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Même si les données disponibles concernant les violences commises contre les enfants [...] sont peu nombreuses, [...] l'institution familiale a été maintes fois épinglée comme scène où se déroulent de nombreuses violences envers les enfants. Les chiffres donnent le vertige et produisent un sentiment d’effroi, aggravé encore par la conscience du rôle des proches parents dans ces violences. Penser celles-ci comme structurelles et non accidentelles conduit parfois à sentir les remparts institutionnels trembler : quelle est donc la légitimité de cette institution familiale qui, alors qu’elle possède la fonction de protection des enfants, constitue l’instigatrice principale des violences envers celleux-ci ? Le paradoxe est grand, et une sensation étrange nous saisit : celle d’avoir fait l’objet d’un jeu de dupes. Nous y avions cru pourtant.

— La domination oubliée by Tal Piterbraut-Merx

I felt safest when I was unwitnessed by other people. I could move outside of society’s gaze, outside the grip of cultural prescriptions and interventions. My hair could run wild, I could dress androgynously, I could be covered in mud. Being in the culvert or the forest was a chance to move amphibiously, to shape-shift, to creep, to oscillate like algae in a riffle, to be neither a boy nor a girl and have no particular identity at all.

— Forest Euphoria by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian

Many species are threatened or endangered in Europe and North America due to a combination of habitat destruction and the ignorant and gruesome practice of snake “roundups,” during which people kill as many snakes as they can. I remember an elementary school classmate of mine, eyes wide with pride, talking about her father’s semiannual snake hunt. He would patrol the perimeter of their suburban home and decapitate any snake he encountered. He would then line up the heads to show his kids before discarding the severed body parts in the trash bin.

My classmate’s pride stemmed from the fact that she, like her father, believed he was protecting their family. People attempt to justify this slaughter on the basis that snakes are dangerous creatures, which is mostly false. Most species in North America are not venomous at all, posing next to no risk to people. Even the potentially lethal timber rattlesnake—given its species name, “horridus,” by early taxonomist Carl Linnaeus in 1758—has killed only a dozen people in the last thirty years across the entire United States. They are not known to be especially aggressive; they’re rather shy, in fact. If they can’t flee, they will usually attempt to warn clumsy humans before opting for their last resort. For this reason, it’s unsurprising that half the reported bites were not hapless encounters. The victims were allegedly handling the snakes—often depicted as agents of the devil in Western Christian stories and imagery—as part of religious services.

— Forest Euphoria by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian