In The Buzz Cut, we bring you a round-up of all the weird, controversial, and wonderful stories we’ve been reading all week.

James Bond franchise producer Barbara Broccoli confirmed there will never be a woman 007. While her comment sparked initial indignation among fans wanting a woman James Bond, Broccoli said she had no interest in replacing a male character with a woman — because the latter is capable of doing more interesting things. We agree.

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Elsie Fisher, of the hit teen drama Eighth Grade, is fed up of whitewashed Oscars, the 2020 nominee list of which once again keeps out works by women and people of color. She has announced her own “Elsie Awards,” replete with a more inclusive nominee list. Might we say, it’s high time someone else took charge.

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The portrayals of sex in pop culture have mostly been through the male gaze. The porn industry has feminist porn; now, movies and TV shows have intimacy coordinators to help filmmakers provide accurate sexual depictions — which incidentally, are also sexier.

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Wellness-oriented period underwear brand, Thinx, rose to fame this decade because of its feminist branding aimed at making women more comfortable during menstruation. Now, reports of the company failing its employees, combined with a study that shows Thinx products involve toxic chemicals, show how companies riding on the feminist brand often cut corners on consumer and employee protection.

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The word “queer” has always been in flux — from gay people using it to normalize homosexuality to people who challenge the normal by being out, proud and unconventional adopting it to signal an elite ‘other.’ But almost a decade after the word “queer” became an alternate to LGBTQIA+, what does it mean, and whom does it stand for?

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A New Yorker investigation reveals how far women have to go to protect themselves against sexual assault — and when they do, they often face harsher sentences than their perpetrator.

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Goop, actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s infamous and absurd wellness brand, is again living up to its potential of being utterly unnecessary — in the form of a candle that smells like a vagina. What’s more, people are buying it.

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One of the biggest institutional mainstays in the romance writer community — the Romance Writers of America of whom industry greats such as Nora Roberts and Julia Quinn have been a part — might be on its way to being irrelevant. Fraught with internal disputes regarding its longstanding perception of being racist, publishers and authors are increasingly boycotting its events.

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France is undergoing its own cultural reckoning with sexual assault — with Gabriel Matzneff, a famed writer who has long been a suspected pedophile, but has still been universally lauded for approximately 40 years within French literary circles. Now, a book, ironically, penned by Vanessa Springora, called Le Consentement (Consent) is calling Matzneff’s violations to be seriously considered and condemned, challenging a decades’-long, comfortable ignorance of the harm he has done.