"I Am Jazz"'s Waking Nightmare: The Butter Bandits

(Season 7 Episode 3 of "I Am Jazz" Reaction))
#FreeJazz #JusticeforJazz

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In this episode, for the first time, we really get a glimpse at the milieu functioning of Jazz when the family is attempting to make a "healthy" dinner together. Surprising no one, Jazz's siblings use the opportunity to mistreat Jazz, bully him, insult him, and otherwise treat him like the family trashcan. When he responds predictably, by reaching for comfort, and attempting to assert some control over his immediate future, the vultures descend, and further explain all the ways that he's a complete failure as a son, brother, group member, and human being.

You also get a better look at Jazz's impaired cognititive functioning. Because recognizing his family's abusive intentions is verboten and a threat to Jazz's survival, the capacity simply has not developed. I would an anticipate low scores on social-pragmatic reasoning tests that are normed and standardized to adolescents. I have and regularly administer such a test for work. I know what kids who do well and do poorly on such tests look like because I have had opportunity to develop a reliable and valid discernment for such things. You can see his dependence on them. Rather than have a nurtured capacity to step back and reasonably (non-abusively) self-advocate for family to respect the plan put in place by the dietitian, he instead confabulates reasons why their abuse is objectively unreasonable, and in response to the social pragmatic deficit, the result is that ends up sounding abusive and unreasonable himself (reactive abuse), calling Ari a "bossy bitch" who "has a tendency to get hostile." I genuinely do not believe he currently has the capacity to live and function independently, and he will never develop such a capacity while he is living under their abusive, coercive, profit-driven control.

They use his eating disordered behavior against him and as a pretext to publicly denigrate him until he finally begs them to stop, at which one of the two people outside Grandma Speedfreak's warped bloodline finally steps in to defend him. In this episode, we also get more information about how devastating the surgery was, as Jazz states he did not even know if he'd ever run again. When he brings up this traumatic experience, he loses the floor, and the conversation instead becomes about much Noah likes having her shirt off. Jazz's score on the sitting rising test places him in the highest risk category for all-cause mortality within the next 6 years, with an estimated 5-6x increased risk.