Noah Berlatsky

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.

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

There's a good argument to be made that the earliest, and the best, rockabilly performers were women. Slicked-back, hiccuping, hopped up cool.

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

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

Talking about race can get you into a lot of trouble . . . especially if you don't have a lot of class power or status.

The loss of gospel history has meant forgetting how important black women have been to American performance styles.

The first graphic novel to win a Caldeott gives children the chance to be adults, and adults the chance to be kids.

It's not the gender that's the problem: It's the oppression.

Bulimia.com has reworked superhero images to show more realistic body types—and their efforts are valuable in more than the expected ways.