Toronto may be the only city where novels are integral to high art, the alternative scene and mainstream culture all at the same time.

Culture is always the echo of economic realities; that's what Marx teaches. Feminism is a clear example of that.

The economy is changing everything. And men need to deal with that. Our response to it has been rage, stupidity and conscious avoidance of dealing with what the reality of being a man might be outside of empty concepts from ancient history.

When you ask single men in their 20s, "Do you want children?" they want children more than women do. Again, economics drive this. If you're a 29-year-old woman, having a baby is going to seriously blow up your career. If you're a 29-year-old man, it isn't.

We're in Trump times - we're in the time this misogynist hate clown is the leader of the free world, and when Putin has made abusing your wife legal, and transgender bathrooms have just been disallowed in school. There are all these political setbacks. And there's no question that those setbacks are very real and need to be treated as civil-rights issues.

The problem with the way we discuss gender is that it tends to be "Let's sympathize with women" or "Let's sympathize with men."

Almost all the voices in history have been men, but on this one question of gender, men don't talk about it. This has nothing to do with women; it has to do with men.