Standing tall in a pair of black-and-white wedge sandals, 77-year-old Linda Bedore put a harmonica to her bright red lips and began to play. As the sound hit the amp and electrified the room, Bedore’s hips swayed slowly from side to side.
Linda Bedore, a musician with six children and three grandchildren, used to be a man.
Bedore was one of nine self-identified transgender performers to take the stage in Driscoll Ballroom on Thursday night as part of the Tranny Roadshow. The Roadshow, a multimedia variety show organized by transpeople and performers Kelly Shortandqueer and Jamez Terry, has traveled North America since 2005, entertaining and educating audiences about gender and self expression. The show featured a variety of performers, from folk singers to puppeteers to magicians and harmonica players, and was attended by over 100 DU students, staff and community members.
“Today was the Day of Silence on campus, and this is how we’re breaking the silence – with the Tranny Roadshow,” said Moises Munoz, a member of DU’s Queer Straight Alliance (QSA). The Day of Silence is a national event that encourages students to remain silent for 24 hours in order to bring attention to anti-gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender harassment at schools and universities.
Kelly Shortandqueer, the director of Victim Services for the Colorado Anti-Violence Program in Denver and co-organizer of the Roadshow, kicked off the evening with a discussion about his experience being raised as a female and subsequently transitioning into a male world.
“Over time, I’ve developed some strategies to help me pass as male,” Shortandqueer said. “I have my ‘man voice.’ I make intentional decisions about shaving my face.”
However, Shortandqueer, who said he is often perceived as a gay man because of his feminine gestures, is not ashamed of being raised and socialized as a female.
“Maybe the ultimate answer is that I don’t want to sound male if it compromises my female politics,” he said.
Speaker and artist Dylan Scholinski, author of the memoir The Last Time I Wore a Dress, used the mic as an opportunity to recount his experience growing up in mental hospitals.
Scholinski, a female-to-male transgender, spent his high school career being forced to cake on blue eye shadow and heavy mascara at institutions that strove to make him “more feminine.”
Scholinksi, who currently lives in Denver, is also the organizer of a program called the Sent(a)Mental Project, which collects artwork as a memorial to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people who have committed suicide.
“I feel it’s important to keep telling my story until we end this kind of treatment of gender-varied people in this world,” Scholinski said.
Musician A.J. Bryce, who goes by the stage name Modern Day Pinocchio, closed the show with three original songs.
One of the pieces, titled “Addict,” was about Bryce’s experience with testosterone shots during his transition. He likened his dependence on the hormones to an addiction in the lyrics: “The syringes in my room, they look kind of shady. And prescription or not, they make me feel dirty.”
Bryce played a slideshow during his performance, which showed pictures and video of his early life as a young girl, his experience having a baby as a woman and his subsequent transition.
“You see my mind does not agree with my own body, so I’m making war inside with myself tonight,” he sang. “I’m just so tired of stumbling down this lonely street. I want people to open their eyes and see I’m just a human being.”
For more information on the Tranny Roadshow or its performers, visit www.trannyroadshow.org. To learn more about DU’s QSA or any of the group’s upcoming events, go to http://www.du.edu/orgs/qsa.
