According to the latest Statistics Canada report on household demographics, the nuclear family is no longer the norm. But are Italians, one of the country's largest ethnic groups, rethinking family composition in step with other Canadians? If so, how do these changes interplay with cultural identity?

Want to start an argument? Ask friends and acquaintances for their thoughts on the gender gap in pay in Canada, and watch how many of them argue that it just doesn't exist. However, data from several sources have shown, over and over again, that there is a real gap between what men earn and what women earn for comparable work. I don't have a solution for all of this; I wish I did. I am still trying to figure these things out for my own family, and I know it's not easy. What we can do is start making changes in our own homes: throw out the old, outdated gender expectations, let go of the resentment about who brings in what.

Last month, I wrote how patriarchy and racism give birth to rape culture, not a drunk woman or her miniskirt. But it is baffling to see the dialogue outside of these platforms going off on a tangent, in random directions. This needs to stop, now. Here are five "solutions" that aren't stopping rape culture.

Men may take women out on different sorts of dates than they previously did, but the expectation that men be the ones to do this largely remains. When it comes to dating, many men are expected to pay for dates, both by some women, and more commonly, by themselves. Men paying for women on dates because they enjoy their company, and view it as a kind gesture, is not an issue. The issue is that some men still pay for women simply because they are women, and the men would feel emasculated if they did not.

After a four-hour trek through downtown to find coloured fishnet stockings, a garter, and plastic water pistols in an outfit that reveals more skin than I do at the doctor's office, we are on our way to the Late Night Double Feature Picture Show. I begin to get very nervous when remember that I am not wearing pants.

Cognitive psychologists have discovered that our brains reduce women to their sexual body parts, and treat those parts as objects. The data confirms what many of us have suspected all along: we objectify women without even thinking about it. But does that mean that sexism is an inevitable result of our physiology? That's not so easy to answer.

A fetus's gender should not be revealed until after 30 weeks of pregnancy, says an editorial published in the Canadian Medical Journal. This change...

"My youngest son wanted to know what the 'part' below his penis was," one mom tells me. "I explained to him that it was his testicles. He quickly replied he didn't like the look of it and could I take them off!"

In days of shopping I was unable to find attractive colourful unisex clothing for my son in main street/mainstream stores. So may I say three words to the fashion industry: Get over it. It is soul-crushing and mindless to force children to differentiate their sexed bodies in such limited and limiting ways.