Splendor of Gender Workshop (1994)
©1995 by Kimberly Westwood (text) & Leslee M. Anthony (photos)
Source: Westwood, Kimberly. (1995, Spring). The Splendor of Gender. Tapestry Journal, No. 72, pp. 37-39.
Thumbnail Photo: Detail from the Splendor of Gender Conference. That’s me in the grainy image.
The Splendor of Gender was a two-day workshop planned and hosted by the Tampa Stress Center and The American Educational Gender Information Service, Inc. We worked together to develop the program and used our contacts to build a powerful team of presenters which included Kimberly Westwood and Carl Bushong, Ph.D. of the Tampa Stress Center; myself, Barbara Warren, Psy. D.; Eugene Schrang, M.D., and Pascual Bidot, M.D. Carl and Kimberleigh arranged the venue and fronted the money for transportation for the presenters.
I supplied the name Splendor of Gender. It was a term I had heard anthropologist Anne Bolin use to describe the Southern Comfort Conference. Topics ranged from transgender history to the HBIGDA Standards of Care to electrolysis, hormones, and male-to-female sex reassignment surgery. Barbara spoke about the Gender Identity Project at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Center in New York City.
Thanks to the publicity generated by a mailing by AEGIS and extensive coverage by local news media in Tampa (thanks to Carl and Kimberly), there were 30 0r more people in the audience— a substantial number, considering the year. Those who needed them to maintain their jobs or professional licenses were able to obtain CEUs.
Splendor of Gender was the entry point to the transgender community by one future leader—Tonye Barreto-Neto.