#Dutch protocol

[coochiequeens]

Common sense is returning.

James Crisp, EUROPE EDITOR 13 April 2024

Dr Hilary Cass said children who think they are transgender should not be given any hormone drugs at all until at least 18 CREDIT: Yui Mok

Belgium and the Netherlands have become the latest countries to question the use of puberty blockers on children after the Cass Review warned of a lack of research on the gender treatment’s long-term effects.

Britain has become the fifth European nation to restrict the use of the drug to those under 18 after initially making them part of their gender treatments.

Their use was based on the “Dutch protocol” - the term used for the practice pioneered in the Netherlands in 1998 and copied around the world, of treating gender dysphoric youth using puberty blockers.

The NHS stopped prescribing the drug, which is meant to curb the trauma of a body maturing into a gender that the patient does not identify with this month.

In Belgium, doctors have called for gender treatment rules to be changed.

Research into impact

“In our opinion, Belgium must reform gender care in children and adolescents following the example of Sweden and Finland, where hormones are regarded as the last resort,” the report by three paediatricians and psychiatrists in Leuven said.

Figures from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom show that more than 95 per cent of individuals who initiated puberty inhibition continue with gender-affirming treatments,” the report by P Vankrunkelsven P, K Casteels K and J De Vleminck said.

“However, when young people with gender dysphoria go through their natural puberty, these feelings will only persist in about 15 per cent.”

The report was published after a 60 per cent rise in the number of Belgium teenagers taking the blockers to stop the development of their bodies. In 2022, 684 people between the ages of nine and 17 were prescribed the drug compared to 432 in 2019, the De Morgen newspaper reported in 2019.

Pressure is also building in the neighbouring Netherlands to look again at their use. The parliament has ordered research into the impact of puberty blockers on adolescent’s physical and mental health.

Dutch protocol

The Telegraph understands that the Amsterdam Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria, where the protocol originated, is set to make a statement on the use of puberty blockers next week.

“I too thought that the Dutch gender care was very careful and evidence-based. But now I don’t think that any more,” Jilles Smids, a postdoctoral researcher in medical ethics at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, told The Atlantic.

Attitudes in the Netherlands have hardened against trans rights, with a bill to make it easier for people to legally change their gender being held up in parliament.

The Cass Review said that the NHS had moved away from the restrictions of the original Dutch protocol, and researchers in Belgium have also demanded those restrictions be reintroduced.

Belgium is regarded as one of the most trans-friendly countries in Europe. A minister in the government is transgender and people have been able to legally change their gender without a medical certificate for the past five years.

But the hard-Right Vlaams Belang party is currently leading the polls ahead of national and European elections in June.

It has called for “hormone therapy and sex surgery to be halted for underage patients until clear and concrete research has been carried out.”

‘Greatest ethical scandals’

In March, a report in France described sex reassignment in minors as potentially “one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine”.

Conservative French senators plan to introduce a bill to ban gender transition treatments for under-18s.

On Monday, the Vatican’s doctrine office published a report that branded gender surgery a grave violation of human dignity on a par with euthanasia and abortion.

Finland was one of the first countries to adopt the Dutch protocol but realised many of its patients did not meet the Protocol’s strict eligibility requirements for the drugs.

It restricted the treatment in 2020 and recommended psychotherapy as the primary care.

Sweden restricted hormone treatments to “exceptional cases” two years later. In December, Norwegian authorities designated the medicine as “under trial”, which means they will only be prescribed to adolescents in clinical trials.

Denmark is finalising new guidelines limiting hormone treatments to teenagers who have had dysphoria since early childhood.

In 2020, Hungary passed a law banning gender changes on legal documents.

“The import and the use of these hormone products are not banned, but subject to case by case approval, however, it is certain that no authority would approve such an application for people under 18,“ a spokesperson told The Telegraph.

In August, Russia criminalised all gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatments.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Bernard Lane

By: Mar 5, 2024

The gist

The puberty blocker-driven “Dutch protocol” of medicalised gender change—administered to ever more teenagers around the world—appears more likely to come under serious scrutiny in its home country.

The parliament of the Netherlands has now passed two motions this year calling for a closer look.

On February 27, with a majority of 101 out of 150 votes, the parliament approved a motion asking the government to commission research.

This would compare the outcomes of the Dutch protocol with the results of new, more cautious treatment policies in other European countries, such as Sweden, where non-invasive psychosocial techniques are now favoured as first-line responses to gender distress.

On January 25, the parliament approved a motion—proposed by Diederik van Dijk of the conservative Calvinist Reformed Political Party (SGP)—that the government seek advice from the independent Health Council on the medico-legal implications of medicalised gender change for minors.

Both motions were opposed by the temporary Health Minister of the Dutch administration in caretaker mode, but cabinet negotiations are under way and expected to produce a new, more responsive government reflecting the success of centre-right and populist-right parties in last November’s elections.

“I think this [second motion] will exert extra pressure on the new minister of health to initiate a review of the puberty blockers in one way or another, be it the Health Council or another institution,” said media sociologist Dr Peter Vasterman, who has been calling for independent evaluation of gender medicine in the Netherlands before any expansion of capacity.

“We don’t have a new government yet, but it will probably be a right-wing variant. So, there is a good chance that this topic will finally be put on the agenda and a review will be conducted of current trans care.”

--

The detail

Parties supporting the February 27 motion included the centre-right New Social Contract (NSC) party of Peter Omtzigt, the right-wing populist Party For Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders and the populist-right Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) of Caroline van der Plas. The motion was spon.sored by NSC member Dr Rosanne Hertzberger.

Among those opposed to the motion were GreenLeft-Labor (GL-PvdA), the social-liberal party D66, the Socialist Party (SP) and the Christian Democratic Appeal party (CDA).

The objections raised by Health Minister Pia Dijkstra, of the D66 party, included privacy risk, the difficulty of the research proposed, the redundant nature of the research proposed, and the ethics of using randomised clinical trials (something not proposed by anyone).

Dr Hanneke Kouwenberg, a Dutch radiologist and nuclear physician who has followed the gender clinic debate, said she was angry at the denial and hypocrisy of parties seeking to block the motion.

“As often happens, opponents of a more fundamental scientific approach in this debate do not substantiate their position with arguments, but rather with emotional blackmail,” she told GCN.

“It is deeply disturbing that research aiming to examine whether Dutch gender care has better outcomes than other countries, which indeed might substantiate the claim of successful selection of treatment candidates, is being vilified by parties perceived as ‘progressive’ and ‘left wing,’ whilst the minister goes so far as to call such research ‘unethical’—which is especially bizarre since no intervention is needed in the proposed research.

“It once again shows how much the parties resisting [inquiries] do not have the interests of minors, nor quality of care, in mind, but consciously and repeatedly close their eyes to a practice whose benefits have never been substantiated but whose drawbacks are increasingly coming to light.” 

“More and more teenage girls are choosing to change their gender around the world. In Quebec, the health system responds very quickly to their requests for medical transition by prescribing blockers, testosterone and mastectomies. These young girls often present with several mental health problems and many wonder if we give ourselves the time to evaluate everything that is going on in their heads. Is it normal for a 14-year-old girl to get a testosterone prescription within minutes? And what happens when they change their minds?”—Documentary, the French-language arm of Canada’s CBC public broadcaster, 29 February 2024

Watch the ethics

A spokeswoman for the group Genderpunt, which advocates for more open debate about gender medicalisation, said the Dr Hertzberger’s February motion with its focus on comparative outcomes might seem more palatable to government, although she suggested that if the job were given to Dutch gender researchers it might be undermined by “gender-affirming” groupthink.

She said it was possible that the ethical and medico-legal analysis called for by Mr van Dijk’s January motion would prove “far more interesting.”

“Is it ethically justified to take the risk that a minor will, in the long-term, regret gender-affirming care and have to deal with the consequences for the rest of his life? How is this child protected by national and international law (like the Convention on the Rights of the Child).”

Science: egalitarian or authoritarian?

Before her recent election to parliament Dr Hertzberger was a microbiologist studying the little understood bacterial makeup of the human vagina, a field with implications for the reproductive and sexual health of women.

“For instance, it is unclear why humans are the only apes with this high acidity and dominance of Lactobacillus whereas these characteristics are absent in other primates. Why is the human vagina such a good host for these specific bacteria?” she says on her website.

She carried out her research thanks to the hospitality of a lab at the VU University Amsterdam, which is also home to the gender centre whose Dutch protocol for “juvenile transsexuals” culminates for males in castration and the surgical creation of a pseudo vagina.

Dr Hertzberger has practised “citizen science” with the rationale of engaging ordinary women in research to develop a probiotic to modify the vaginal microbiome. She is also an advocate for “open science” whereby all findings, even negative results, are made public.

“The general aim is to increase scientific efficiency by sharing as much information as possible with other scientists and the general public,” she says.

She has also reflected on the role of science in society, publishing an essay with the title The great nothing: Why we have too much faith in science. Her thesis is that science is muscling into the moral vacuum left by organised religion.

“I see a new generation of Western secular policymakers, politicians, administrators, thinkers, writers, entrepreneurs and leaders who no longer see science as a tool for generating knowledge, but as a new infallible authority; an all-knowing judge who decides what is good and what is evil,” she writes.

Video: Dutch MPs debate gender clinics

Vision necessary

Dr Hertzberger’s motion was put in the context of the international scientific debate over youth gender dysphoria and reports to the Dutch parliament acknowledging missing data and a “lack of visibility” into local gender patients.

A familiar narrative in the Netherlands has been that the pioneering Dutch protocol was a source of pride and that any concerns arose from its less careful application in other countries. However, the rigour and ethics of the key Dutch studies establishing the protocol have recently come under much sharper scrutiny both in the Netherlands and internationally.

During the February 15 debate of motions proposed by her and other MPs, Dr Hertzberger said: “The decision to treat these children with puberty inhibitors is taken at an early age, 14 to 15 years on average, during a period of major hormonal, physical and mental changes, based on symptoms that are not objectively quantifiable.”

“We have seen in recent years how other European countries have become more reluctant to treat minors according to the so-called ‘Dutch protocol’. More importantly, the reports before us today show a lack of visibility [into Dutch gender patients].

“We see in Sweden, for example, that they have temporarily really stopped puberty inhibitors altogether and only allowed them in experimental settings. We are very curious to see what happens to that cohort of patients in the end and how their wellbeing goes.

“This [shift to more cautious treatment] comes not only from politics and not only from society, but also from healthcare itself and from science.”

“The Endocrine Society (ES) is updating its clinical practice guidelines on ‘gender-affirming care.’ ES, however, appears to be putting its thumb on the scale in favor of medical interventions by appointing experts with serious conflicts of interest to its guideline-development group, ignoring its own standards for how to write trustworthy medical recommendations, and trying to keep the process hidden from the public.”—Leor Sapir, news article, City Journal, 27 February 2024

“It’s noteworthy that most of the authors of ES’s 2017 clinical practice guidelines were also big names at WPATH [the World Professional Association for Transgender Health]. Two—Peggy Cohen-Kettenis and Louis Gooren—were Dutch pioneers of pediatric gender medicine. Despite the perception that ES and WPATH are separate entities, and that recommendations on behalf of ‘gender-affirming care’ are not just made by trans advocacy groups but also by run-of-the-mill U.S. medical groups, the truth is that WPATH members used ES as a guise for embedding hormonal interventions as an accepted standard of care in the United States.”

Why the data drama?

Aside from her successful motion, Dr Hertzberger put up another which did not go forward. This sought data to compare people diagnosed and treated in Dutch gender clinics with those on waiting lists.

She noted that the patient group seen today—dominated by teenage females—was different from the past group of mostly males with gender distress stretching back to early childhood.

“I am really puzzled by this [resistance of some MPs to requests for more data], because there is a report [to parliament] that says there is too little visibility into this group [of patients] and the medicalisation of this growing group of children and adults,” she said.

“We are particularly interested in the children. We see major changes in recent years in European countries that have changed their standard of care [Finland was first in 2020, followed by Sweden in 2022 and England issued a new, cautious draft treatment policy in 2023—GCN.]

“Surely that is a goldmine of data which, by the way, we can easily collect in anonymised and aggregated form, as we so often do.

“I really want to ask [Health Minister Dijkstra] why she does not want more data on this important development [in gender dysphoria], which also has medical-ethical consequences,” Dr Hertzberger said.

Dr Vasterman told GCN that it was quite reasonable to request current data on patient registrations, diagnoses and treatment at Dutch gender clinics.

“It is unacceptable that no new data has been provided for years now, which makes it very difficult to evaluate current trends, such as the shift in sex ratio [of patients] and the rise of non-binary identity among young girls.

“These developments have huge impact on the needs for trans care but without data it is difficult to develop new a policy.”

“Despite claims that blocking puberty gives time for decision-making, no one can answer the obvious: How is it possible for a child to discover ‘This isn’t as bad as I feared,’ when they are blocked from experiencing it? Fears are resolved by confronting them, not avoiding them.”—Sexual behaviour scientist Dr James M Cantor, tweet, 3 March 2024

Not our problem

Dr Kouwenberg said that “Dutch politics has long acted as if there were no problem with the Dutch protocol,” despite last October’s breakthrough Zembla documentary on the flawed design of key studies, critiques in international journals and the shift to caution of progressive European countries.

“And if there were a problem, it was invariably stated that the problems abroad were due to a poor selection of candidates for puberty blockers, that in the Netherlands, work was being done very carefully, and only children who were actually ‘trans’ [those whose gender dysphoria would not desist with the passage of time] would be treated with puberty blockers. The concerns of critics were always dismissed as moral panic and fear-mongering,” Dr Kouwenberg told GCN.

“It comes as no surprise that there is actually no test, let alone a validated one, to distinguish desisters from persisters prospectively, and Dutch medicine does not possess crystal balls to predict the future. Nevertheless, the gender clinic in Amsterdam [which developed the Dutch protocol] and the politics associated with it have long been able to stave off further investigation with statements like these.” 

“With this motion [by Dr Hertzberger], it seems that finally an end has come to a long period of denial of the altered reality at the gender clinics and of the criticism of the approach for gender dysphoric youth.”

[healingdemeter]

The Lie About Pediatric Transition

I am currently reading Time to Think which details the trans medical scandal at the Tavistock. I have been following this for awhile and am still shocked at the details that are emerging.

One lie I am tired of hearing is that the Dutch Protocol and Pediatric transition were immaculately researched and have a strong evidence base. This book shows how poor the evidence base was, how the research was funded by pharmaceutical companies, how the pressure to transition children was driven by activist groups such as Mermaids, and how poor funding for children’s mental health services all contributed to this perfect storm of putting children on a medicalized pathway that leaves them at risk of being anorgasmic, infertile, and whose consequences to brain development we do not yet understand. 

Children who are gender diverse deserve better than this! Gender diverse children deserve to learn to love their bodies and to have bodies that are fully functioning!

[faxxmachine]

This is fucking monstrous. Read the whole thing and be enraged: The Dutch Protocol for Juvenile Transsexuals: Origins and Evidence by Michael Biggs

Warning: contains descriptions of chemically neutering homosexuals.

[creature-premium]

MY FUCKING NATIVE LANGUAGE IN TMAGP AHHHHHHH, dude warn me first

[kazoohu]

When you want to sub to Rusty Quill's Patreon to get to see the TMP previews but you can't since you don't have a fucking credit card, visa nor PayPal 😭😭

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

In 2017 I interviewed Bernadette Wren, then head of psychology at the Tavistock Gids clinic, and asked what effect puberty blocking drugs have on the adolescent brain. Looking highly uncomfortable, she replied that the evidence so far was only anecdotal but that the clinic would study its patients “well into their adult lives so that we can see”.

Even back then, before whistleblowers had exposed the rush to medically transition children, it was alarming to hear that heavy-duty GnRH agonists such as triptorelin — used to treat advanced prostate cancer and “chemically castrate” sex offenders — were being prescribed to arrest puberty in hundreds of children as young as 11.

Moreover, they were being used “off-label” before any clinical trials. And the long-term study Wren promised never materialised: Gids (the Gender Identity Development Service) routinely lost touch with patients, and the 44 it did follow reported little long-term mental health improvement.

This shocking chapter in medical history, where the ideological objectives of trans rights campaigners trumped the welfare of disturbed children, is coming to an end worldwide. The decision by NHS England effectively to ban the prescription of puberty blockers comes after the Cass review noted these drugs could “permanently disrupt” brain development, reduce bone density and lock children into a regime of cross-sex hormones requiring life-long patienthood.

NHS England unites with other national health services including those in Finland, France, Sweden and, most notably, the Netherlands — where the “Dutch protocol”, a regime of early blockers then hormones, was devised in 1998 — in pulling back from prescribing them.

Even in the United States, where a toxic combination of extreme activism and medical capitalism has pushed child gender medicine to grotesque extremes, with double mastectomies performed on 14-year-old girls, there is some retrenchment.

Leaks from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the body which formulates guidance on “trans healthcare”, reveal doctors perplexed at how they should explain to an 11-year-old child that drugs will render them infertile. Crucially, liberal media such as The New York Times are now reporting grave medical misgivings about child transition, once dismissed as a culture-war issue for the Republican right.

Yet the question remains: how was this ever allowed to happen? For years, puberty blockers were cheerily billed as a mere “pause button”. In 2014, Dr Polly Carmichael, the last head of Gids before the Cass review ordered its closure, went on CBBC in a show called I Am Leo, saying of blockers: “The good thing is, if you stop the injections, it’s like pressing ‘start’ and the body carries on developing as it would if you hadn’t started.”

The BBC permitted her to make this unevidenced claim to an impressionable audience of six to 12-year-olds. Imagine hearing this as a developing girl, freaked out by your new breasts and periods. No wonder Gids referrals subsequently rocketed.

Carmichael failed to mention that she did not know if pressing “restart” on puberty is always medically possible — it is not — and in fact, almost every child Gids put on blockers went on to irreversible cross-sex hormones.

After years in a Peter Pan state while their peers developed, they understandably felt there was no way back and forged on with treatment. Yet if allowed to experience natural puberty, almost 85 per cent of gender dysphoria cases resolve themselves.

Nor did Carmichael tell CBBC kids that the blockers-hormones combination, if taken early enough, not only results in sterility but kills the libido so that a young person will never experience an orgasm.

At the 2020 judicial review brought by a former Tavistock clinician and Keira Bell, the brave young detransitioner rushed onto hormones by Gids, judges expressed astonishment at Gids’s lack of an evidence base.

Reporting on this issue for seven years, I too have been struck by a complete clinical incuriosity. Not only was data not collected, but those who queried treatments or pressed for evidence faced angry condemnation. Perhaps activists knew what research might find because one long-term Finnish study, recently reported in the BMJ, destroyed the myth used to justify blockers: that a child will commit suicide if denied them.

The Finns found that “gender-affirming care” does not make a dysphoric child less suicidal. Rather, such children had the same suicide risk as others with severe psychiatric issues. In other words, changing bodies does not fix troubled minds.

Yet even after NHS England’s announcement, activists refuse to heed the now-overwhelming evidence. In its response, Stonewall persists with the myth that puberty blockers “give a young person extra time to evaluate their next steps”.

Many questions remain unanswered: will private clinics still be permitted to prescribe puberty blockers; and is Scotland’s Sandyford child gender clinic still determined to close its ears to all evidence? Plus, we have few details on how the NHS’s new “holistic” treatment for gender-questioning children will operate when it opens next month.

This repellent experiment — in which girls who like trucks or little boys who dress as princesses, and who invariably grow up to be gay, are corralled inexorably down a road towards life-changing treatments — belongs in the book of medical disgraces. As do the cheerleaders who raised money for Mermaids and those who persecuted whistleblowers or damned journalists asking questions as transphobic.

In 50 years, chemically freezing the puberty of healthy children with troubled minds will be regarded with the same horrified fascination as lobotomies — which, never forget, won the Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz the 1949 Nobel prize.

--------------------

{Article source (behind paywall)}

[nataliawrites]

Crowning Glory // Max Verstappen

Max Verstappen x Princess of the Netherlands!Reader

Max prided himself on his control. His job depended on it. His life depended on it.

Even when he briefly lost control — and he really doesn’t regret the infamous pushing incident — it was always of his own doing.

Until you came into his life.

A knock on the door to his driver’s room started Max. It was race day and it was rare for him to be bothered when he was preparing on his own. A home race meant that everything was heightened. The adrenaline thrummed deeper. The cheers were louder. The Orange Army was nearly blinding in the stands.

“Max,” the familiar voice of his team principal filtered through the door after another knock, “I have someone who would like to meet you.”

“Can’t we do this later, Christian? I know you know my routine by now.”

“Just open the door. I think you’ll be happy to change up your routine this once.”

Max heaved himself off of the small couch and went to send the Brit and whatever guest he brought along away so he could continue to focus on the race in peace.

He opened the door, prepared to shut it in a second, but stopped short when he saw who was standing next to Christian. The guest in question was wearing an elegant summer dress in a bright shade of orange sure to be similarly reflected upon thousands of Dutch fans around the track.

She was also the subject of his long running teenage crush. A crush he thought he had gotten over until he was staring open-mouthed at her right in front of him.

“Hallo,” she takes the initiative to greet Max considering he was still making somewhat of a fool of himself in front of her, “it is a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Max bends into a hasty bow, unsure of the protocols for meeting someone he had only ever seen on the news and the pages of magazines, “Your Royal Highness, I am so sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m the one intruding on your preparations,” she waves his apology off. “I just wanted to stop by and wish you luck before the race. It is my first time attending a Grand Prix in-person but my family and I have been fans for a long time and started following your career when news of an incredibly promising young driver racing under the Dutch flag first made its rounds.”

“I-thank you, Your Highness. I am honored.”

“Well, I will leave you to continue getting ready. Mr. Horner promised me a tour of the garage. Good luck again, you do your country proud.”

Max remained frozen in the doorway, watching the heir apparent walk away with the Red Bull team principal, bodyguards seemingly materializing from the walls to surround her as they made their way into a public area of the F1 Holzhaus.

Max managed to get you out of his head once the race began. The second he got into the car, nothing else mattered. Everything beyond the track ceased to exist as he pushed the car to its limit and passed the chequered flag for yet another home win.

But when it came time for the podium ceremony, there you were front and center, ready to present trophies to the three drivers. Max swore he could feel a spark travel up his arm as your fingers brushed his while handing him the trophy. “Well done! Tonight we celebrate.”

Turns out the celebration was a far cry from the ones he was used to. Instead of a club, Red Bull team members were invited to join you at a nearby royal residence for dinner and drinks. Max listened to you explain why from his seat next to you at the long dining table as you waited for the first course to be served, pleasantly warm from champagne already, “I used to love going out. Tried to have a typical university experience, you know? But I was almost kidnapped last year and despite security stepping in on time I have been forbidden from doing so again. Too much risk.”

And there it was. The reminder of just how different your lives wore despite both being Dutch public figures. One day Max will retire and can live a relatively normal life if he so chooses while you will ascend to the throne and lead a kingdom.

He didn’t exactly pity you — royalty was royalty at the end of the day — but he did sympathize with the constraints that it placed on you and how you lived your life.

Max clears his throat, “I’m not exactly sure how this whole thing works but I would love to take you out.”

He waits for a response and nervously cards his fingers through his hair when he doesn’t get one, “only if you want, of course, Your Highness. I have a sailing boat on the coast not too far from here. It’s not a yacht, though you are welcome to join me on that too if you are ever in Monaco, but I promise that it is peaceful and private. I just thought you would like to get away from all this,” he gestures around the room of mingling Red Bull staff and dignitaries, “for a little.”

“Are you sure?”

“Hhmm?”

You ask again, “are you sure?”

“Sure about what? That I would like to take you on a date? Quite sure.”

“Any privacy we have won’t last long.”

“I know.”

“The press can be brutal.”

“So I’ve learned. I don’t particularly care.”

“There are rules …”

“I will learn them.”

“Okay,” you finally allow a shy smile.

“Okay?”

“Yes, Max. I would love to go on a date with you.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But if we are to date you have to call me Y/N.”

“Gladly … Y/N,” he tests out how your name feels on his lips for the first time.

“Oh and you will have to meet my parents.”

That gives him pause. “Your parents?”

“Yes.”

“As in the King and Queen.”

“Yes.”

“I have to meet the King and Queen?”

“It’s all still a bit old fashioned, I’m afraid. We will need their approval.”

You’re quick to reassure him when you see how quickly the color drains from his face, “my father is a big Ferrari fan but he has a soft spot for you. You need not worry.”

“Your father is the King.”

“Yes.”

“My King.”

“Yes. And he’s my father. You’ll have to get used to it if you see us going anywhere.”

“Right. Of course …” A few seconds pass. “But he’s the King.”

You pat his hand where it’s splayed on the table, “you’ll be fine.”

[fatehbaz]

Whales, like wolves, elephants, and beavers, are keystone species, animals who disproportionately shape ecosystems. While alive, their fecal plumes fertilize phytoplankton, the microscopic plants that oxygenate our atmosphere. In death, whales who settle on the ocean floor attract an astonishing necrobiome, the community of scavengers who feed upon the dead: hagfish, mussels, limpets, isopods, sleeper sharks, chemosynthetic bacteria. Some, like bone-eating Osedax worms, subsist exclusively on benthic carcasses. Whalefalls are oases in the abyssal wastes, as enticing to life as a Saharan watering hole. Not every dead whale, however, comes to rest in the depths.

Those whales who drift ashore -- buoyed by internal gasses, conveyed by currents -- support complex ecosystems of their own.

Vultures and seabirds peck at eyes and blowhole; sharks strip blubber in the surf. In Namibia’s coastal deserts, jackals and hyenas gnaw at dead seal pups, dolphins, and whales. When, in 2020, a minke whale -- nicknamed Godfried, for a beloved local author -- washed ashore on a Dutch islet, he was visited by 57 species of beetle, 21 of whom had never been seen on the island before. In Russia, scientists have documented 180 polar bears feasting on a single bowhead.

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Once, coastal necrophages could count on a steady supply of whale carcasses. (California’s famously huge grizzlies, now extinct, may have attained their gargantuan size by feeding upon the same marine mammals who supported condors.) Today, however, washed-up cetaceans are comparatively rare. In part, that’s because industrial whaling -- “the largest removal of biomass in world history,” per one researcher -- ravaged the leviathans. Blue whale populations have plummeted by up to 90 percent, and sperm whales endure at just one-third of their historic numbers. Scavengers can’t eat nonexistent animals.

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But the dearth of whales isn’t entirely responsible for the dearth of whale carcasses. We humans also tend to be overzealous morticians. Rather than letting stranded animals fulfill their ancient roles, we hastily dispose of their remains, depriving coastal ecosystems of nature’s greatest windfall. As one group of scientists put it in a recent review of cetacean carcass management, whaling and whale-removal have together “led to radical changes in the abundance and availability of large marine biomass inputs.” In other words: Our shorelines miss their whales and dolphins.

Lately, some researchers have begun to pay closer heed to the value of stranded whales, and to encourage coastal managers to let carcasses lie. Granted, not every beach is an appropriate resting place for a reeking, 50,000-pound corpse. When circumstances allow, however, permitting dead whales to decompose in situ may be preferable to disposal. [...]

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[E]very country, state, and municipality obeys slightly different protocols. Some whales are carted off to the landfill, incinerator, or rendering plant, where their oily fats may be extracted for soaps, pet foods, and biofuel. Some are towed to sea, weighed down with scrap metal, and sunk. Some are buried. Some are cleaned for museum display. In 1970, the Oregon Highway Department infamously dynamited a gray whale, flattening an Oldsmobile beneath a chunk of flying blubber [...]. Mostly, whales are removed for a prosaic reason: They stink. [...]

As a result, authorities seldom let carcasses lie. Some countries, like Belgium and France, actually require officials to usher dead cetaceans off to a waste-management facility. In the United States, Quaggiotto found that just 28 percent of cetacean carcasses remain in situ -- nearly all of these, surely, on remote beaches in wildlife refuges, national parks, and Alaska. In heavily developed Florida, Megan Stolen, a stranding investigator and scientist with the Blue World Research Institute, estimates that less than 5 percent of dead whales and dolphins get to stay put. [...]

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In May 2010, biologists in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park spotted a 41-foot-long female humpback carcass sprawled across a beach and, sensing opportunity, set out cameras to monitor her fate.

Over the next four months, brown bears and wolves feasted almost daily, inscribing networks of pawpaths onto forest and beach. The “blubber bonanza” became a site for ursine reproduction -- cameras caught a pair of bears mating -- and even innovation. In July, a researcher observed a young bear scrubbing his muzzle with a barnacle-encrusted rock, like a post-prandial diner dabbing himself with a napkin. [...] “That carcass seemed to be a beacon calling to these huge bears -- and, of course, they got huger and huger,” says Tania Lewis, wildlife biologist at Glacier Bay. “We can never underestimate the importance of the marine ecosystem for the terrestrial ecosystem.”

The Glacier Bay humpback was both a cornucopia and an anachronism, a glimpse of the resplendent necrobiome that predated industrial whaling, coastal development, and aseptic carcass management strategies. The feast lasted until early September, when park staff severed the whale’s head to perform a necropsy. Unmoored, the body lolled into the tide and drifted away; later, it would wash up down the beach, where wolves gnawed the bones. As the whale floated into the sunset, observers on the beach noticed a passenger: a seafaring brown bear, still trying to chisel off a few last morsels of blubber before the bounty bobbed away.

-------

Headline and text by: Ben Goldfarb. “Humans Are Overzealous Whale Morticians.” Nautilus. 10 August 2022.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Published: Apr 5, 2023

Prisha Mosley was 17 when she was first given testosterone in a clinic in North Carolina, after she had declared to her parents that she was a boy. She had struggled through her teen years with anorexia and depression after a sexual assault. Luka Hein had both breasts removed as a 16-year-old in Nebraska. Chloe Cole, in California, was a year younger when she had her double mastectomy. She had been on testosterone and puberty-blocking drugs since 13, also after a sexual assault.

All three girls were experiencing “gender dysphoria”, a feeling of intense discomfort with their own sexed bodies. Once a rare diagnosis, it has exploded over the past decade. In England and Wales the number of teenagers seeking treatment at the Gender Identity Development Service (gids), the main clinic treating dysphoria, has risen 17-fold since 2011-12 (see chart 1). An analysis by Reuters, a news agency, based on data from Komodo, a health-technology firm, estimated that more than 42,000 American children and teenagers were diagnosed in 2021—three times the count in 2017. Other rich countries, from Australia to Sweden, have also experienced rapid increases.

As the caseload has grown, so has a method of treatment, pioneered in the Netherlands, now known as “gender-affirming care”. It involves acknowledging patients’ feelings about a mismatch between their body and their sense of self and, after a psychological assessment, offering some of them a combination of puberty-blocking drugs, opposite-sex hormones and sometimes surgery to try to ease their discomfort. Komodo’s data suggest around 5,000 teenagers were prescribed puberty-blockers or cross-sex hormones in America in 2021, double the number in 2017.

Dysphoria furoria

The treatment is controversial. In many countries, but in America most of all, it has become yet another front in the culture wars. Many on the left caricature critics of gender-affirming care as callously disregarding extreme distress and even suicides among adolescents with gender dysphoria in their determination to “erase” trans people. Zealots on the right, meanwhile, accuse doctors of being so hell-bent on promoting gender transitions that they “groom” vulnerable teenagers—a term usually applied to paedophiles. In October supporters and critics of gender-affirming care held rival, rowdy protests outside a meeting of the American Academy of Paediatrics. Several American states, such as Florida and Utah, have passed laws banning gender-affirming care in children. Joe Biden, America’s president, has described such laws as “close to sinful”.

Almost all America’s medical authorities support gender-affirming care. But those in Britain, Finland, France, Norway and Sweden, while supporting talking therapy as a first step, have misgivings about the pharmacological and surgical elements of the treatment. A Finnish review, published in 2020, concluded that gender reassignment in children is “experimental” and that treatment should seldom proceed beyond talking therapy. Swedish authorities found that the risks of physical interventions “currently outweigh the possible benefits” and should only be offered in “exceptional cases”. In Britain a review led by Hilary Cass, a paediatrician, found that gender-affirming care had developed without “some of the normal quality controls that are typically applied when new or innovative treatments are introduced”. In 2022 France’s National Academy of Medicine advised doctors to proceed with drugs and surgery only with “great medical caution” and “the greatest reserve”.

There is no question that many children and parents are desperate to get help with gender dysphoria. Some consider the physical elements of gender-affirming care to have been life-saving treatments. But the fact that some patients are harmed is not in doubt either. Ms Mosley, Ms Hein and Ms Cole are all “detransitioners”: they have changed their minds and no longer wish to be seen as male. All three bitterly regret the irreversible effects of their treatment and are angry at doctors who, they say, rushed them into it. Ms Cole considers herself to have been “butchered by institutions we all thought we could trust”.

The transitioning of teenagers has its roots in a treatment protocol developed in the Netherlands in the 1980s and 1990s. It is built on three pillars: puberty-blockers (formally known as gnrh antagonists), cross-sex hormones and surgery. The goal was to alter the patient’s body to more closely match their sense of cross-sex identity, and thereby relieve their mental anguish. A pair of papers published in 2011 and 2014 by Annelou de Vries, one of the Dutch protocol’s pioneers, reported on the experiences of some of the first patients. They concluded that symptoms of depression decreased among patients taking puberty-blockers, and that gender dysphoria “resolved” and psychological functioning “steadily improved” after cross-sex hormones and surgery.

Transition ignition

Puberty-blockers do what their name suggests. The idea is that suspending unwanted sexual development can give patients time to think about their dysphoria, and whether or not they wish to pursue more drastic interventions. The same family of drugs is used to treat “central precocious puberty”, in which puberty begins very early. Some countries also use them to chemically castrate sex offenders. As with many other medicines used in children, the use of puberty-blockers in gender medicine is “off-label”, meaning that they do not have regulatory approval for that purpose.

Patients who decide to proceed with their transition are then prescribed cross-sex hormones. Males will see the development of breasts and alterations to how fat is stored on the body. Giving testosterone to females boosts muscle growth and causes irreversible changes such as deepening the voice, altering the bone structure of the face and the growth of facial hair.

Under the original Dutch protocol, surgery was permitted only after a patient turned 18, although as the cases of Ms Cole and Ms Hein show, in some places mastectomies occur at a younger age. Male patients can have artificial breasts implanted. More elaborate procedures, in which females have a simulated penis built from a tube of skin harvested from the forearm or the thigh, or males have an artificial vagina made in a “penile inversion”, are performed extremely rarely on minors.

In 2020 the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (nice), a British body which reviews the scientific underpinnings of medical treatments, looked at the case for puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones. The academic evidence it found was weak, discouraging and in some cases contradictory. The studies suggest puberty-blockers had little impact on patients. Cross-sex hormones may improve mental health, but the certainty of that finding was low, and nice warned of the unknown risks of lasting side-effects.

For both classes of drug, nice assessed the quality of the papers it analysed as “very low”, its poorest rating. Some studies reported results but made no effort to analyse them for statistical significance. Cross-sex hormones are a lifelong treatment, yet follow-up was short, ranging from one to six years. Most studies followed only a single set of patients, who were given the drugs, instead of comparing them with another set who were not. Without such a “control group”, researchers cannot tell whether anything that happened to the patients in the studies was down to the drugs, to other treatments the patients might be receiving (such as counselling or antidepressants), or to some other, unrelated third factor.

The upshot is that it is hard to know whether any of the supposed effects reported in the studies, whether positive or negative, are actually real. Reviews in Finland and Sweden came to similar conclusions. As the Swedish one put it, “The scientific base is not sufficient to assess…puberty-inhibiting or gender-opposite hormone treatment” in children.

Two American professional bodies, the Endocrine Society (es) and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (wpath) have also reviewed the science underpinning adolescent transitions. But es’s review did not set out to look at whether gender-affirming care helped resolve gender dysphoria or improve mental health by any measure. It focused instead on side-effects, for which it found only weak evidence. This omission, says Gordon Guyatt of McMaster University, makes the review “fundamentally flawed”. wpath, for its part, did look at the psychological effects of blockers and hormones. It found scant, low-quality evidence. Despite these findings, both groups continue to recommend physical treatments for gender dysphoria, and insist that their reviews and the resulting guidelines are sound.

One justification for puberty-blockers is that they “buy time” for children to decide whether to proceed with cross-sex hormones or not. But the data available so far from clinics suggest that almost all decide to go ahead. A Dutch paper published in October concluded that 98% of adolescents prescribed blockers decide to proceed to cross-sex hormones. Similarly high numbers have been reported elsewhere.

The reassuring interpretation is that blockers are being prescribed very precisely, given only to those whose dysphoria is deep-rooted and unlikely to ease. The troubling one is that puberty-blockers lock at least some children in to further treatment. “Time to Think”, a new book about gids by a British journalist, Hannah Barnes, cites British medical workers concerned by the latter possibility. They say patients received blockers after cursory and shallow examinations.

The Dutch researchers weigh both explanations. “It is likely that most people starting [puberty-blockers] experience sustained gender dysphoria,” they write. But, “One cannot exclude the possibility that starting [puberty-blockers] in itself makes adolescents more likely to continue medical transition.”

Perhaps the biggest question is how many of those given drugs and surgery eventually change their minds and “detransition”, having reconciled themselves with their biological sex. Those who do often face fresh anguish as they come to terms with permanent and visible alterations to their bodies.

Once again, good data are scarce. One problem is that those who abandon a transition are likely to stop talking to their doctors, and so disappear from the figures. The estimates that do exist vary by an order of magnitude or more. Some studies have reported detransition rates as low as 1%. But three papers published in 2021 and 2022, which looked at patients in Britain and in America’s armed forces, found that between 7% and 30% of them stopped treatment within a few years.

The original Dutch studies published in 2011 and 2014 were longitudinal—that is, they followed the same group of patients throughout their treatment. Yet three recent critiques published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy nonetheless find fault with the studies’ data.

One of the new studies’ concerns is the small size of the original samples. The 2011 paper looked at 70 patients. But the outcome of treatment was only known for between 32 and 55 of them (the exact number depends on the specific measure). And even then, the final assessment of outcomes occurred around 18 months after surgery—a very short timeframe for a treatment whose effects will last a lifetime. (The first patient, “FG”, was followed for longer. In 2011, when in his mid-30s, researchers reported his feelings of “shame about his genital appearance” and of “inadequacy in sexual matters”. A decade later though, things had improved, and FG had a steady girlfriend.)

The critiques also suggest that the finding that gender dysphoria improved with treatment may have been an artefact of how the participants were assessed. Before treatment, female patients were asked to agree or disagree with such statements as, “Every time someone treats me like a girl I feel hurt.” This established their desire to be seen as male. After blockers, hormones and surgery the same individuals were asked questions on a scale originally developed for those born male. It offered statements such as, “Every time someone treats me like a boy I feel hurt.” Naturally, patients who preferred to be seen as male disagreed. In effect, the yardstick was changed in a way that might be seen as making positive outcomes more likely.

Finally, the original studies seem to have inadvertently cherry-picked patients for whom the treatment was most effective. The researchers started with 111 adolescents, but excluded those whose treatment with puberty-blockers did not progress well. Of the remaining 70, others were omitted from the final findings because they did not return questionnaires, or explicitly refused to do so, or dropped out of care or, in one case, died of complications from genital surgery. The data may therefore exclude precisely those patients who were harmed by or dissatisfied with their treatment.

In a rebuttal published in the same journal, Dr de Vries insists that the original papers found a significant improvement in gender dysphoria, the condition the protocol was designed to treat. She concedes that the switching of assessment scales is “not ideal” but says this does not imply the studies’ results were “’falsely’ measured”. In response to worries about the relatively short follow-up, she noted that a study reporting longer-term outcomes is due “in the upcoming years”.

What is more, whatever the merits of the Dutch team’s original research, the patients passing through modern clinics are strikingly different from those assessed in their papers. Twenty years ago the majority of patients were pre-pubescent boys; in recent years teenage girls have come to dominate (see chart 2). The findings of older research may not apply to today’s patients.

The Dutch team’s approach was deliberately conservative. Patients had to have suffered from gender dysphoria since before puberty. Many of today’s patients say they began to suffer from dysphoria as teenagers. The Dutch protocol excludes those with mental-health problems from receiving treatment. But 70% or more of the young people seeking treatment suffer from mental-health problems, according to three recent papers looking at patients in America, Australia and Finland.

Despite the protocol’s caution, says Will Malone of the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, an international group of concerned clinicians, the reality is often the reverse, especially in America, with mental-health issues becoming a reason to proceed with transitions, rather than to stop them. “We are now told that if we don’t address young people’s mental-health problems caused by dysphoria with transition, they will kill themselves.”

Gender agenda

The original Dutch protocol emphasises the need for careful screening and assessments, as do official guidelines in most countries. But whatever the guidance, there are persistent allegations that it is not being followed in practice. “I had one 15-minute appointment before I was given testosterone,” says Ms Mosley. Many American patients contacted by The Economist reported similarly brief examinations.

The possibility that many teenagers presenting as trans could instead be gay has long been discussed. The Dutch study of 2011 found that 97% of the participants were attracted either to their own sex or to both sexes. In 2019 a group of doctors who resigned from gids told the Times, a British newspaper, of their worries about homophobia in some patients and parents. They worried that, by turning children into simulacra of the opposite sex, the clinic was, in effect, providing a new type of “conversion therapy” for gay children.

Both within America and without, whatever the loudmouths may claim, the vast majority of practitioners are simply trying to ease the genuine suffering of adolescents afflicted by gender dysphoria. But in America in particular the charged atmosphere has made it very difficult to separate the science from the politics.

European medical systems have not concluded that it is always wrong for an adolescent to transition. They are not trying to erase distressed patients. They have simply determined that more research and data are needed before physical treatments for gender dysphoria can become routine. Further research could, conceivably, lead to guidelines similar to those already in use by American medical bodies. But that is another way of saying that it is impossible to justify the current recommendations about gender-affirming care based on the existing data. 

[ Via: https://archive.is/oeQ6F ]

[healingdemeter]

Layla Jane is suing Kaiser Permanente for malpractice as a result of her gender transition. She is suing the same organization that Chloe Cole is and they had some of the same doctors. Tragically, Layla Jane has a mastectomy at 13, which she now regrets.

This is a reminder that pediatric transition is a highly experimental procedure with a shockingly poor evidence base. The Dutch Protocol was funded by Ferring Pharmaceuticals, which makes puberty blockers and it has never been successfully replicated. Children who experience gender dysphoria deserve care that is evidence based, not highly experimental and questionable treatments.

[sysakiddo]

I am so insane about this AU I made a moodboard for it. If anyone knows how to make the quality unfucked, hit me up please. Èze bit is already halfway cooked. first part second part

"Do you usually take all of your interns here?" Daniel asks doubtfully. He is wearing a silk shirt under the blazer. On his hands, he is not only wearing the usual wedding band but four other diamond rings. The Harry Winston one, sapphire set in diamonds on his right ring finger, is his favourite. A gift from Max for their third anniversary. He wears it only for special occasions. 

Max furrows his eyebrows when he sees it shining brightly in the restaurant's lights. A dinner with an intern is not a special occasion. 

"Marais is the place for youngsters." Max shrugs. Daniel's answering laugh is too loud. It makes him cringe a little. 

"Youngsters, oh my god, Maxy," he shakes his head disapprovingly. "You're too young to talk like this." 

"Not again with the age talk." Max snaps, can't help but remember how Daniel looked in the dim light of their bedroom when he said China might be his last chance. "Besides, what's wrong with Marais? I thought you liked it." 

Daniel looks like he belongs here, anyway, with his tanned skin and designer clothes. 

Before he can answer, Max's phone beeps, and he stands up to find their guest in front of the restaurant. When they arrive at the table, she is shocked to see Daniel already sitting there. 

"Your excellency," she says, her voice rough with nervousness. "I did not know you would be here." 

Daniel smiles broadly, shaking her hand. "Please call me Daniel. I hope I won't be interrupting." 

She blushes a bit, amazed. "No, of course not, your exce- Daniel, I mean." She sits down when Max pulls the chair for her. "I am Anne; it's a pleasure to meet you." 

"Let's switch to English," Max proposes, even though Anne's French is immaculate. He doesn't like talking to Daniel in French, only connects it to work in his head. 

Daniel knows this, but it doesn't stop him from smirking at Anne. "It's because he thinks my French sucks," he tells her, this time in English. 

Max flips a page of the menu, not taking his eyes off it. "Don't take him too seriously," he tells Anne in Dutch. She keeps looking at them with wide eyes like she can't believe she had the luck to see this. She has heard many stories about them in the office and back home at uni, the rockstars of Parisian diplomatic life. Now, a bantering couple having dinner on a busy Friday night. 

Daniel knows enough Dutch by now not to be sidetracked. "Oh, yes, Anne, please do not take me seriously at all! I am here only for the oysters and gossip." 

Anne laughs lightly, closing the menu. "I fear I won't be very helpful in the gossip area." 

"Oh no, I'd like to hear everything! Is he quite dreadful? Does he make you triple-check the daily update for the ministry? Do you still have to send him the media digest every morning? Did you know he subscribes to four different types of newspaper and refuses to go to bed without finishing the crossword in each of them?" 

Max scoffs while Anne shakes her head. "No - I enjoy my tasks," she says, sneaking a look at Max. She doesn't want to seem like she is trying to kiss his ass. "I like that we actually get to do the real work. I mean, it's great to see that someone thinks I am able to do more than just take the minutes."

Daniel sees the soft blush coating her cheeks and looks at Max, who is smiling at her. He is shocked to see it's his genuine smile, not the one he uses at work. 

"I heard those stories, yeah." he nods. Daniel doesn't like managing his interns, makes the chef of the protocol do it. Max, however, likes being close to his staff. Daniel privately thinks it's just a way to control them better. 

"It's even worse as a woman, I think," she continues, more confidently now that they seem interested in what she has to say. "In Cairo, they wouldn't let us do anything else than make coffee and filter the mail. The ambassador told us only the men had access to the conference rooms." 

Max furrows his brows, leaning closer to her subconsciously. "What?" he barks out. 

The unexpected reaction makes her freeze. Daniel sees the moment when it dawns on her, a shadow setting on her face. She has never connected the dots, and it got away. She did not realize that the ambassador in Egypt shares a surname with her current boss. 

Daniel clears his throat. "I wouldn't let my interns make me coffee, Anne, that's for sure. Nobody knows how to make it properly for me, not even my husband," he says with a big smile, kicking Max's foot under the table. 

Max blinks, still waiting for more words to come out of Anne's mouth. The distraction doesn't work; both of them awkwardly quiet. The waiter comes out of nowhere as if he felt they needed something to save them from the sticky situation. 

Daniel orders twelve oysters and only then Max snaps out of it. "You can't be fucking serious-" he mutters, kicking him back. 

"I bet Anne will split with me, right?" he winks at her and she smiles thankfully, nodding. Thank you, she mouths while Max is ordering for himself. 

Max can feel Daniel's phone vibrating in his pocket, the constant buzz audible even over the loud chatter in the background. Daniel makes no move to answer it. Instead, he moves to top up their glasses with more wine, smiling broadly at Anne. When he sits back down, he squeezes Max's knee, waiting until Max squeezes his hand back before moving it away. 

Max insists they walk home after dinner. They are quiet for a while, the sounds of the streets distracting enough. 

"You really like the kid," Daniel says eventually. 

Max nods. "She asked me to be her mentor, actually." Daniel hums. The request is nothing extraordinary. Everyone wants to get mentored by the best. "I think I'm going to say yes." 

Daniel raises an eyebrow at him, tonight full of surprises. He has never agreed to do that before. 

"I also thought I would invite her to Èze with us. What do you think?" 

"Èze?" he stutters, shocked. Èze is for the closest friends. And Charles, Max would always add begrudgingly. He would rather eat an oyster than count  Charles into his 'closest friends circle'. 

Max furrows his brows in confusion. "You don't like her?" 

Daniel shakes his head. "You've never done this, that's all." 

Max is walking a bit faster now, shrugging his shoulders. "I thought it would give me something to do, y'know. In Beijing or whatever. I was thinking about it and - yeah, I could mentor the kids and write a memoir. That way, I wouldn't be so bored." 

This is not the first time Max has mentioned wanting to write a biography. Daniel tried to persuade him that writing a memoir at 25 is a bit too cocky, even for someone like Max. 

This is, however, the first time Max mentioned Beijing since Daniel's big revelation. 

He is not ready to have that conversation yet, so instead, he asks him what's been bothering him throughout the night. 

"Your father-" 

"Don't." Max stops him before he can breathe in, holding his palm up. Max's father has been a taboo in their household since The Catastrophe. And because The Catastrophe was the reason why Max moved out of their flat for two months, the only time when Daniel used the word 'divorce' and Max couldn't stop talking about jealousy and holding grudges, he lets it go.

Daniel rolls his eyes but takes Max's hand in his. "Invite her to Èze. Pierre is also bringing an intern, so she won't be alone." 

Max hums, squeezing his palm as a silent thank you. 

At home, Max is brushing his teeth when the DHoM calls. He spits out the foam and rolls his eyes. A call on a Friday night has never been a good sign. 

"The President cancelled the visit of the Netherlands, I am afraid," she says, straight to the subject, just as Max has urged her to do every time. 

"What? Why?" He spent weeks trying to negotiate the visit. The preparations started five weeks ago. 

"They did not give me an official reason. But David told me, in confidence, of course, that they've added Australia to his Pacific tour. The submarines are long forgotten."

Max paces in the bathroom for a few minutes after hanging up. 

When he finally enters the bedroom, Daniel doesn't even have the decency to look guilty. 

"You've seen the dates of the visit in my diary." he accuses him, a thunderstorm in his eyes. 

Daniel knows what he is talking about. Of course he does. He is just glad Max did not get the call while they were still in the restaurant. "How was I supposed to know they would cancel instead of postponing?" Max is breathing fire by now, but Daniel isn’t wearing his glasses so all he sees is a figure that could be his husband but also could be a very handsome burglar.

Max waves a finger in his face, looking menacing, even when wearing nothing but his sleeping shorts. He knows Daniel is full of shit. "You should have had the decency to inform my office." 

Daniel has the nerve to roll away from him. "No work talk in the bedroom." 

Max grinds his teeth together and grabs the duvet, rolling it up into a ball and throwing it at shocked Daniel. "Then get the fuck out." He also throws the pillow, his finger pointing to the living room. Daniel huffs but stands up and gets out of the bedroom nevertheless.  

In the morning, Daniel's back is fucked from sleeping on the couch, and he spits a few harsh words in the general direction of Max's still-sleeping figure. When he returns from the market, Max is sitting at the kitchen table with a tea in his hands. He blinks a few times to make the morning fog disappear and is only partly successful. Daniel is sheepishly holding ten teddy bear sunflowers in his hands. 

Max lets Daniel kiss him with a soft apology, standing up to get the vase. "Your coffee is next to the toaster!" he says before turning around. He misses how Daniel's face glows up, smile small and real and only for Max. 

fourth part

[creature-wizard]

Figured I'd pop in to YouTube and see what the conspiracy theorists are up to, and I found this dude making some wild claims about Christmas and Santa Claus.

He claims that Santa is actually a reptilian, based on the old "Satan is an anagram for Santa" canard. (In reality, "Santa Claus" comes from the Dutch Sinterklaas, AKA Saint Nicholas.) In New Age mythology, Satan is just another name for Enki, whom they regard as a reptilian alien.

It doesn't take long before he starts claiming that Christmas is just a new form of Saturnalia, which has been pretty thoroughly debunked by scholars. Next he leaps to the Black Cube of Saturn conspiracy theory, which for those of you who don't know is another Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion redux. And from here of course he jumps into the blood libel/witch panic tropes, claiming that the elite of Rome practiced child sacrifice.

Next he claims that Apollo (!) is another incarnation of Enki and compares Santa's chariot and claims that Jesus was a sun god created by the Catholic Church, which is extremely ridiculous for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that Christianity existed for three hundred years before Emperor Constantine decided to make Christianity the official Roman religion. (Psst, by the way, if early Christianity interests you, check out Bart D. Ehrman.) This conspiracy theorist claims that Jesus's name derives from "Iesous," which means "hail Zeus" - again, completely made-up etymology.

He shows a graph claiming that the Christmas tree star represents a Satanic pentacle, the Christmas garland on the tree represents the serpent in Eden, the ball ornament represents Ba'al, and the lights represent the torch of Lucifer. In fact, Christmas trees have late medieval origins among Christian peasants from the Rhineland, not the early Catholic Church, and this supposed symbolism is literally just a malicious reading by people who want something sinister to be behind the Christmas tree.

This is why literacy in these topics matters. Without this kind of knowledge, you can watch a video like this and get sucked down into believing the world's deadliest conspiracy theories. The body count is in the millions, and it's still growing with every act of deadly violence motivated by belief in these conspiracy theories.

[soleiltac]

Okay, recently I found out the information from Disney Wiki that AUTO from WALL-E is the only non-sentient robot in the movie. And I don't feel like that. :(

I am aware that he is meant to be an antagonist, the "villain" of the story as he follows his directives like there's no tomorrow. But, I didn't think this trait should define ALL of his personality. Like, he clearly had emotions and showed them in a restrained way. Or at least I thought he did?

I decided to rewatch it.

Warning: spoilers, potential grammar, punctuation mistakes. Excuse me, english is hard!

***

Why do I think AUTO is a sentient robot? My observations.

• Every bot on this ship is capable of emotions, when why an intelligent steering wheel isn't?

• Well, why, he actually has them! You can tell it by his body language and a tone of deep synthesized voice.

He expresses:

1. Frustration, annoyance.

- "CAPTNNNNN D:" – AUTO said calmly.

2. Surprise.

- He is genuinely shocked to see WALL•E with 'the p l a n t' on his head. I actually laughed at his reaction.

- "n ot pos sible! 0:" every now and when.

3. He is persistent and blutantly stubborn. Strict on himself. Some people can be like that without any directives.

- Captain McCrea needed to give AUTO 'a stern look' for him to share the information about directive. AUTO reluctantly obliged. (At least he tried to reason with Captain.)

- "sir, i INSIST you give me the plant." (Dutch Van der Linde voice here: "he INSISTS...")

- (And the whole plot obviously.)

4. Anger, fear. McCrea: – You want it? Come and get it, blinky.

Auto: – N O.

- "E N ouGh" 😡 *flips the ship around impulsively*

- "NOT POSSIBLE D:" but with more panicking tone.

- "NoOOo..." when he gets deactivated.

• The whole sequence with manual is... interesting.

- At this point of the story AUTO ordered GO-4 to steal the plant from EVE to make her look defective in Captain's eyes.

- I felt how much AUTO and McCrea are tired of each other's presence. AUTO is patiently anticipating McCrea's attention, he is eager to do his job.

(- Captain tries to imitate jogging in his seat and AUTO for some reason looks at him with puzzled and uncertain look. )

- AUTO keeps pretending like he doesn't know anything...

• Which is actually not a common thing for robots. "Lying is a human emotion." (c) HAL 9000

And yes, hiding the truth is considered to be lying too.

It's not like he was instructed to lie by his superiors, they didn't care. But rather it's the tactic that he learnt while being active for 700 years. I bet he understands it would be much easier to secretly yeet the plant into space without bothering captain with a decision. I suppose it required some thinking in his mechanical brain.

When why does he show the captain an operation manual? Good question. My personal headcanon: he loves doing his job so much, it doesn't matter for him if it can increase risks towards his global goal. That is why I can tell it wasn't a programmed, logical decision of the machine. If non-sentient perfect AUTO knew about A-113, he wouldn't let captain see the possibility at all. He hasn't considered that his domestic human pet might get interested in whole "Earth" thing. And he hasn't considered sentient WALL•E and EVE as serious obstacles. He did a crucial mistake to satisfy his ego... Or... Or maybe not? It's a headcanon, after all. Maybe it was a part of protocol. Or maybe he tried to entertain McCrea. AUTO seems to care about him in some way as he didn't push him out off the power until the last moment. (uwu) Choose whatever you like more. It's a thought-provoking subject.

• That aside, have you noticed that there is not a single character in the movie who would not be terrified of having to leave the comfort zone? It's only AUTO, who is opposing this idea for the sake of survival. Recolonizing nearly-dead Earth is not an easy work, someone can get really hurt and, well, die. And knowing that AUTO is based on famous computer HAL 9000, who is, in fact, killed people because of his panic attack (he didn't want to be deactivated/murdered), this situation kinda gets a new meaning? It's an interesting perspective to look at AUTO's character, too. AUTO, like HAL, at the start of story was okay and non-hostile towards others. Eventually, as the story progresses, AUTO becomes more and more impatient, eager to complete his primary task, thus taking violent measures. In AUTO's eye WALL•E & EVE are rogue robots anyway, defected and dispatchable. But attacking the captain? AUTO's final step to AI "madness" was fighting the man he is designed to serve. And though I believe he wouldn't kill him, we can imagine AUTO was panicking at this moment. So, no programmed logic there either, pure emotion of fear and reckless behaviour, almost like HAL. And HAL is 100% sentient and conscious entity.

*** Well...

Maybe it's just me and my anthropomorphizing tendencies on non-living fictional objects. I can be self-projecting too much, so if you disagree, let's say it's my headcanons and leave that at that. After all, AUTO is a direct representation of BnL – heartless company, that destroyed life on Earth and continued destroying it in space. They made humans, their customers, helpless like babies! And I am afraid it could only be worse in the future, if it wasn't for WALL•E and EVE.

It's quite a tragedy that AUTO can't escape from this never-ending system of least resistance and comfort. He is the system. He is made to be an autopilot of Axiom, he IS the Axiom, programmed to do his job fully dedicated to the mission of saving mankind. And if he was really fully-sentient... well, it would've made his life even more miserable. What's the use of the steering wheel on Earth surface? It's not like they are gonna fly into space again. Captain's dead and woah, hello eternal loneliness, next generation forgets about your existence or decides to ignore it like a bad memory about containment. Even AUTO's closest henchman GO-4 is forever destroyed... *sigh*

I am overthinking too much, aren't I? Gosh, this wheel NEEDS a redemption arc. And friends. My heart bleeds for him, really.