Zach

“We are still untangling the legal and moral problems caused by the invention of a new sex, the transsexual, produced by chemical and surgical manipulation of the body. The transsexual is a technological androgyne whom we are happy to call “she” out of the courtesy owed to all inspired makers of fiction.”
― Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

“Our sexually selected instincts for displaying sympathy tend to affect our belief systems, not just our charity and courtship
behavior. When individuals espouse ideological positions, we typically interpret their beliefs as signs of good or bad moral
character. Individuals feel social pressure to adopt the beliefs that are conventionally accepted as indicating a "good heart," even
when those beliefs are not rational. We may even find ourselves saying, "His ideas may be right, but his heart is clearly not in the
right place." Political correctness is one outcome of such attributions. For example, if a scientist says, "I have evidence that human intelligence is genetically heritable," that is usually misinterpreted as proclaiming, "I am a disagreeable psychopath unworthy of love." The arbiters of ideological correctness can
create the impression that belief A must indicate personality trait X. If X is considered sexually and socially repulsive, then belief A
becomes taboo. In this way our sexually selected instincts for moralistic self-advertisement become subverted into ideological dogmas. I think that human rationality consists largely of separating intellectual argument from personality attributions about moral character. Our difficulty in making this separation suggests that political, religious, and pseudo-scientific ideologies have been part of moralistic self-display for a very long time.”
― Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

“The answer lies in the fact that slave labor, in spite of its seeming superiority, was actually not as advantageous as indentured labor the first half of the century. Because of the high mortality among immigrants to Virginia, there could be no great advantage in owning a man for a lifetime rather than a period of years, especially since a slave cost roughly twice as much as an indentured servant. If the chances of a man's dying during his first five years in Viriginia were fifty-fifty – and it seems apparent that they were- and if English servants could be made to work as hard as slaves, English servants for a five-year term were the better buy.”
― Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom

“It is hard to go into a fight and were often afraid," confessed the Cheyenne warrior John Stands in Timber, "but it was worse to turn back and face the women.”
― Peter Cozzens, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West