![]() What ABC's When We Rise gets particularly right, from the perspective of the activists it represents, is the way these groups had to work together, despite their different causes and viewpoints. Later, after he’s diagnosed as HIV-positive, he nearly falls through the cracks of the system, a problem many people of color faced during the AIDS crisis. “And that’s when I really became invested in doing something different.” In the miniseries, Ken is openly shunned by gay rights leaders and told he’s unwelcome at an all-white gay bar. “The light went off when I looked at that table, the makeup of that table and the dynamics of the table,” he said. In a phone interview, Jones recalled a meeting at an AIDS activist group where women and people of color were quite literally pushed to the side in favor of one table entirely composed of white men. ![]() But it was an even bigger roadblock for Ken Jones, of course. The fact that these men were largely white was an issue for Guy, who was initially drawn to activism through the civil rights struggle. “I didn’t trust that these white gay men, mostly, were gonna accept lesbians equally, that we weren’t still gonna be the secretaries,” she said. Guy said some lesbians were uncertain about the role they would have in a male-dominated movement. “There was a segment of the lesbian community that was very much separatist and wanted little to do with men,” said Jones, whose memoir, also titled When We Rise, is the basis for the miniseries. Cleve Jones recalled in a phone interview with BuzzFeed News that as women’s groups were working to find a place for lesbians within the movement in the 1970s and ’80s, lesbians were deciding whether or not they wanted to take part in another movement that was, at that point, largely white and male. Of course, these conflicts were not resolved all at once. Williams), who has to find his role as an activist while fighting against his ostracization from the gay community as a black man and challenging the unchecked racism of the burgeoning gay movement. The third activist When We Rise centers on is Ken Jones (played by Jonathan Majors and Michael K. McKenzie and later by Guy Pearce) works within the burgeoning gay rights movement, and though he is also an activist for women’s causes, there is distrust among female activists of any man, despite his sexual identity. Roma's friend Cleve Jones (played first by Austin P. The early episodes of When We Rise - which aired in four parts this week, the last of which premieres tonight - do an admirable job of encompassing many of these battles within the activism community, though it'd be impossible to touch on every intersection within it. ![]() ![]() I’m like, OK, fine, civil rights, racism, the women’s movement, and lesbian and gay rights - it has to all come together.” “But as I saw it, it was really part of the struggle. “Was I gonna come out and therefore make that part of my movement work, or was I just going to eat it and say, 'I won’t have lovers but I’ll work in the women’s movement'?” Guy recalled over the phone. Guy - who's played by Skeggs as a young woman, then by Mary-Louise Parker when she’s older - told BuzzFeed News that she feels like When We Rise captures the struggle she and many other lesbians faced at the time. I can’t carry this, too.”įeeling like there's a choice to be made between women’s rights and gay identity might seem foreign to a modern audience, but it was a reality for the real Roma Guy, particularly after National Organization of Women president Betty Friedan called growing lesbian visibility a “lavender menace” that would undermine feminists' goals. “There are rights for women we need to fight for now,” Roma (Emily Skeggs) tells Diane (Fiona Dourif). She can’t have a real relationship with another woman at this point in time, she explains. When viewers first meet Roma Guy in the ABC miniseries When We Rise, it’s 1972 and she’s gently pushing away her lover, Diane.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |