Mazzoni director Narit Shein introduced Bono:
"What you've done for the movement has propelled it forward so much faster than we could," she told him.
Daniel O'Donoghue, who arrived early to grab a good seat, said he had watched little Chastity Bono on her parents' 1970s television show, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.
"It's so affirming," O'Donoghue said, "to see him out and proud."
In childhood, Bono told the audience, he realized he wanted to be like the boys he knew - not the girls. He came out as a lesbian at 18 and struggled for decades before acknowledging to himself and others his need to transition.
He is in a committed relationship now, with a woman who stuck by him through the change he started two years ago, taking testosterone and undergoing "top surgery," in which the breasts are removed and the chest re-shaped.
"I waited so long because of fear," he told the audience. "Fear of rejection."
By that time, Sonny Bono had already died, in a skiing accident. In the book, Bono describes his ever-shifting relationship with his mother, Cher, as loving but never fully accepting.
The first few attendees who rose to speak thanked Bono for giving a positive public face to a community that has been ignored, ridiculed, and attacked.
But Bono also has been chastised for clinging to traditional gender roles; some critics wish he would emphasize the range of gender expression that is possible.
Their most serious complaint, though, is how Bono describes his post-testosterone - male - personality.
"I find that women seem to have the ability to talk endlessly about things, recounting every little detail," he writes. "When I'm around such chatter, it starts to drive me crazy. . . . When I'm with a group of women . . . I just want to jump out of my skin."
At the conference, some in the audience took Bono to task for that.
