Eglathren

“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
― Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”
― ursula le guin

“Although most of the women I interviewed felt that their sexual
attractions paralleled their emotional attachments, this was not always
the case. In fact, women reported that on average, the percentage
of physical same-sex attractions they experienced differed
from their emotional same-sex attractions by about 15 percentage
points in either direction (in other words, some women were more
emotionally than physically drawn to women, whereas others were
more physically than emotionally drawn). A small number of
women reported discrepancies of up to 40 percentage points.
Like women with nonexclusive attractions, women with significant
gaps between their emotional and physical feelings often
faced challenges in selecting a comfortable identity label. They had
to decide whether their sexual identity was better categorized by
patterns of “love” or patterns of “lust,” and they had to forecast
what sort of relationships they might desire in the future. Many
of these women found it difficult to make these determinations.
Sue, for example, felt that her attractions were riddled with
contradictions: “I prefer to make out with men, but the idea of having
sex with a man utterly repulses me. I would, however, like to
marry a woman, and that’s who I want to make a long-term commitment
to.”
― Lisa Diamond, Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire

“Science is not separate from politics. As much as I would like it to be a pure thing, existing only in some intellectual realm unsullied by human struggle, it will always be entangled with the world we live in.”
― Marie Brennan, The Tropic of Serpents