Noah Berlatsky

english lit academic. wish fulfiller. thwarted world-changer.

The cover for A-Force is a combination of tired trope and deodorant ad. Female empowerment can do so much better.

The MIT professor recently wrote that feminist literature left him "terrified" of his sexual desire. But is Dworkin to blame?

Action movies don't usually bother much with romance. The trailer for The Transporter: Refueled certainly doesn't. The hero is cool — sexy women, plural, throw themselves at him, or at least stand near him and things blow up; there are fights and revenge and high production values. Romance is, at best, a secondary concern.

As a white woman, Swift can afford to celebrate carelessness. Beyoncé, though, knows that even her casualness has to be perfect.

Under the guise of philanthropy, 8 Minutes essentially blackmails some of the most marginalized and powerless people in society.

If my wife and son had thought bubbles above their heads, like in the comics, you would be able to read them saying, "dog dog dog dog dog dog dog."

Is the gender of the philosopher a marginal curiosity—or is it more central?

Rather than seeing Beyoncé's sexual performance as linked to destruction, we can consider whether eroticism might be an alternative to violence.

This doesn't mean that the outcomes of domestic violence are always equal; men tend to be bigger and stronger than women, and therefore are more likely to cause serious harm, even in situations where violence is reciprocal. Still, the fact that women are frequently perpetrators of violence in domestic situations substantially undermines the typical story of domestic abuse—and helps to show just how harmful that story is.