We have to deal with the straight world as physicians and that can be wearing. WIM can be a great place to bring your partner and be in a community of people who understand, who can get in touch politically with the important issues. The first WIM conference was held in 1984 at Asilomar, a beautiful retreat near Monterey. There were 35 attendees. It was a great place to meet, well out of the public eye.
Privacy is still a very important component to the meeting.
It was a welcomed relief to come, bring our children and talk openly. There was a blend of the politically active, the scientific community, and community physicians. Talking openly put us on the cutting edge of medicine for women. With the academia present along with physicians who were interested in the psychosocial context of medicine, we were not afraid of controversy. At one of the conferences, as Robertson points out, there had been a huge debate about mastectomies three years before it became an explosive issue in the general medical community.