Em

“Booee acted intelligent enough to impress, and emotional enough to inspire empathy, but he remained nonthreatening, “a sweet boy,” who was “guileless” and “forgiving”—the kind of being who would inspire sympathy in humans. What if, like Red Peter, imitating human beings was not something that pleased Booee? What if he did it because he was looking for a way out and for no other reason?”
― Sunaura Taylor, Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation

“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

“We can decide what we mean by things like 6 and +, but once we do, the results of expressions like 6 + 6 are beyond our control. Logic leaves us no choice. In that sense, math always involves both invention and discovery: we invent the concepts but discover their consequences. As we’ll see in the coming chapters, in mathematics our freedom lies in the questions we ask—and in how we pursue them—but not in the answers awaiting us.”
― Steven H. Strogatz, The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity

“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