A very interesting point of discussion was raised at the recent and first ever health and research conference that was held by Gender DynamiX in Cape Town, November 2010. How do transgender issues fit into traditional health practices? How is this issue perceived by traditional health practitioners and can it be facilitated on this platform?

hese burning questions inspired another workshop that was facilitated by GDX on the 28th and 29th of March 2011. This workshop sought to bring together the western and traditional approaches of transgender and looking to frame it in the cultural context. The meeting was well attended by some traditional health practitioners and was facilitated by He-Jin Kim and co-facilitated by Tebogo Nkoana who is both a sangoma, as well as the outreach officer for Gender DynamiX.

In the celebration and honouring of women on 9 August, Gender DynamiX was involved with the ArtsCape Women’s Festival which took place on 5, 6 and 7 August. Gender DynamiX was involved in 3 of the events.

The first event was “Real Women, Real Beauty” in which we looked at how the media and advertising make women feel they need to conform to a certain standard in order to be accepted by society.

Jody Bieber presented an audiovisual of photographs she had done of women of all shapes, sizes, colours and races. She photographed each of them in their own environment wearing lingerie which each of them had chosen for themselves. Among those photographed was a transgender woman. The idea was to show how, even if women do not conform to the standards set by the media, they could still be beautiful. It also poses the question;” what qualifies what a real woman is?”