Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: the Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2: An article was done about a singer from the thirties
Speaker 2: and forties named Gladys Bentley, and she was a lesbian.
Speaker 2: She was an act of lesbian And this article, though,
Speaker 2: was all about how Gladys Bentley was repenting her sinful life,
Speaker 2: and it was really horrifying. It denigrated everything about being
Speaker 2: a lesbian, and I was devastated. I was devastated by
Speaker 2: reading that article, and I felt like, she, of course
Speaker 2: has every right to change her mind, but the coverage
Speaker 2: itself was really.
Speaker 3: Horrific.
Speaker 2: It was like, I read that and I thought, Oh,
Speaker 2: what is the point of going on if that's what
Speaker 2: life is going to mean?
Speaker 3: As I get older.
Speaker 1: As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
Speaker 1: I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
Speaker 1: ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
Speaker 1: that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
Speaker 1: are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll meet Juel Gomez, one of the
Speaker 1: founders of the queer media watchdog organization GLAD. We'll learn
Speaker 1: how and why GLAD was founded and how gone unchecked
Speaker 1: the media can drive our opinions about the world around
Speaker 1: us and ourselves. From my heart podcast, I'm Jordan Go
Speaker 1: and Solves and this is what we loved. Last year,
Speaker 1: at the height of the Beyonce Craze, I went to
Speaker 1: the Renaissance tour and oh my god, it was incredible,
Speaker 1: like sixty thousand people jumping and singing and sweating, and
Speaker 1: in between Beyonce songs when she was doing costume changes,
Speaker 1: she created these video interludes to play on stage, and
Speaker 1: one of them struck a darker tone in giant letters.
Speaker 1: A Jim Morrison quote appeared on a JumboTron. Whoever controls
Speaker 1: the media controls the mind, it said, and it stayed
Speaker 1: with me because I sort of disagreed with it. I mean,
Speaker 1: today there's so much media out there that I feel
Speaker 1: like I control my media diet. I pick what I'm consuming.
Speaker 1: So I thought support from Business Insider actually found that
Speaker 1: ninety percent of American media content is controlled by just
Speaker 1: six companies. And when I thought about it, almost all
Speaker 1: of the shows that I watched this year, and a
Speaker 1: lot of my election coverage all came from within those
Speaker 1: six companies. It made me think about how much power
Speaker 1: they have, how easy it is to skirt accountability for
Speaker 1: bias and misinformation, especially when it comes to representing queer people. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: there are organizations that exist specifically to hold these companies accountable.
Speaker 1: GLAD is one of them. Since its inception, GLAD has
Speaker 1: held countless media organizations responsible for bad coverage of LGBTQ people.
Speaker 1: My next guest, Juel Gomez, was one of the founders
Speaker 1: of GLAD. She graduated from Columbia Journalism School in the
Speaker 1: early seventies and became a famous writer and activist. She's
Speaker 1: well known for her queer class novel The guilda Stories
Speaker 1: that came out in nineteen ninety one. It follows a
Speaker 1: black lesbian vampire from eighteen hundreds of America all the
Speaker 1: way into the twenty first century. Even from a young age,
Speaker 1: Jewle understood that those who control the media also control
Speaker 1: the mind. You grew up in Boston, Massachusetts in the
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, and I'm wondering if you could tell
Speaker 1: me what was it like growing up as a lesbian
Speaker 1: at that time in that place in America.
Speaker 2: I was raised in Boston by my great grandmother and
Speaker 2: her daughter, who's my grandmother. And I was also very
Speaker 2: close to my father who lived nearby us and Bostonians
Speaker 2: were very specific and they had a hard time believing
Speaker 2: that people of color were actually born in Boston. Now,
Speaker 2: as a lesbian, everything was very kind of on the
Speaker 2: down low in a way, because there wasn't much representation anywhere.
Speaker 2: But I did have the good fortune. As I said,
Speaker 2: my grandmother was very close to me and helped raise me.
Speaker 2: She'd been on the stage in the forties and the thirties,
Speaker 2: so she knew every kind of person in the world.
Speaker 2: She used to go to Cape Cod every summer with
Speaker 2: her friend Scotti and his boyfriend and stay in their cottage.
Speaker 2: So I grew up understanding there were gay people. I
Speaker 2: knew I was one, and I knew it was going
Speaker 2: to be okay because my grandmother was okay. Same with
Speaker 2: my father. He was a bartender. He had queer people
Speaker 2: in his bark, men who were drag Queen's. I got
Speaker 2: a lot of my best high school clothes from Queen's
Speaker 2: miss Case, specifically because she was my size.
Speaker 3: You know, she was a little chubby.
Speaker 2: I was a little chubby, So I got all these
Speaker 2: great suits and dresses from her, So I knew it
Speaker 2: was gonna be okay, but I knew in the moment
Speaker 2: it was not gonna be something I could actually talk about.
Speaker 1: Well, Jewel, that is so timely, because I won't wonder
Speaker 1: what is the story of the moment that you knew
Speaker 1: you were gay?
Speaker 2: I knew I was gay around eight years old. There
Speaker 2: was a house across the street. There was a young
Speaker 2: woman who was my age, maybe she was ten, but
Speaker 2: she used to climb the tree in her front yard
Speaker 2: all the time. And let me just say, I knew
Speaker 2: when I looked out of the window, I was in love.
Speaker 3: I just was in love.
Speaker 2: It was just really athletic and gorgeous. And I didn't
Speaker 2: have a word for it, of course, but I knew
Speaker 2: I was in love with Diane.
Speaker 3: That was her name.
Speaker 2: I never did get to know her, but I knew
Speaker 2: when she came out to play, because that's when I
Speaker 2: could go to my front window and watch her.
Speaker 1: You have really become hugely influential as a lesbian feminist
Speaker 1: through the literature and poetry that you've written. Was there
Speaker 1: sort of a moment in your childhood or your early
Speaker 1: life that influenced you to become an activist.
Speaker 3: Growing up during the Civil Rights movement.
Speaker 2: Every day people in our community were talking about what
Speaker 2: was going on with sit ins, with bussing.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was a very.
Speaker 4: Active You grew up in the Civil rights era, yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: The Civil rights movement, which was seemed to be centered
Speaker 4: more in the South, I was actually trying to make
Speaker 4: inroads into northern communities because racism in the North was
Speaker 4: as bad, perhaps not as obvious, but certainly as bad
Speaker 4: as it was in the South.
Speaker 2: And the fact that schools that were predominantly black were poor,
Speaker 2: only got second hand books, did not have strong programs
Speaker 2: preparing students for college. There was a big controversy about that. Specifically,
Speaker 2: when I was in high school in Boston. I went
Speaker 2: to a fairly poor school in a black neighborhood, and
Speaker 2: one year the civil rights activists decreed Black Day, and
Speaker 2: they invited young black students in high school to just
Speaker 2: stay home. So the protests were really to make the
Speaker 2: school system aware of how it was short changing it's
Speaker 2: students of color. And when they first did that, I
Speaker 2: did not stay home because I was one of those
Speaker 2: who all I really cared about was having a perfect
Speaker 2: attendance record.
Speaker 3: I was really kind of a nerd.
Speaker 2: I didn't stay home even when I had cramped so
Speaker 2: bad I could barely walk. But the guidance counselor, when
Speaker 2: I was in my freshman year, convinced my great grandmother
Speaker 2: I shouldn't be in the college program because I was
Speaker 2: never going to be able to afford to go to college.
Speaker 2: And the next year I understood, Oh, this is something
Speaker 2: that's bigger than my attendance record. I need to be
Speaker 2: present by being absent, I need to make my voice
Speaker 2: part of this voice demanding that the school system and
Speaker 2: the city pay attention to the needs of people of
Speaker 2: color in this community. So from that moment on, I
Speaker 2: understood I was meant to participate. And by the time
Speaker 2: the next year rolled around, civil rights actions had gotten
Speaker 2: us a new administration in the high school, and this
Speaker 2: time the guidance counselor called my great grandma and said, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: she needs to be in a college program. She will
Speaker 2: go to college.
Speaker 1: So Jule you would go on to co found GLAD
Speaker 1: in the eighties, which became an organization focused on holding
Speaker 1: the media accountable to betraying gay people in a fair way.
Speaker 1: Was there a piece of media for you growing up
Speaker 1: where you felt like the portrayal of queer people negatively
Speaker 1: impacted you.
Speaker 3: There is one specific thing that happened.
Speaker 2: I probably was a teenager, and I of course knew
Speaker 2: I was a lesbian. I had a lover in high
Speaker 2: school at the age of fourteen. But in this magazine,
Speaker 2: I think it was either Ebony or Jet magazine, an
Speaker 2: article was done about a singer from the thirties and
Speaker 2: forties named Gladys Bentley. Now, Gladys Bentley was very, very popular.
Speaker 2: She always dressed in men's clothes and a top hat.
Speaker 2: She had a particular club she sang in every week,
Speaker 2: and she was a lesbian. She was an act of lesbian.
Speaker 2: And this article, though, was all about how Gladys Bentley
Speaker 2: was repenting her sinful life, and it was really horrifying.
Speaker 2: It was it really dismissed everything about the culture that
Speaker 2: she'd been a part of in the thirties and forties.
Speaker 2: It then agreed everything about being a lesbian and basically
Speaker 2: said she was saved and going to go to heaven
Speaker 2: because she had decided to get married to a man.
Speaker 2: And I was devastated. I was devastated by reading that
Speaker 2: article and I felt like, she, of course has every
Speaker 2: right to change her mind, but the coverage itself was really.
Speaker 3: Horrific.
Speaker 2: It was like, I read that and I thought, Oh,
Speaker 2: what is the point of going on if that's what
Speaker 2: life is going to mean as I get older?
Speaker 1: When we come back, Jewel transforms her frustration into activism
Speaker 1: and becomes one of the founders of glad It's the
Speaker 1: late nineteen eighties. By this point, Jewel had been a
Speaker 1: published author for several years, and she began working for
Speaker 1: the New York State Council on the Arts. Her personal
Speaker 1: and professional see were starting to be filled with other
Speaker 1: queer writers, particularly gay men, who at the same time
Speaker 1: were in an existential battle for their lives. They were
Speaker 1: dying of AIDS, and the media coverage was not good.
Speaker 1: Having lived through the Civil Rights movement and the anti
Speaker 1: Vietnam War protests, Jewell understood that the way people were
Speaker 1: covered by the news directly impacted the way they were
Speaker 1: treated in real life. You're now in your thirties and
Speaker 1: already becoming quite a prolific poet. At this point, you
Speaker 1: AIDS is raging and killing tens of thousands of Americans.
Speaker 1: By nineteen eighty five, I wonder had the media portrayal
Speaker 1: of queer people changed at that point from when you
Speaker 1: were fourteen and reading this article in Ebony magazine. Had
Speaker 1: it changed by the eighties when AIDS was raging.
Speaker 2: Now, keeping in mind that I had gone to Columbia
Speaker 2: journalism school, I was very familiar with the way that
Speaker 2: media worked, and I wasn't cynical, but I was aware.
Speaker 2: So by the eighties when there was this pandemic and
Speaker 2: the newspapers demonized, primarily demonized gay men, I was not
Speaker 2: surprised at all.
Speaker 5: A mystery disease known as the gay plague has become
Speaker 5: an epidemic unprecedented in the history of American medicine that
Speaker 5: today from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Topping
Speaker 5: the list of likely victims are male homosexuals who have
Speaker 5: many partners and.
Speaker 3: Drug users who inject themselves with needles.
Speaker 2: I felt like, Oh, okay, this is just an extension
Speaker 2: of how the media can number one sell papers and
Speaker 2: use people's fears against gay people.
Speaker 3: So I was horrified.
Speaker 1: What is one piece of media that you remember recall
Speaker 1: at that point, sort of being horrified, we.
Speaker 2: Put together these t shirts from headlines and one of
Speaker 2: them was something like about sending gay men to an island.
Speaker 2: Some right wing person decided that queer people should just
Speaker 2: go be sent to an island.
Speaker 1: The AIDS crisis came about during a time of religious
Speaker 1: resurgence in America, and coincidentally, it was a virus that
Speaker 1: intersected with some of society's deepest taboos, drugs, sex, and homosexuality.
Speaker 1: It would famously take President Ronald Reagan more than four
Speaker 1: years to publicly acknowledge the disease. One US Senator from
Speaker 1: North Carolina, who voted against AIDS research in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: testified saying, quote, nothing positive was likely to happen to
Speaker 1: America if our people succumbed to the drumbeats of support
Speaker 1: for the homosexual lifestyle.
Speaker 6: There is not one case of age own record in
Speaker 6: this country, or as far as I know, anywhere else that.
Speaker 3: Did not have its origin asodomy.
Speaker 1: A significant amount of Americans also believed that AIDS was
Speaker 1: God's punishment. Jewel knew that the media could either help
Speaker 1: combat this disdain for gay people or perpetuate it, but
Speaker 1: sadly AIDS coverage was toxic. In a twenty eighteen retroactive
Speaker 1: analysis of their own AIDS coverage. The New York Times
Speaker 1: admitted their AIDS reporting was quote scant, judgmental, and distressingly vague.
Speaker 1: Jewele's friends were dying and it angered her that the
Speaker 1: met wasn't taking it seriously.
Speaker 2: And there were all kinds of headlines that indicated whoever
Speaker 2: got aged deserved it. It was simple deviousness on the
Speaker 2: part of journalists to write headlines that blamed people who
Speaker 2: were getting ill.
Speaker 1: Well, tell me about that. Why was it important for
Speaker 1: you to draw the connection between media representation and combating homophobia?
Speaker 1: Because when I think about it, there's so many different
Speaker 1: avenues that you could have taken to address homophobia. There's
Speaker 1: healthcare in the eighties, there's politics. What was it about
Speaker 1: media that drew your interest and sort of made you
Speaker 1: think this is an avenue that we could really affect
Speaker 1: change and really combat homophobia.
Speaker 2: As someone who had trained to be a journalist, I
Speaker 2: was interested in media. I had studied it. I was
Speaker 2: dedicated to its usage for justice, and I grew up
Speaker 2: watching the news during the Civil rights movement and the
Speaker 2: war in Vietnam. I learned so much about what was
Speaker 2: wrong with things that were happening by what I saw
Speaker 2: in the media, and it was very clear pretty early
Speaker 2: on that media was being utilized to first make the
Speaker 2: population in favor of the war in Vietnam, and the
Speaker 2: scariest thing one could do was protest against it, because
Speaker 2: then you would be portrayed as a trader. And that
Speaker 2: was with the media's support. As a kid watching demonstrators
Speaker 2: be hosed and watching dogs being sick on young people
Speaker 2: by white southern sheriffs, I was really clear the media
Speaker 2: had an effect that turned the tide in many people's
Speaker 2: minds about what was important, and what was important was
Speaker 2: protecting our younger people and getting the right to vote
Speaker 2: and defeating these racist sheriffs. So that was a situation
Speaker 2: in which the media actually worked to our advantage because
Speaker 2: it showed us perfect you know, pictures worth a thousand words.
Speaker 2: It showed us exactly what was going on. So I
Speaker 2: was aware, you know, from an early age, that media
Speaker 2: could depict queer people and gay men specifically as horrific predators,
Speaker 2: and that's what it seemed to be doing. And if
Speaker 2: we did not change that, we were going to watch
Speaker 2: more and more and more of our young people dying.
Speaker 1: Well, you ended up co founding Glad Glad is now
Speaker 1: very well known across America for essentially acting as a
Speaker 1: watchdog for fair queer media representation. What was that story
Speaker 1: of how you co founded GLAD.
Speaker 2: I worked at that time for the New York State
Speaker 2: Council and the Arts in the Literature program, and my
Speaker 2: boss was Gregory Coolovacas, who was a gay man, and
Speaker 2: you know, he'd gone to an Ivy League school, and
Speaker 2: he was every example of what you would portray if
Speaker 2: you wanted to look at like a particular kind of
Speaker 2: gay man. Blonde, blue eyes, dimples, those gold rim glasses,
Speaker 2: very size, very.
Speaker 3: Desirable.
Speaker 2: He was very outgoing and smart, and we became dear,
Speaker 2: dear friends, and it was totally amazing to me when
Speaker 2: he said to me, some guys and I are starting
Speaker 2: to get together to try to figure out what to
Speaker 2: do about meatia coverage.
Speaker 3: You should join us.
Speaker 2: I was just starting to work on my novel, The
Speaker 2: Guild of Stories, which is the first black lesbian vampire novel,
Speaker 2: and it's still in print decades later, so I wasn't
Speaker 2: sure how much time I was going to be able
Speaker 2: to devote. But I bumped into Vito Russo, the writer
Speaker 2: about film and really strong activists and he said, no, Juel,
Speaker 2: you have to join us. This is this is the moment,
Speaker 2: it's happening right now. So that's how I ended up
Speaker 2: going to GLAD meetings. And it started very simple, and
Speaker 2: we started keeping articles that we cut out that were
Speaker 2: that were, you know, damaging, we thought of as damaging.
Speaker 2: And one of the first things that we did was
Speaker 2: insist on meeting with the editorial boards of the New
Speaker 2: York Times, the Daily News, and Newsday, the three major
Speaker 2: papers in New York City, to really talk with them
Speaker 2: about how screwed up their coverage was and that they
Speaker 2: should expect demonstrations if they were not willing to meet
Speaker 2: with us and if they were not able to reconsider
Speaker 2: their editorial position in their headlines. And it was the
Speaker 2: first meeting of a queer organization with the major newspapers
Speaker 2: in New York.
Speaker 6: What was some of the coverage, like the big thing
Speaker 6: was closed down the bathhouses and because this feeling was
Speaker 6: aids would be transmitted in bath houses where gay men
Speaker 6: had anonymous sex.
Speaker 2: That was an aspect of some of that, but it
Speaker 2: really was and getting to the point of how is
Speaker 2: it transmitted and how do you get men gay men
Speaker 2: men having sex with men who didn't necessarily identify as gay,
Speaker 2: how did you get them to understand how to be safe?
Speaker 2: And there was no sense of being safe. It was
Speaker 2: all about you all have to stop having sex. You
Speaker 2: all have to stay in your homes. You cannot be
Speaker 2: in the public eye, you know, sweeps through Central Park
Speaker 2: where gay men would have sex at night, And it
Speaker 2: was suddenly like the fifties where gay men were afraid
Speaker 2: to walk through Central Park, much less have sex, because
Speaker 2: their pictures would then be in the daily news. So
Speaker 2: it was a very specific editorial attitude.
Speaker 3: Well, what were.
Speaker 1: Some of the early victories that you had with Glad.
Speaker 3: I had read that.
Speaker 1: Glad had in those early meetings convinced the New York
Speaker 1: Times to stop using the word homosexual.
Speaker 3: Number one.
Speaker 2: Having a meeting with the major editorial boards of New
Speaker 2: York was a huge success. One of the things that
Speaker 2: we counted as a success was that the number of
Speaker 2: people at each demonstration we had grew exponentially. First it
Speaker 2: might be twenty people, and then it might be one
Speaker 2: hundred people. Keeping in mind that there was no internet,
Speaker 2: there was no email. We had what we called a
Speaker 2: phone tree. You know, I called one person and that
Speaker 2: person called two people, and those two people called two
Speaker 2: more people. Before that, if you can imagine, people were
Speaker 2: afraid to be seen. People were afraid to have their
Speaker 2: picture taken coming out of a gay bar. People were
Speaker 2: nervous about being known. So if you could have a
Speaker 2: demonstration in the nineteen eighties and get one hundred people
Speaker 2: to show up, not wearing masks, not hiding it, it
Speaker 2: was pretty stunning. It was pretty stunning, and that I
Speaker 2: think shifted things for a lot of gay people because
Speaker 2: we were able to be ourselves in daylight. And once
Speaker 2: you can do that, you can pretty much protest anything,
Speaker 2: change anything, come out wherever you feel like you want to.
Speaker 2: And that was I think the personal success of appearing
Speaker 2: in public was huge.
Speaker 3: It was really huge.
Speaker 1: I am wondering, as Glad is accomplishing all of this
Speaker 1: and people are finally becoming visible. There's a face to
Speaker 1: the gay rights movement, and people are understanding it's it's
Speaker 1: not just those people, but it's my neighbors, it's my
Speaker 1: family members, perhaps even my son or daughter. You're making
Speaker 1: a ton of strides in that movement. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, was there a time where you also felt
Speaker 1: like the efforts felt futile. I wonder if you remember
Speaker 1: Ellen and that show being canceled. Yeah, yeah, yeah, tell
Speaker 1: me about that.
Speaker 2: Actually, it's kind of funny because you know Ellen, I
Speaker 2: knew she was a lesbian before she had her show.
Speaker 3: I watched her.
Speaker 2: She was a host on the I think the Oscar
Speaker 2: Awards once and she was interviewing people on the backstage
Speaker 2: and everything, and I thought, oh my god, that woman's
Speaker 2: a lesbian. Then the next and she was very, very funny.
Speaker 2: And so the next thing I know, she has this show,
Speaker 2: and I'm thinking, and then she also had done a
Speaker 2: movie and it didn't do well, and I thought, oh gosh,
Speaker 2: she's not gonna do well because they don't actually want
Speaker 2: her to be a lesbian on screen, and so they
Speaker 2: don't know what to do with her. They keep kind
Speaker 2: of setting her up in these weird situations. And I
Speaker 2: was so relieved when it was decided that she would
Speaker 2: get to say she was a lesbian, because to me,
Speaker 2: it was like, here was this incredible talent being tied
Speaker 2: up like a mummy and unable to spread her wings
Speaker 2: and able to really use her humor because she was
Speaker 2: so tied tight to persona. And once those ties and
Speaker 2: bandages were ripped open. I was really thrilled because she
Speaker 2: went on to do what she does, which is be
Speaker 2: an incredibly funny person.
Speaker 1: How did you feel when that show got canceled after
Speaker 1: she came out?
Speaker 2: I was sorry for her, because you know, she could
Speaker 2: feel like she'd failed, which I thought was absolutely not
Speaker 2: the case. I felt like it freed her to actually
Speaker 2: fulfill her destiny as a storyteller and as a human
Speaker 2: being in a way that she never would have been
Speaker 2: able to do if she stayed on TV like that.
Speaker 2: But I wasn't that surprised that Ellen's show was canceled
Speaker 2: after she came out, because where were they going to go?
Speaker 2: They were not going to do a show about lesbians.
Speaker 3: They were really not ready.
Speaker 2: To do a comedy about lesbians. I mean lesbians was
Speaker 2: still if they appeared in something, they had to die
Speaker 2: at the end.
Speaker 1: By the early two thousands, GLAD had racked up several accomplishments.
Speaker 1: Their efforts on AIDS was largely successful, pushing media companies
Speaker 1: to report on science and not on the things that
Speaker 1: compounded stigma. GLAD would go on to seriously influence queer
Speaker 1: representation on TV, too, essentially becoming a consultant for major
Speaker 1: networks wanting to portray queer characters. Their work is so
Speaker 1: powerful in the industry today that they've even managed to
Speaker 1: get some TV shows canceled for bad depictions of queer life.
Speaker 1: Their annual media awards draw wide attention for best in
Speaker 1: class representations of queer people. But Jules says, even though
Speaker 1: strides have been made, there's still a lot more to do.
Speaker 1: What was the moment where you found that the tide
Speaker 1: was beginning to turn in your favor, that gay media
Speaker 1: representation was actually becoming meaningful.
Speaker 2: Mmmm, well, I I feel like we're not.
Speaker 3: Finished. There is so much more that needs to happen.
Speaker 2: We can't have journalists look at a television coverage and say, oh, well,
Speaker 2: this show has five queer people on it, and this
Speaker 2: show has two lesbians on it.
Speaker 3: See, aren't we perfect. We can't do that. What we
Speaker 3: still have to do is.
Speaker 2: See that people involved in the media are looking at
Speaker 2: us through candid eyes, that looking at us, not through
Speaker 2: their own prejudices, and that takes a long time. We
Speaker 2: still need to get the producers, the directors, the writers
Speaker 2: to be accountable for what they produce and what they write.
Speaker 3: And I don't think that's true.
Speaker 1: How do you fit into this story, Juel, You were
Speaker 1: a part of this group glad that has championed fair
Speaker 1: depiction of queer people and really has changed the landscape
Speaker 1: of queer representation in the media, certainly in the United States.
Speaker 1: But you're also part of that group of queer people,
Speaker 1: and you are also a queer person in the media.
Speaker 1: So how are you impacted by all of this?
Speaker 2: I would say I'm very grateful that I came along
Speaker 2: when I did through the activism of the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 2: the civil rights, anti war, lesbian feminist movements, because it's
Speaker 2: made activism such a part of my body. In my mind,
Speaker 2: I have that as part of who I am. Nobody
Speaker 2: has to tell me to do that, no one has
Speaker 2: to remind me to do that, and it helps me
Speaker 2: when I'm writing, so that I'm creating characters that I
Speaker 2: feel represent the philosophical underpinnings that have guided me all
Speaker 2: of my life. I want people, when they read The
Speaker 2: Guild of Stories one hundred years from now to say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I understand that character. That character means a lot to me,
Speaker 2: whether I'm queer or not, and the character is telling
Speaker 2: me some ways to be in the world that are honorable,
Speaker 2: and I want all of my writing to be able
Speaker 2: to do that.
Speaker 1: The last question I have for you is sort of
Speaker 1: around passing things down for all of the young people listening.
Speaker 1: Why do you want queer people to continue fighting for
Speaker 1: representation in the media. It feels like right now almost
Speaker 1: every show has a queer character of some kind. This
Speaker 1: is actually a queer show on a large media network.
Speaker 1: In America. There are LGBTQ people in writers' rooms.
Speaker 2: I had a young student say to me once, I
Speaker 2: don't know about you baby boomers.
Speaker 3: You did a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: You got some civil rights movements, bills passed and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, and then you got old and you just stopped.
Speaker 2: Social change is not just a long distance race. Each
Speaker 2: of us could start out thinking we're going to change
Speaker 2: the world before we die, and we will change some
Speaker 2: part of the world before we die. But social change
Speaker 2: is a relay race. And my generation did what we
Speaker 2: could for our part of the track, and now it's
Speaker 2: the next generation's turn to do what they can with
Speaker 2: their part of the track. People don't see and don't
Speaker 2: understand social change is something that you have to keep
Speaker 2: working at It doesn't just about a being about a bang.
Speaker 2: Everybody is nice to you. Social change is something we
Speaker 2: do one by one, and I'm still doing it, so
Speaker 2: I don't see an end. I keep thinking, this is
Speaker 2: what we do, This is what we do with our
Speaker 2: lives when we get up in the morning, and this
Speaker 2: is what we dream about when we go to bed
Speaker 2: at night.
Speaker 3: How to Make the World Better.
Speaker 1: But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan go Andsolves.
Speaker 1: New episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write
Speaker 1: in to tell your story, email us at but We
Speaker 1: Looved at gmail dot com, or you can send me
Speaker 1: a message on Instagram or TikTok at your underscore againsolvice.
Speaker 1: We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts. But We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Joey pat Emily Meronoff, and Christina Loranger.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are me Maya Howard and Katrina Norville.
Speaker 1: Original music by Steve Boone. Special thanks to Jay Bronson
Speaker 1: and Roquel Willis. If you loved this episode, leave us
Speaker 1: a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify,
Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.