A kinder, gentler turn to the gender wars?

Article here. Excerpt:

'Are we coming to a truce in the gender wars? Or just opening a second front? Or, perhaps, actually starting to talk to each other?

Those are the questions I was asking myself as I attended the First International Conference on Men's Issues in Detroit last weekend. And, to be honest, I'm still not sure. But it's certainly true that the discussion is expanding, and I'm enough of a believer in discussion and engagement to think that's a good thing.

The first thing that struck me about the conference — both the speakers and the attendees — was how diverse the crowd was. (Full disclosure: I was there as a tag-along spouse while my wife spoke about her gender relations book, Men on Strike.) There were plenty of women there, which I suppose should be no surprise, as there are plenty of men at conferences on women's issues. There's even a women's group called The Honey Badger Brigade that supports men's rights.

There were also a lot of African-Americans — or, in the case of Canadian Sen. Anne Cools, African-Canadians. But it turns out, as we heard from speakers like Fred Jones, the victims of the gender war are disproportionately black, because black men are more likely to be jailed for failure to pay child support, or on charges of domestic violence.
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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."

With men and women both talking and listening, it gave me some hope that perhaps we'll see something new, and better, in the politics of gender. Will this spirit be able to overcome the politicized divisiveness that marks today's gender discussion? If enough men and women of good will come together, it just might.'