Noah Berlatsky

Banks' "Ice Princess" video shows that it's not only white people who can pick up someone else's culture.

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

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

Feminist dystopia at its finest. Joanna Russ imagines a world in which the elimination of gender hierarchy leads to freedom, strength, and power.

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

"I believe that, in order to address these problems, we need to first understand how we got here."

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

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

I am on my knees in 15-degree weather scrubbing poop from the sidewalk, and I have an epiphany of sorts—I do not want this dog.

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.