The research points pretty clearly to the rise of companionate marriage, and I just think it's going to keep being popular, for the very simple reason that it's basically the only way to afford a family life in the 21st-century in advanced economies. It's one of the major reasons for the spike in income inequality. Surgeons used to marry their secretaries. Now they marry other surgeons.

The more money women make, the less violence, the less sexual crimes against women. Everything horrific and misogynistic declines. But then what you're dealing with here is "What does it mean to be in love with people who are your equals?" And that's a very beautiful thing that we should cherish, but it's also incredibly tough in some ways.

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."

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.

Only idiots or snobs ever really thought less of 'genre books' of course. There are stupid books and there are smart books. There are well-written books and badly written books. There are fun books and boring books. All of these distinctions are vastly more important than the distinction between the literary and the non-literary.

Marriage is this black box which is the key to all social and political problems; the family is the unit.

As you get closer to equality, you get more pornography. True patriarchal societies like Saudi Arabia do not allow pornography because women are not allowed to turn their bodies into a commodity; women are chattel.