Noah Berlatsky

Art without politics actually results in a sweeping Puritanism. For art to have power, it needs to engage with power, with politics.

Their sexuality traps and destroys male innocence, as they grad hold, by the penis- the better to lead him to castration. Make no mistake that castration is greeted with fear, terror, and disgust—but also with glee. Women as super villains allow their characters to be super powerful; a force for evil is at least a force. In a media landscape where women are often rendered secondary, invisible, and passive, the femme fatale, in her icy violence, seizes female agency along with the phallus that she so efficiently cuts off.

Metal aggression isn't sexual, but existential. As a result, women in the genre are both rare and unexpectedly equal.

Conservative fetishization of the past is myopic, simplistic, and mean-spirited—but progressives can be too quick to cede tradition.

Lower your standards, live in moderate amounts of filth, and go to bed early. The cat will thank you.

Can a popular author also be celebrated for literary quality? Not if that author is a woman like Austen.

Some love stories don't end happily. So why do so many romance novels insist they do?

The loss of gospel history has meant forgetting how important black women have been to American performance styles.

David Ress' Aphexswift is genius precisely because it's so unlikely.

A recent controversy at the Calgary Expo suggests MRAs care more about making opponents look bad than they do about discrimination.