Em

“The way women are treated, valued, and used has remarkably little in common with how women perceive themselves. The legend says that vampires cannot see themselves in mirrors, but in this case the vampires’ victims cannot see themselves: what would stare back—the cow, the land, the uterus, the crop, the plowing, the planting, the harvest, being put out to pasture, going dry—would annihilate the delusion of individuality that keeps most women going.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women

“Fearnley-Whittingstall and Pollan argue that on some evolutionary level the animals have agreed to be slaughtered, because animals tend to stay around human encampments even when there are no physical fences; thus, despite the inevitability of being killed, a relationship with humans must be worthwhile to them—worth even their own deaths. But not all fences are physical, as we humans know too well. One need only look at the history of male domination over women to see various psychological and economic fences at work in the rampant and insidious nature of patriarchy. One cannot argue that the domesticated animal chose slaughter any more than one could argue that generations of women chose patriarchy. Human domination is the system domesticated animals live under because there is no other system available to them.”
― Sunaura Taylor, Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation

“Some species of fish have been shown to have long-lasting memories, complex social lives, and personalities. Yet our biases against them allow us to withhold even the most minimal of legal protections. Fish die stressful, painful, and drawnout deaths by such things as asphyxiation, stab wounds, or evisceration (disembowelment). 50 Writer Jonathan Safran Foer points out in his book Eating Animals that there is no such thing as a humane death for a fish: “No fish gets a good death. Not a single one. You never have to wonder if the fish on your plate had to suffer. It did.”
― Sunaura Taylor, Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation

“As an artificer by inclination as well as vocation, I have always known that anything worth doing is best accomplished in a deliberate, structured, and meticulous fashion. Feelings and dreams are useless, and imagination is worse. Reality doesn’t care how you think it ought to be, or what you fantasize it might be. Effective action is achieved only by the intelligent application of what is.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Test of Metal