Greg hears Jazz say that he is struggling to complete/understand his math homework, and then proceeds to INTERRUPT him, which is the WORST thing you can do to someone who is trying hard to complete a difficult task. It's not like he interrupted Jazz for a GOOD reason, or an emergency. What a horrible father.
I wonder if Jazz's reported moustache nightmares don't have a darker origin. Flying beards and 'staches "attaching to [his] face."--this sounds an awful lot like an unwanted kiss from a threatening male figure. Was jazz molested????
Jazz makes the provocative comment about boobs/watermelons to lower the temperature after broaching an uncomfortable topic with his siblings. It is his way of saying "you still love me, right, I'll do the thing that makes people love me, I hope you still love me, so I will Say The Line."
My heart breaks for all these children, but ESPECIALLY for Jazz and Ari.
As a survivor myself, I don’t think you’re wrong regarding a possible/likely darker origin for Jazz’s moustache nightmares. Ex has touched on this before at various points along the way.
Thank you Cait, I really appreciate your compassion and kindness. My childhood experiences were over 35 years ago, and I’m only beginning to find some measure of peace now.
I’m watching on in horror as Jazz’s life and complex trauma is reduced to entertainment for the masses. In such a vulnerable situation, may he somehow find his peace in the midst of extreme family dysfunction and exploitation.
Regarding the first part of your comment: Jazz’s family has always gone out of their way to make him fail at everything so he remains completely helpless and dependent upon them. This is especially obvious in the more recent episodes that Exulansic has critiqued, where Jazz can’t even enroll in classes for his second year of university without his family all standing around him mocking him. His need for them to help him at this stage is concerning already—he should know how to do it by now— but then they fail to even offer any help.
I also have to wonder what the puberty blockers and hormones at such a young age has done to his brain development. The Drs pretend that puberty is only physical attributes, never mentioning what his entire body and brain development are also going to be significant.
Can you explain what you mean when you mention the producers of the show pressuring Greg not to get Jeannete a gift, due to social judgement outside the family? I am having trouble understanding how it fits together.
Assuming the whole story about how Jeanette isn't his mother isn't completely scripted, my interpretation is that the producers would have pressured him TO get a gift and otherwise participate in order to not draw negative judgment from viewers.
Ah, I see, yes that makes sense to me that the producers can sense the utter sociopathy in Greg and need to prod him to not come across as utterly unpalatable to millions of boomer viewers who will accept all manner of atrocity as long as a veneer of "niceness" covers it. Forgive my initial obtuseness as I am watching this to distract from a bad tooth ache!
Now I'm confused. I thought the producers would WANT the father to give the mother a gift on Mother's Day.. Veneer of "niceness" covering up hurtful policies like "gender affirming"--when it's really gender disaffirming.
Me too. I would urge him to give her a gift. Makes him look like a caring husband/father and part of the family. However, didn't Cait say the producers pressured him NOT to give her a gift?
Why does your comment target “boomer” viewers specifically? Why would the boomers have something to get upset about, but the younger generation that tends to center their whole personality off of being easily offended would not??
I just think we need to be careful when placing strangers into large groups and then make assumptions about their character or personality based off that arbitrary categorization. Saying that liberal boomers will always think/act like “this” is just as bad as Biden saying crap like, “if you don’t vote for me, you’re not black.”
Additionally, while I’m on the topic lol, the “boomer” term alone is problematic. I assumed you meant the old, white, Trump-is-the-Messiah crowd; but you were actually talking about people who embody the exact opposite of that stereotype.
....Whenever we choose to be catty rather than precise with our language, misunderstandings occur and the conversation looses its course. Just because we disagree with someone doesn’t mean we need to be disparaging toward them. If we are going to go that route, then we are just as childish as the gender ideologues who think everyone “not on their side” is a disrespectful TERF that deserves to be aggressively silenced and approached violently at every opportunity. 🙄
Our society needs to relearn that it’s okay to agree to disagree. Mutual respect is what pushes conversations forward-- generalizations and derogatory name-calling doesn’t. (Just food for thought from someone who may be classified as a “conservative boomer.” I’m not sure about the age cut-off for that designation 😜) ❤️
Could you help me with something else, though? I’m trying to become a paid subscriber to Excul’s content, but it keeps placing me in the free subscriber category and doesn’t give me the option to purchase... do you know what I’m doing wrong?? I know this is a pretty broad question, so if you can’t help I totally understand. I just figured it was worth a shot to ask 🙂
He doesn't have sperm, so will the sperm come from his boyfriend? The focus on MOTHERHOOD seems to ignore the contribution of the male. Many childless females enjoy their nieces/nephews. My best friend in high school proved unable to conceive--so, instead, she doted on her sister's children. So let Ari get married, have children--and Jazz can enjoy mothering them. Doting aunt!
It seems insane that all viewers just go along with this trans fantasy of unicorns and flowers. It's fine that the trans woman gets everything she wants. You, too, can enjoy motherhood after you transition. People must cater to your desires.
I looked up definition of surrogate mother. If Ari becomes Jazz's surrogate, then does she surrender all rights to her baby? So the baby leaves her and comes to live with Jazz and his partner? In my fantasy they were sharing parental experience. What will happen?
Seems he's like Rumpelstiltskin. The parents have promised Ari's first born child to the "little man" who spun straw into gold by becoming the star of the TV show and made his parents also stars.
Don't get your dander identity mixed up with Greg's dandy identity.
One thing that absolutely must come out of this horror is a rule against exploiting minors on "reality TV" that is actually just abusive manipulation dressed up as entertainment.
In her work _Intercourse_ there's a long discussion of a short story about a man who has sex with a woman in a hole who has a sandy vulva. Here's part of it:
At first, close to civilization
and its ways, the man’s sexuality is in looking: “A sand-covered
woman was perhaps attractive to look at but hardly to touch. ” 17
But the pure physicality of the sand slowly makes him concretize
his own responses; the body is real in the sand;
abstraction is useless. What he feels, he feels physically. The
sand is so extreme, so intense, so much itself, so absolute, that
it determines the quality and boundaries of his consciousness,
which changes from being vaguely, dully mental to being
acutely, if painfully, alive in physical labor, physical feeling,
physical survival. This is not pleasant or nice; it cannot be
judged from a comfortable mental distance as physical experience
in civilization is in fact judged; there is no escape into
equivocation or effete human arrogance:
And then his feet began to sink into the sand. Before he knew
whether he was making progress or not, he was buried up to
his knees and seemed to have lost all power o f movement.
Then he attempted frantically to scramble up on all fours. The
burning sand scorched his palms. Sweat poured from his
whole body. Sand and sweat blinded him. Soon he had cramps
in his legs and was unable to move them at all. 18
The sand causes physical response, even erection: “A little
flow of sand, along with his trousers, slid over the base of his
member and fell along his thighs.. . . Slowly, but surely, with a
pumping like that of a water pipe in which the water has been
Don't all young kids have fears around body hair? I was incredibly upset about developing female body hair (and it didn't help that I was the oldest and one of my siblings who didn't realise it would be their fate one day too, took to announcing to people that I was 'hairy'). It's not called growing pains for nothing, you just have to suck it up.
I am 67. I took testoserone in my late 20s for endometriosis. I now have a severe overweight problem and facial hair that requires waxing each month. It is a nightmare, you're right. Selling this stuff to kids should be a crime, the same as any dangerous controlled drug.
What I also found interesting, given that we know in later episodes that Jazz is also attracted to woman, is the assumption that it is Ari that will be the surrogate, and Jazz will be in what appears to be a heterosexual relationship (i.e., with a man--who they all presume will be able to produce sperm, so not a transgender person who was denied puberty). At no point does anyone wonder whether Jazz will be with a woman, and therefore one of the twins would, uh, help out.
It's interesting in retrospect and also telling of how little Jazz understands at this point, that he's willing to just blithely say, oh yea, Ari can risk her life 8 times for me (or even once!).
Edited to add: This is particularly an interesting point to me, because of course we see Sander in later seasons being pressured to date a trans woman, because trans women are women -- here, of course, there's an assumption that Jazz would not be with a trans person who had been denied puberty, because that person wouldn't be able to "throw some sperm" into Ari or whatever crude thing they said.
Poor Ari. I always felt (hoped) she may secretly terf-out. Jazz and Jeanette planning that Ari's destiny would be to be Jazz's handmaid and nanny to his 8 children; not forgetting all that fuss about Jazz (the academic genius) getting into Harvard. Whatever, Ari skipped a few seasons of this horrific 'show', she was away at college, studying for a PHD!
The Harvard admission is a joke. The show probably gave them a very nice donation and the school had it's DEI score raised by a lot. That's why some of these big companies are catering to them or selling tuck bathing suits for kids in target. Didn't he have to leave school for his mental health as well, plus gain a ton of weight? The messed up thing is that most of the family, procedures, and the doctors are all very aware that he's miserable but they have to keep the charade going, especially Jazz because he has no choice but to stay on the road his sick Mom put him on. He can't de transition, because of the pressure and because he is completely mutilated and never knew anything but trans, and they are banking on him to keep the money coming in. That mother should be arrested not only for Jazz but also for having the show normalize this crap and neglect
The Ari thing was so upsetting and a little triggering? My dad will make inappropriate sexual comments similar to the Jennings family and nothing makes me want to crawl out of my skin more. Having to have a family conversation about how jazz and your mom want to turkey baste you? Bye. Disgusting
It would be really interesting to hear the real conversations that Ari and her 2 brothers have with their real friends away from the cameras. Wouldn't it be funny if they were really conservative and against transition. All the kidding aside, I get the feeling that the brain of Jazz knows it is xy male heterosexual and keeps trying to reset itself back to factory (GOD created) settings - in the beginning. Jazz claimed she was a lesbian so she could date women. When she was confronted about it, the show made "her" date a man.
Honestly, I think it is so sad, I believe, if Jazz, had just been allowed to be Jazz and not have puberty blockers or opposite sex hormones, Jazz would have worn female clothing, used makeup, hung out with "her" friends, and at some point puberty would have kicked in, Jazz would have met a girl, felt the tingle of a first crush and returned to openly being male. I know there are some human beings who were born wanting to express themselves and live as what they perceive is the opposite sex. The grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side. When I was in my early 20s I would tell guys - if I was a guy my life would be perfect, and the funny part is, they would explain some of the heartache and difficulty of being a man - I said, it must be great to be a man, you get a woman pregnant and you don't have to go through the pain of labor and delivery - and my guy friend said, "but I am there with her, as she is going through the worst pain of her life, it is so hard to watch someone you love go through that much pain". I never thought about a different perspective until I actually talked to a man. It is funny how I perceived the opposite sex, there are so many things I imagined about being a man, but, hearing the actual experiences of a xy male really made me see things differently - we all have things to contend with in life. I imagined, if I just became a male, my life would be perfect - it is funny to learn that we all have problems, there is no "perfect" life. The grass IS always greener because there is a different kind of manure (the polite word) fertilizing it.
Thoughts 24 min in:
Greg hears Jazz say that he is struggling to complete/understand his math homework, and then proceeds to INTERRUPT him, which is the WORST thing you can do to someone who is trying hard to complete a difficult task. It's not like he interrupted Jazz for a GOOD reason, or an emergency. What a horrible father.
I wonder if Jazz's reported moustache nightmares don't have a darker origin. Flying beards and 'staches "attaching to [his] face."--this sounds an awful lot like an unwanted kiss from a threatening male figure. Was jazz molested????
Jazz makes the provocative comment about boobs/watermelons to lower the temperature after broaching an uncomfortable topic with his siblings. It is his way of saying "you still love me, right, I'll do the thing that makes people love me, I hope you still love me, so I will Say The Line."
My heart breaks for all these children, but ESPECIALLY for Jazz and Ari.
As a survivor myself, I don’t think you’re wrong regarding a possible/likely darker origin for Jazz’s moustache nightmares. Ex has touched on this before at various points along the way.
I'm sorry that this happened to you, and I am sending you compassion and peace.
Thank you Cait, I really appreciate your compassion and kindness. My childhood experiences were over 35 years ago, and I’m only beginning to find some measure of peace now.
I’m watching on in horror as Jazz’s life and complex trauma is reduced to entertainment for the masses. In such a vulnerable situation, may he somehow find his peace in the midst of extreme family dysfunction and exploitation.
Take care
Regarding the first part of your comment: Jazz’s family has always gone out of their way to make him fail at everything so he remains completely helpless and dependent upon them. This is especially obvious in the more recent episodes that Exulansic has critiqued, where Jazz can’t even enroll in classes for his second year of university without his family all standing around him mocking him. His need for them to help him at this stage is concerning already—he should know how to do it by now— but then they fail to even offer any help.
I also have to wonder what the puberty blockers and hormones at such a young age has done to his brain development. The Drs pretend that puberty is only physical attributes, never mentioning what his entire body and brain development are also going to be significant.
I found itnweird how dad was sitting next to jazz in his bed
Can you explain what you mean when you mention the producers of the show pressuring Greg not to get Jeannete a gift, due to social judgement outside the family? I am having trouble understanding how it fits together.
Assuming the whole story about how Jeanette isn't his mother isn't completely scripted, my interpretation is that the producers would have pressured him TO get a gift and otherwise participate in order to not draw negative judgment from viewers.
Ah, I see, yes that makes sense to me that the producers can sense the utter sociopathy in Greg and need to prod him to not come across as utterly unpalatable to millions of boomer viewers who will accept all manner of atrocity as long as a veneer of "niceness" covers it. Forgive my initial obtuseness as I am watching this to distract from a bad tooth ache!
Now I'm confused. I thought the producers would WANT the father to give the mother a gift on Mother's Day.. Veneer of "niceness" covering up hurtful policies like "gender affirming"--when it's really gender disaffirming.
Yes, they do. Seems like greg wouldnt give her a gift if not for the producers
Me too. I would urge him to give her a gift. Makes him look like a caring husband/father and part of the family. However, didn't Cait say the producers pressured him NOT to give her a gift?
I hope your tooth ache gets better
Why does your comment target “boomer” viewers specifically? Why would the boomers have something to get upset about, but the younger generation that tends to center their whole personality off of being easily offended would not??
The liberal boomers who are the intended audience for the IAJ propaganda don't like it when their aspirational programs aren't "nice."
I just think we need to be careful when placing strangers into large groups and then make assumptions about their character or personality based off that arbitrary categorization. Saying that liberal boomers will always think/act like “this” is just as bad as Biden saying crap like, “if you don’t vote for me, you’re not black.”
Additionally, while I’m on the topic lol, the “boomer” term alone is problematic. I assumed you meant the old, white, Trump-is-the-Messiah crowd; but you were actually talking about people who embody the exact opposite of that stereotype.
....Whenever we choose to be catty rather than precise with our language, misunderstandings occur and the conversation looses its course. Just because we disagree with someone doesn’t mean we need to be disparaging toward them. If we are going to go that route, then we are just as childish as the gender ideologues who think everyone “not on their side” is a disrespectful TERF that deserves to be aggressively silenced and approached violently at every opportunity. 🙄
Our society needs to relearn that it’s okay to agree to disagree. Mutual respect is what pushes conversations forward-- generalizations and derogatory name-calling doesn’t. (Just food for thought from someone who may be classified as a “conservative boomer.” I’m not sure about the age cut-off for that designation 😜) ❤️
Could you help me with something else, though? I’m trying to become a paid subscriber to Excul’s content, but it keeps placing me in the free subscriber category and doesn’t give me the option to purchase... do you know what I’m doing wrong?? I know this is a pretty broad question, so if you can’t help I totally understand. I just figured it was worth a shot to ask 🙂
Raging at how casually Jazz states that Ari would be his surrogate. Hideous stuff. Wonder where he learned that lack of boundaries and consent.
He doesn't have sperm, so will the sperm come from his boyfriend? The focus on MOTHERHOOD seems to ignore the contribution of the male. Many childless females enjoy their nieces/nephews. My best friend in high school proved unable to conceive--so, instead, she doted on her sister's children. So let Ari get married, have children--and Jazz can enjoy mothering them. Doting aunt!
Yes he said his husband will knock her up
It seems insane that all viewers just go along with this trans fantasy of unicorns and flowers. It's fine that the trans woman gets everything she wants. You, too, can enjoy motherhood after you transition. People must cater to your desires.
There just is no bottom that they ever hit. I mean, wow… 🤦♀️
I looked up definition of surrogate mother. If Ari becomes Jazz's surrogate, then does she surrender all rights to her baby? So the baby leaves her and comes to live with Jazz and his partner? In my fantasy they were sharing parental experience. What will happen?
Right it would be Ari giving up parental rights and jazz would then adopt Ari's biological child.
Seems he's like Rumpelstiltskin. The parents have promised Ari's first born child to the "little man" who spun straw into gold by becoming the star of the TV show and made his parents also stars.
Telling, too, that they get each other bracelets, manacles, shackling, handcuffs, no escape. What a hideous metaphor.
Yeah i find wearing bracelets on my dominant hand gets in the way of writing snd drawing.
Don't get your dander identity mixed up with Greg's dandy identity.
One thing that absolutely must come out of this horror is a rule against exploiting minors on "reality TV" that is actually just abusive manipulation dressed up as entertainment.
Agree!!!
for historical purposes, Jeanette is really showing us the worst of 2010's fashion
Thank you for this comment.
I don't get the Dworkin reference at around 40:24
In her work _Intercourse_ there's a long discussion of a short story about a man who has sex with a woman in a hole who has a sandy vulva. Here's part of it:
At first, close to civilization
and its ways, the man’s sexuality is in looking: “A sand-covered
woman was perhaps attractive to look at but hardly to touch. ” 17
But the pure physicality of the sand slowly makes him concretize
his own responses; the body is real in the sand;
abstraction is useless. What he feels, he feels physically. The
sand is so extreme, so intense, so much itself, so absolute, that
it determines the quality and boundaries of his consciousness,
which changes from being vaguely, dully mental to being
acutely, if painfully, alive in physical labor, physical feeling,
physical survival. This is not pleasant or nice; it cannot be
judged from a comfortable mental distance as physical experience
in civilization is in fact judged; there is no escape into
equivocation or effete human arrogance:
And then his feet began to sink into the sand. Before he knew
whether he was making progress or not, he was buried up to
his knees and seemed to have lost all power o f movement.
Then he attempted frantically to scramble up on all fours. The
burning sand scorched his palms. Sweat poured from his
whole body. Sand and sweat blinded him. Soon he had cramps
in his legs and was unable to move them at all. 18
The sand causes physical response, even erection: “A little
flow of sand, along with his trousers, slid over the base of his
member and fell along his thighs.. . . Slowly, but surely, with a
pumping like that of a water pipe in which the water has been
turned off, his member began to fill again. ”
Oh. There was a South Park episode where Cartman kept accusing Kyle of having sand in his vagina.
https://youtu.be/LqcIrveKjVs?si=FnLyikeR1JYesNOL
I wonder if South Park writers got the idea from Dworkin or if "getting sand in your vagina" was a thing outside of Dworkin
Don't all young kids have fears around body hair? I was incredibly upset about developing female body hair (and it didn't help that I was the oldest and one of my siblings who didn't realise it would be their fate one day too, took to announcing to people that I was 'hairy'). It's not called growing pains for nothing, you just have to suck it up.
Christmas is early!
I am 67. I took testoserone in my late 20s for endometriosis. I now have a severe overweight problem and facial hair that requires waxing each month. It is a nightmare, you're right. Selling this stuff to kids should be a crime, the same as any dangerous controlled drug.
Too bad Jazz's mom wasn't as protective of Jazz's health and body parts as she was to a few pieces of junk.
What I also found interesting, given that we know in later episodes that Jazz is also attracted to woman, is the assumption that it is Ari that will be the surrogate, and Jazz will be in what appears to be a heterosexual relationship (i.e., with a man--who they all presume will be able to produce sperm, so not a transgender person who was denied puberty). At no point does anyone wonder whether Jazz will be with a woman, and therefore one of the twins would, uh, help out.
It's interesting in retrospect and also telling of how little Jazz understands at this point, that he's willing to just blithely say, oh yea, Ari can risk her life 8 times for me (or even once!).
Edited to add: This is particularly an interesting point to me, because of course we see Sander in later seasons being pressured to date a trans woman, because trans women are women -- here, of course, there's an assumption that Jazz would not be with a trans person who had been denied puberty, because that person wouldn't be able to "throw some sperm" into Ari or whatever crude thing they said.
Andrea Dworkin would be sooooooooo proud :D
Poor Ari. I always felt (hoped) she may secretly terf-out. Jazz and Jeanette planning that Ari's destiny would be to be Jazz's handmaid and nanny to his 8 children; not forgetting all that fuss about Jazz (the academic genius) getting into Harvard. Whatever, Ari skipped a few seasons of this horrific 'show', she was away at college, studying for a PHD!
The Harvard admission is a joke. The show probably gave them a very nice donation and the school had it's DEI score raised by a lot. That's why some of these big companies are catering to them or selling tuck bathing suits for kids in target. Didn't he have to leave school for his mental health as well, plus gain a ton of weight? The messed up thing is that most of the family, procedures, and the doctors are all very aware that he's miserable but they have to keep the charade going, especially Jazz because he has no choice but to stay on the road his sick Mom put him on. He can't de transition, because of the pressure and because he is completely mutilated and never knew anything but trans, and they are banking on him to keep the money coming in. That mother should be arrested not only for Jazz but also for having the show normalize this crap and neglect
Jazz is Greg in a dress at 10:12- complete with the same gaslighting of his siblings
The Ari thing was so upsetting and a little triggering? My dad will make inappropriate sexual comments similar to the Jennings family and nothing makes me want to crawl out of my skin more. Having to have a family conversation about how jazz and your mom want to turkey baste you? Bye. Disgusting
It would be really interesting to hear the real conversations that Ari and her 2 brothers have with their real friends away from the cameras. Wouldn't it be funny if they were really conservative and against transition. All the kidding aside, I get the feeling that the brain of Jazz knows it is xy male heterosexual and keeps trying to reset itself back to factory (GOD created) settings - in the beginning. Jazz claimed she was a lesbian so she could date women. When she was confronted about it, the show made "her" date a man.
Honestly, I think it is so sad, I believe, if Jazz, had just been allowed to be Jazz and not have puberty blockers or opposite sex hormones, Jazz would have worn female clothing, used makeup, hung out with "her" friends, and at some point puberty would have kicked in, Jazz would have met a girl, felt the tingle of a first crush and returned to openly being male. I know there are some human beings who were born wanting to express themselves and live as what they perceive is the opposite sex. The grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side. When I was in my early 20s I would tell guys - if I was a guy my life would be perfect, and the funny part is, they would explain some of the heartache and difficulty of being a man - I said, it must be great to be a man, you get a woman pregnant and you don't have to go through the pain of labor and delivery - and my guy friend said, "but I am there with her, as she is going through the worst pain of her life, it is so hard to watch someone you love go through that much pain". I never thought about a different perspective until I actually talked to a man. It is funny how I perceived the opposite sex, there are so many things I imagined about being a man, but, hearing the actual experiences of a xy male really made me see things differently - we all have things to contend with in life. I imagined, if I just became a male, my life would be perfect - it is funny to learn that we all have problems, there is no "perfect" life. The grass IS always greener because there is a different kind of manure (the polite word) fertilizing it.