Noah Berlatsky

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

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.

Sex and bodies don't clarify gender; they confuse the issue.

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

If you want America to relearn how to hate white Jews, the quickest way to do that is to associate them with black people.

As a parent, you tend to assume that you have some say in forming your child's mental landscape. Then Santa comes along.

Fifth Harmony is nobody's idea of a roots band.

The history of pop music, and of black pop music in particular, has always been gay history.

Who is memorialized in death has everything to do with race, class . . . and who you were in life.

"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.