The Empathy Machine: Why Moonlight Isn’t Universal and That’s a Good Thing

What is film but a medium that asks us to experience worlds — physical and emotional — beyond our own? It’s when it brings us to tears or makes us overflow with joy that film has the possibility of slipping past our defenses to challenge how we perceive the world and maybe even ourselves. The way […]

In Praise of Soft Cock

It was never the crude pestle, the blind ramrod we were after: merely a fellow-creature with natural resources equal to our own. — Adrienne Rich, “Natural Resources,” The Dream of a Common Language. * As trans and anti-racist critiques of the now-iconic knitted pink “pussy hats” (worn at Women’s Marches around the world on Jan. […]