Although language is potentially versatile, the ritualized ways we use it reflect thousands of years of expansion through violence. History has embedded classification and objectification in the byways of our thoughts, anchored to the superiority of the warrior male, who is defined by an ability to kill with prowess while showing no emotional vulnerability. All of us unconsciously replicate this program, and must overcome it in the struggle to reclaim our words, enlisting them to sculpt a mature ethos.

Aristine Eaglewoman, Ecofem Wise