Noah Berlatsky

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

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

The MIT professor recently wrote that feminist literature left him "terrified" of his sexual desire. But is Dworkin to blame?

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

While Atwood's feminist dystopia remains our favorite nightmarish future, Marge Piercy's Woman On The Edge Of Time is far superior.

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

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

So, if there are so many ways to sing this song, and if it's meant different things at different points, why complain about Beyoncé's version?

Action movies don't usually bother much with romance. The trailer for The Transporter: Refueled certainly doesn't. The hero is cool — sexy women, plural, throw themselves at him, or at least stand near him and things blow up; there are fights and revenge and high production values. Romance is, at best, a secondary concern.

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.