We are proud to report on the amazing work of Center staff at The 2012 Gay Men’s Health Summit held July 20-21 at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Since 1999, the Gay Men’s Health Summit has worked to lay the groundwork for an expanded activist gay, bisexual, and transgender men’s health movement in the United States.

This year the summit was organized around eight core issues:

• Exploring the longings for intimacy and connection with other men and the social structures, networks, and ideologies that promote or prevent such connections.
• Understanding the meanings of anal sex, penetration, and the exchange of semen and exploring the relationships between various racial, ethnic, and class-based masculinities and anal sex practices.
• Addressing the emotions, pleasures, and wounds emerging from childhood and adolescent experiences with boys and men.
• Tapping into the sources of resilience, creativity, determination, humor and playfulness in diverse gay men’s cultures.
• To support the healing from trauma: violence, abuse, homophobia, racism, poverty, AIDS and addiction.
• Examining the ways transgression, risk, and cultural taboos interact with gay men’s sexual desires, practices, and subcultures.
• Confronting the ways in which privileged youth masculinities present challenges to, and opportunities for, the well-being of men as they grow older.
• Reviving and recreating community rituals, social structures, and networks to replace those lost during the most intense years of the AIDS crisis.

The workshops conducted by our talented Community Services Directors included:

Celebrating Male Diversity: Emotional Support and Community Building for Trans-Men

Andres Hoyos, MS, LCSW, NYC LGBT Center

Making decisions about their bodies and talking about isolation and depression are often difficult topics for trans-men to discuss. For this reason, the space created at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender Community Center in New York City is vital for

This article originally appeared on: http://www.gaycenter.org/centerblog/2012-07-25-center-staff-conduct-workshops-at-the-2012-gay-men%E2%80%99s-health-summit/