Once again the Gay and Lesbian Association of Students and Staff (GLASS) at the University of Calgary is throwing their infamous gender bending event at the Den.

Gender Bender has been hosted by the campus bar almost as long as GLASS has been officially running. GLASS started an underground society in the early seventies, and has come a long way toward helping promote tolerance and diversity on campus. Consisting of students, staff and devoted community members, the group is dedicated to improving the experience and outreach to queer students on campus. It accomplishes this by providing resources and peer support.

Currently there exists no student charter of rights on campus dealing with diversity or harassment related to race, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religion, or socio-economic background. This responsibility therefore falls to campus clubs like GLASS to bring diversity issues into focus, as well as providing education on the issues which can cause negative situations to arise.

Gender Benders are a college and university tradition using drag as a tool to open up lines of communication and promote tolerance, offering differing views on binary gender. The annual Gender Bender event is an expression of creating safe spaces on campus for queer students. By hosting the show at the Den, a space not usually considered safe or positive for queer students, GLASS effectively takes over the bar for the night.

The club is currently undertaking a project to reflect its own history on campus, and in Calgary’s broader queer history. Working with the Glenbow museum, the ‘Archive Project’ is currently under the watchful eye of Jasmine Ing, who hopes to present it later this year to the University to be inducted into the history of the institution.

GLASS has been making great strides in the past year to have their club reflect the community it serves. Part of this has been a complete re-write of their constitution, bringing it up to date according to the needs of its current membership and reflecting where the club has come from and hopes to go. A name change is to be revealed at the upcoming Gender Bender.

The Gender Bender has had something of brush up as well, bringing back old favorites and introducing new participants.

This year’s lineup covers a complete range of the drag scene in the Calgary community, welcoming back performers like Argentina, Electronica, the Fake Mustache drag king troupe, and several members of the Imperial Sovereign Court of the Chinook Arch. Of course, Bruce Lee will be behind the microphone as our ever enthusiastic host. Not to mention that there are fantastic door prizes to be won, generously donated by A Little More Interesting - a women centered sex positive store that hosted this year’s GLASS sex toy party with much success.

So throw on your mom’s favorite flowered sun dress, or grab dad’s fedora and head down for a night of gender-unspecific fun and flawless performance!

GLASS Annual Gender Bender

Sat, April 12th

The Den, University of Calgary

Door open 8pm, Show at 9pm

Tickets $5 in advance, $7 at door.

www.ucalgary.ca/~glass