The Word for World is Forest (Hainish Cycle, #5)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Probably the guy was effeminate like a lot of intellectuals, and resented Davidson’s virility.

Again it’s a universal social phenomenon that might have a physiological foundation, though it’s very hard to establish anything as ‘innate’ in human beings.

He was stupid, old Ding Dong, but he liked Davidson, and Davidson liked him.

For if it’s all the rest of us who are killed by the suicide, it’s himself whom the murderer kills; only he has to do it over, and over, and over.

The colonists were letting the Athsheans alone and they were letting the colonists alone. A healthy situation, and one not to be disturbed unnecessarily. The only thing likely to disturb it was fear.