I wanted to reblog this post speculating about Gethenian religion in The Left Hand of Darkness but @gentlier made it unrebloggable, but she said I could link to it and copy/paste it:
"Ok the yomesh religion’s milk thing in the book isn’t super prominent but yomeshta (or at least orgota people who grew up in a yomesh-dominant culture) say variations on “by meshe’s milk” all the time, and the Orgota creation myth involves ice shapes turning into milk and awakening the first people (who were made but weren’t alive yet because they hadn’t drank milk). Milk is a unique thing on Gethen because no animals are mammals save the people. So it doesn’t surprise me that Orgota hold it in esteem and associate it with the sacred. It’s fun to extrapolate from that, though.
Like what if people believed the human soul was not formed until the first drink of milk? Also what if really religious people got weird and psychosexual about it like the irl nuns who are passionately in love with Jesus? These are questions that Le Guin did not ask but I would love to explore in my own fiction. What if a religion was really weird about milk?"