» The Infinite Matrix | Ursula K. Le Guin | "The Seasons of the Ansarac"

People are always telling you that “we have always done thus,” and then you find that their “always” means a generation or two, or a century or two, at most a millennium or two. Cultural ways and habits are blips, compared to the ways and habits of the body, of the race. There really is very little that human beings on our plane have “always” done, except find food and drink, sleep, sing, talk, procreate, nurture the children, and probably band together to some extent. Indeed it can be seen as our human essence, how few behavioral imperatives we follow. How flexible we are in finding new things to do, new ways to go. How ingeniously, inventively, desperately we seek the right way, the true way, the Way we believe we lost long ago among the thickets of novelty and opportunity and choice…

[Happy belated birthday, Mrs. Le Guin.]

“(14) CLEANING UP THE HOUSE. (TWO.)
Washing the baby’s diapers. Sarah Boyle writes notes to herself all over the house; a mazed wild script larded with arrows, diagrams, pictures, graffiti on every available surface in a desperate/heroic attempt to index, record, bluff, invoke, order and placate. On the fluted and flowered white plastic lid of the diaper bin she has written in Blushing Pink Nitetime lipstick a phrase to ward off fumey ammoniac despair. “The nitrogen cycle is the vital round of organic and inorganic exchange on earth. The sweet breath of the Universe.” On the wall by the washing machine are Yin and Yang signs, mandalas, and the words, “Many young wives feel trapped. It is a contemporary sociological phenomenon which may be explained in part by a gap between changing living patterns and the accommodation of social services to these patterns.” Over the stove she had written “Help, Help, Help, Help, Help.”
— from “The Heat Death of The Universe”, by Pamela Zoline (helpful commentary)

Or look at it this way:

Billy Collins
Man in Space

All you have to do is listen to the way a man
sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,

and you will know why the women in science
fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own
are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine
when the men from earth arrive in their rocket,

why they are always standing in a semicircle
with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart,
their breasts protected by hard metal disks.

*

(some context)

“It was fashionable at that time (we made it fashionable: one of our covert disinformation campaigns) to complain bitterly about the inappropriately erotic and ‘sexist’ cover art, that kept people from taking sf’s sober, intelligent, futurist speculation seriously. But we knew very well, and so did the men, that the art -all those air-brushed spacegirls in the crotch-hugging suits; all those wispily clad or bronze-breasted females ravished (as far as public decency permitted) by monsters or spacemen, told the honest truth. The real purpose of science fiction is to describe how Man gets out there to the edge of the known, grabs hold of a chunk of that alien dark, and pumps it full of his seed…”
— from Kairos (What the Apocalypse Means to Me), by Gwyneth Jones
“Don’t you realize how important your presence, your character is? Don’t you realize this gift this man [Roddenberry] has given the world? Men and women of all races going forth in peaceful exploration, living as equals. You listen to me: Don’t you see? This is not a Black role, and this is not a female role. You have the first nonstereotypical role on television, male or female. You have broken ground. … Don’t you see that you’re not just a role model for little Black children. You’re more important for people who don’t look like us. For the first time, the world sees us as should be seen, as equals, as intelligent people—as we should be. There will always be role models for Black children; you are a role model for everyone. Remember, you are not important there in spite of your color. You are important there because of your color.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr. to Nichelle Nichols (as quoted in her autobiography), taken from: Where No Woman Has Gone Before: An Actress Spotlight on Nichelle Nichols | Bitch Magazine