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.

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

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.

These covers remind us of the lengthy, rich—but often obscured—history of female songwriters.

The Lord of the Flies can feel like a vacation spot for conflict-management consultants in comparison to social media.

Genre boundaries are conscious of race—and, in the case of rock, conscious of gender too.

Female masturbation is sexy in part because it flirts with lesbianism. For male masturbation, it's a different story.

Katniss is the voice of conscience and morality in the film, and in The Hunger Games series as a whole. In the just released last film in the series, she tries repeatedly to avoid unnecessary deaths. She insists that refugees from an attacked base be given an escape route, for example, and exposes herself in an effort to help them.

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

It's hard to deny the appeal of the masculine ideal, especially when embodied in Jude Law. And yet, it's also a depressing vision.