women-based media. Janice Raymond, in the foreword of her 1979 book The Transsexual Empire, thanked Rich for "constant encouragement" and cited her in the book's chapter "Sappho by Surgery." "The Transsexual Empire" is considered by some LGBT and feminist critics to be transphobic, and many have criticized Rich for her involvement in and support of its production. While Rich never explicitly disavowed her support for Raymond's work, Leslie Feinberg cites Rich as having been supportive during Feinberg's writing of Transgender Warriors. By the early 1980s, Rich was using canes and wheelchairs due to rheumatoid arthritis. Diagnosed with the condition at age 22, Rich kept her disability quiet for decades. The cold air in New England motivated Rich and Cliff to settle in California. A 1992 spinal operation required Rich to wear a metal halo screwed into her head. In June 1984, Rich presented a speech at the International Conference of Women, Feminist Identity, and Society in Utrecht, Netherlands titled Notes Toward a Politics of Location. Her keynote speech is a major document on politics of location and the birth of the concept of female "locatedness". In discussing the locations from which women speak, Rich attempts to reconnect female thought and speech with the female body, with an intent to reclaim the body through verbalizing self-representation. Rich begins the speech by noting that while she speaks the words in Europe, she has searched for them in the United States. By acknowledging her location in an essay on the progression of the women's movement, she expresses her concern for all women, not just women in Providence. Through widening her audience to women across the world Rich not only influences a larger movement but she invites all women to consider their existence. Through imagining geographical locations on a map as history and as places where women are created, and further focusing on those locations, Rich asks women to examine where they were created. In an attempt to try to find a sense of belonging in the world, Rich asks the audience not to begin with a continent, country, or house, but to start with the geography closest to themselves –which is their body. Rich, therefore, challenges members of the audience and readers to form their own identity by refusing to be defined by the parameters of government, religion, and home. The essay hypothesizes the women's movement at the end of the 20th century.