Noah Berlatsky

Last year there was much excitement at the announcement that Lupita Nyong'o was going to play a major role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens — the first Black woman to star in the franchise.

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.

Bus ads comparing Muslims to Hitler have been replaced with images of a superhero. And not just any superhero.

Bulimia.com has reworked superhero images to show more realistic body types—and their efforts are valuable in more than the expected ways.

Country music is an overwhelmingly heterosexual endeavor. The LGBTQ community certainly listen to, and perform, country, but in terms of lyrical content and themes, country has been focused on male-female romantic love.

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

"The look on Miley's face during Nicki Minaj's savage, expletive-laden rant says it all," Salon tweeted the day after the VMAs. Less than 140 characters, but still enough to link a black woman to a longstanding racial slur.

There's a good argument to be made that the earliest, and the best, rockabilly performers were women. Slicked-back, hiccuping, hopped up cool.

It's not the gender that's the problem: It's the oppression.

Let's not ignore the fact that the original James Bonds wasn't just white. He was a white supremacist.