I cannot imagine how frustrating this whole dynamic is for the twins and for Ari.  Makes me want to slap them.

  • Love 4
Link to comment
On 1/31/2018 at 6:01 PM, Impatient said:

Jeanette's mom fascinates me.  She is obviously a smart woman.  But 2 things about her always distract me:  the wig, of course.  But more than anything, the crossed eyes.  Can she see anything?

I agree that the other kids are starting to express how ridiculous this whole fixation on all things trans is.....

They should be in family therapy.  Together.  ALL of them

Thank you! Her crossed eyes bug me every time she is onscreen. I can see nothing else.

  • Love 1
Link to comment
On 1/31/2018 at 6:01 PM, Impatient said:

They should be in family therapy.  Together.  ALL of them

Sorta, but then the other three kids would be sucked into the whole Jazz-is-central issue. I think they've done the healthiest thing by just escaping. I think the parents and Jazz together is a great idea tho.

  • Love 2
Link to comment

I mean nothing bad by saying this but a child such as Jazz must be very stressful on a marriage.  She's very spoiled but a very good kid....but Jeanette does hover over her at the expense of Greg and the the other 3 children.

  • Love 1
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...