Dear Jazz,

I don’t know you and I am sure we will never meet. But like millions of others, I have seen you on your reality TV show ‘I am Jazz’, broadcast on TLC, and I feel I need to comment on this because you seem like such a lovely person who deserves so much better than what they got. I hope you made yourself a coffee or tea because this is going to be long!

To many viewers it is clear you have been exploited from childhood, for why should a child’s daily life, struggles, problems, and sensitive medical treatments have been recorded and broadcast to the whole world? TLC does not care about you nor about your family, they are just in this for the money. Your parents don’t appear to care much about you either as they have agreed to your exploitation and undoubtedly are benefitting from this in some way, whether it is financial or reputational or professional or emotional. And then there’s your brother Sander, who seems to have latched on to the attention you are getting to advance his own ‘fame’ and professional opportunities… (with little success, it seems).

Do you have sole access to all of the money made off of the display of your life? If not, why not? The show is about you, your (scripted) life, and this has been going on for eight seasons now (in 2023). There must have been many millions made through this show, your parents undoubtedly getting some of that money. Where is your share? Do you know how much money TLC made and how much your parents/family received for their participation? How much did you get? What about earnings from the children’s book you co-wrote? You are an adult now and should have full and sole access to most if not all of the money your family made off this show to use in any way you see fit, whether that is spending it all now, investing it, or leaving it in your bank account to use in the future.

All of what I am writing here is just my opinion, but not just of me it seems, as many people online are voicing the same concerns. We all care about you because you seem to be a kind, caring, bubbly and creative young person who was harmed for most of his life because as a young boy you displayed some stereotypically effeminate interests/behaviours and you may have been confused about what makes you a boy and not a girl.

Why were you not allowed to be a boy who likes mermaids and pink and glitter? Why were you not allowed to develop into a healthy teenage boy who may simply be gay? Why were you not given transgender-non-affirmative/’neutral’ therapy for any other mental health issues you may have experienced in childhood and adolescence, and instead you were put on this gender transition path? Did you have depression and anxiety before you had socially transitioned or before you were given puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones? Depression and anxiety are common issues, suffering from them does not mean you are transgender. Did you ever consider your other mental health issues may have been caused by or made worse by your social/medical transition and/or TLC filming and broadcasting your life? Maybe your family’s treatment of you has something to do with it too as they seem to be domineering and unkind to you.

Where would you have been at your current age had your parents not agreed to your TV show and not facilitated your transition? Would you have been an anonymous, healthy, young gay man now? Being gay might not be easy, but I imagine it must be a lot less hard than having medically transitioned… Would you have gone to Harvard, where it doesn’t seem like you fit best, or gone to maybe an art college instead? Would your mother be as overbearing as she currently is, or would she have learned to let all her kids, including you, grow up to become independent young adults? Would she still be tracking your phone location, demand any dates you go on are chaperoned by Sander, and would she demand you spend holidays at home (when you should probably be spending most of that time with your friends in your college town, maybe working a job, or traveling)?

Did you ever feel like you could ‘back out’ of your transgender identity and medical transition? Backing out of this is very hard for any (young) person because it will feel like losing face, having insisted for months or years that you ‘really know who you are’, incessantly asking to (medically) transition before parents finally give in (or did they not push back at all?), and demanding people use your chosen name and the opposite-sex pronouns. And then when you finally get what you want, for some people it turns out it isn’t right for them. You really can’t back out without losing face: people will have thoughts about this. However, that doesn’t mean you should not back out. How much harder would it have been for you with an international TV show and, I am assuming, financial gain for your family riding on this. I remember the episode in which you underwent hypnotherapy where you even say that you are a gay boy/man. I am surprised TLC left that in. Is that how you see yourself? Why was this not a moment for everyone involved to stop and think: ‘Is transition the best thing for Jazz?’.

What would your body and health be like had you not medically transitioned? Looking at your immediate relatives, it looks like you would have grown up to be a slim and fit young man, probably around 4-6" taller than you ended up being. At your current age you probably would have had plenty of solo sexual experience and probably also sexual experiences with others, with fully functional and unaltered healthy male genitalia. How different your body and sexual opportunities now appear to be…

Although gay and bi people have unique dating challenges compared with straight people, the challenges for trans-identifying people seem to be on a whole other level because most people, irrespective of their sexuality, are not interested in dating someone who identifies as transgender and/or who has medically transitioned. Maybe that makes most of us ‘transphobic’, but we don’t care: when it comes to who we have sexual/romantic relationships with, we will not let ourselves get pressured into doing this with someone we don’t 100% want this with. In other words: most of us are ‘super straight’, ‘super gay’, or ‘super bi’.

Jazz, you have a lot of beautiful features, but most straight men are not going to want to date you because they are attracted to females. Most gay men don’t want to date you either because they like males who look like men and who have male genitalia. Most lesbians don’t want to date you because they are attracted to other females. And straight women are not going to be interested in you because they like males to look like men and to have a penis. Since your genital surgery, you are no longer of interest to ‘chasers’ because the appeal to them is a female-looking body with male genitalia. This only leaves other trans-identifying people as possible sexual/romantic partners: a very small minority of the general population (interestingly, many of them don’t want to date another trans-identifying person). If that is who you are attracted to, more power to you, but it seems that you are looking to date males who present as men. Which males are you trying to attract? Straight men because it will ‘affirm’ your ‘gender’? You recently went on a date with a woman. It isn't clear whether this was something that naturally happened or whether you were encouraged/pushed to do so for the show. Maybe dating a woman seems like a less daunting prospect because she does not have a penis and will not insist on using your neovagina? I wish you the best of luck with your love life. Really.

Aside from the difficulty to find a sexual/romantic partner who is interested in you, most people do want to have (their own) children. Because you transitioned at such a young age and you have been castrated, you are not going to be able to father any children. Because you are not female, you will not be able to mother any children either. You are sterile and will never have your own child. With enough money you could still obtain a child one way or another but it may require exploitation of one or two females (for their eggs and to function as a gestational surrogate) and of a baby (for whom it is not in their best interest to be born into such a convoluted medical experiment). This would also only work if your partner were a fertile male or you will also be looking for a sperm donor resulting in a child that is not related to either you or your partner. Alternatively, you could look into adoption which is probably the way with the least ethical concerns and with the highest net benefit (an existing child who is in need of capable and loving parents is matched up with capable and loving parents). But adoption is expensive, time-consuming, you may end up not being approved, or you may only be able to adopt a slightly older child as infants available for adoption are rare, and then there are the unique challenges of raising an adopted child.

And what about your difficulties with food resulting in a large weight gain? Could this have anything to do with the hormones you are taking and/or with the fact that you have been castrated? Could this be aggravated by you using food and eating as a way to soothe yourself, as a way to celebrate, or as a way to beat boredom or to deal with stress? At 5’2” and 235 pounds your BMI is 43, which is considered morbidly obese. You appear to struggle with normal physical tasks despite being a young adult, when you were so sporty when you were younger. Your family doesn’t seem to help at all and instead makes your eating issues worse. Is it possible for you to take a big step back from your family?

What are you doing at Harvard? How did you get in? Isn’t Harvard extremely competitive with only the 1% of the 1% making it (with regards to intellectual abilities, commitment to academic study, work ethic)? Based on the TV show it does not seem like you are academically gifted nor that you have ambitions for which you really need to go to an Ivy League university. It appears that you may have gotten in for reasons other than your academic abilities and that your parents are the ones who are pushing you to attend this institution. It sounds like you are reconsidering Harvard, and I think you should. You are young so may not have everything figured out yet, but you will know whether the degree you are doing and the institution you are doing it at are the right fit for your life at this point, or not.

Based on the bits of your show that I have seen, and I have to say I haven’t seen everything, it looks like you are probably an effeminate young gay man who is caring, kind, bubbly, creative, and who would probably fit best at an art college. I am not convinced you are a ‘woman trapped in a man’s body’, whether that even exists or not, and that you are just an effeminate gay male who was not allowed to be who he is. Your family and TLC have been exploiting you for going on a decade now and they are not looking out for what is best for you. Looking in from the outside, I would suggest that you find your own lawyer to ensure that you have full and sole control of the finances that should be yours. I would quit the show. I would quit Harvard. I would move far away from your family, maybe even travel nationally or internationally, anonymously if possible. Be with yourself. Find your tribe, the people whom you get on with really well because of shared interests, shared lifestyle, shared worldviews, shared ambitions. I am willing to bet good money that once you have full control of your life, are away/low contact with family, and are no longer part of this TV show, you will be so much happier and shed the excess pounds within a year or two (although you should probably keep visiting an endocrinologist to ensure your hormone levels are appropriate).

Although you have been seriously harmed in so many ways including in ways you may not see or understand yet, all is not lost. You have options. You could continue your life presenting as a woman because aside from everyone in the USA knowing who you are, you do pass well (at least when your genital area is covered). You could also detransition and seek specialist medical care for this to start male hormones again and look into options to remove your gynaecomastia, if this is what you want. You should not rush anything, and it will become apparent to you how you want to move forward once you are living your life on your own terms away from TLC and away from helicopter parenting. Therapy with a skilled psychiatrist and psychologist who will not affirm your chosen gender but who instead will look at your issues holistically could be a first step to the rest of your life. Maybe you will one day write a book: I am sure many people are keen to learn how you really feel about everything that has happened to you. Maybe you want to step out of public life forever: this would be fully understandable as you have been on display enough.

I hope you will find a way to break free from TLC, to break free from your overbearing and abusive family members, and to step into an independent life as the young adult you are. I wish you a long, healthy, and happy life!