You're treating these like they're separate issues when, in reality, they're the same thing. Who wrote Girls? A writing staff that was 50+% women. Who wrote Orange is the New Black? A writing staff that was 50+% women, based on a book written by a woman. Who created both of those shows? Women. Who wrote Community?…

Women don't like hard work. It's a good thing we have men here to do it for us so we can sit back by the pool reading our romance novels and eating bon-bons. I just feel bad for them! White Man's Burden part two.

Yes—when you look at the big-name female directors, the vast majority of them got their starts because they were related to somebody in the film industry who could pull strings for them (Bigelow and Coppola are the obvious examples, but also Ephron, Holofcener, etc). People in Hollywood promote who they know, and who…

I just want to add the totally useless information that Elvis had the same madonna/whore complex and refused to sleep with Priscilla after she had Lisa Marie. So Priscilla had an affair with her karate instructor. Do that, letter-writer's friend.

It's actually probably MORE sexist than it's ever been. There were significantly more films released that were aimed at women in the '90s (and even in the '50s and '60s) than there are now. The "blockbuster or bust" philosophy that's taken over in the past 15 years has been incredibly damaging for films aimed…

Given that "Same Love" was originally written and released as a protest song against Washington's anti-gay marriage referendum, I don't think "subtlety" was (or should have been) the goal.

Yeah—nobody's saying that nobody can critique the materialism of mainstream rap, but those critiques generally are better-received when they're made by people within the system they're critiquing and who actually understand it. Mainstream rap culture and its emphasis on consumerism were not formed in a vacuum, they…

Lorde has never been poor, though, which makes the whole persona she's adopting in the song a bit tasteless.

Gold teeth, Grey Goose, Cadillacs, Cristal, Maybach and perhaps "diamonds on your timepiece" (given that rap stars are really the only people left who brag about their watches) are all fairly obvious coded racial references. Yeah yeah, white people drink Cristal and drive Cadillacs too, but you've got to be pretty…

They don't have any princess movies on tap after this, as far as I know. But given that boys take center stage in almost every single animated non-princess movie, I'll take an enlightened princess movie like this one over no female leads at all.

Well, untimely in the sense that it was smack in the middle of the Harry Potter franchise, at least.

"Getting them into STEM" is rarely the problem. If you buy the toys, take them to the classes, talk about STEM-related topics with them . . . sooner or later they're going to find a part of it they're interested in. The hard part is keeping them involved despite the rampant sexism in many programs (either top-down or…

I expected to see Rome, too.

I think it's that (in both cases), only the good stuff tends to get exported. So we don't ever see the terrible things you make, and you don't ever see that the vast majority of American TV is stuff like "Full Throttle Saloon" and "Gold Rush: Alaska." So the percentages on the other side of the Atlantic look better…

Not exactly. There's vast differences in the levels of starvation and oppression in, say, districts one and two versus eleven and twelve. And the more starving you are, the more likely that you're going to put your name in the Hunger Games draft more times in exchange for food. (I don't remember if this was touched on…

And the second half being her either injured or totally out of it while important things happen around her.

The one book/two movies thing is usually bullshit, but this is one of the rare occasions where it actually makes sense. The third book's two halves are tonally and thematically different and are set in different places, there's a natural climax that'll serve as a breaking point near the middle, and the book really…

SPOILERS N STUFF

They have, but Divergent also has a moderate degree of cross-generational appeal—most of the women I know in their 20s and 30s who read regularly have read it, as have some of the men—a very engaged fanbase similar to THG/Twilight/etc, and probably the closest sales numbers to the Hunger Games/Twilight as any YA…

It doesn't make sense for everyone to meet their future spouses in high school in our world, but in the wizarding world that Rowling created? Sure, it does. The wizard community seems to be very small, and as far as we can tell, Hogwarts is the only wizard school in Britain. Everybody goes there. By the time you…