Noah Berlatsky

With the death of Leonard Nimoy, it's a good moment to pay tribute to (and question) his most famous character.

At first, this looks like sexism. And then you realize, hey, this is sexism. Hope isn't allowed to do the dangerous job because Pym has put her on a pedestal, and won't let her off it.

"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.

Daredevil focuses on the dynamics of heroism—the display of strength and violence as a way to distance oneself from weakness.

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

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.

Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Edith Piaf: they're all still practically household names.

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.

A Ghostbusters with a female cast is a thorough violation of the spirit of the original. And that's a good thing.

Why should prostitution be illegal? And, more specifically why should male prostitution be illegal?