A kinder, gentler turn to the gender wars?

Treatment of men in the media was also a big topic: Everyone is familiar with the way men, especially dads, are treated as bumbling losers in TV sitcoms and commercials, and the news media are generally much quicker to cover violence affecting girls than boys. (When the Nigerian terror groups Boko Haram kidnapped a group of girls, it got international attention and a hashtag campaign spearheaded by first lady Michelle Obama. When Boko Haram had burned a bunch of boys alive earlier, nobody much noticed.)

But although the specifics were interesting, the thing that struck me most about the gathering was the palpable lack of gender tension. Men and women at this conference seemed to be on the same page, and the same team, in a way that seems almost surprising in these gender-divided times. Maybe that’s because gender-talk, long a female domain, is also now about men. As another speaker at the conference, Warren Farrell, said, women can’t hear what men don’t say. So it’s good that men are speaking up. As Farrell concluded in a Friday night dinner speech, the goal is “not a men’s movement, not a women’s movement, but a gender liberation movement.”