Wilson Cruz on How Fellow Travelers Takes Viewers on a Journey from Shame to Pride (Guest Essay)

The ‘My So-Called Life’ star writes to PEOPLE about the Showtime series’ lesson for the LGBTQ+ community to “share who we are, who we love and our humanity” to “inspire others to do the same”

Since he starred in My so-called life, Wilson Cruz was a force for change. Cruz, who was the first openly gay actor, who will play an openly gay character on the US TV show, has spent nearly three decades fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, previously serving as the national spokesperson and director of entertainment industry partnerships for GLAAD, and now as chairman of the board of GLSEN.

In the Apple TV+ documentary series Visible: on television, on which Cruz was an executive producer, the 49-year-old actor explored the LGBTQ+ movement in America and the influence of television.

“I wanted to pay tribute to … the power of what television can do to open people’s minds,” Cruz said PEOPLE in 2020

Now in an exclusive guest essay for PEOPLE, Cruz, currently acting Star Trek: Discoverytalks about the importance of Showtime’s series Companions, how mainstream gay romantic drama harkens back to darker periods of LGBTQ+ history, and how lessons from the past can be powerful tools for educating today’s young people.

Wilson Cruz has been advocating for LGBTQ+ rights for almost 30 years since he starred in ‘My So-Called Life.’

Denis Ilić

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“It took many years of regurgitating all the filth I was taught about myself and half-believed before I could walk the Earth as if I had a right to be here.” — James Baldwin While watching Showtime’s stunning new limited series Companions, based on the historical novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon, I was reminded of these words of James Baldwin. The effort to reject the shame that we are taught about ourselves as Queer people, and especially as Queer people of color, is the work of every single person born with the knowledge that they are different. The overarching theme of the LGBTQ+ rights movement has been to be fully seen and respected as human beings.

Throughout the series Companions, we follow the lives of several different LGBTQ+ characters. Beginning in the 50’s with the Lavender Scare during the Army/McCarthy hearings to the 80’s at the height of the AIDS epidemic, one character after another finds themselves in an internal struggle between the shame they are taught to feel about themselves and the pride and love they inherently know and feel as Queer people. No one is born into this world with a sense of self-hatred. That kind of debilitating self-hatred is carefully taught to suppress and control a segment of society that has historically been vilified and oppressed simply for being who they are or what they love. These are lessons based on ignorance and fear and lessons taught for the sole purpose of control. To quote Bell Hooks: “Shame is one of the most profound tools of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy, because shame produces trauma, and trauma often produces paralysis.”

The love affair of Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey was put to the test in New Companions Trailer

IN Companions, we witness the ever-present shame that our heroes face, whether at school and at home as children and/or in culture, church or at work, as adults, we see how this shame manifests internally, externally and interpersonally because it penetrates the most tender and intimate moments. Embarrassment is and was the point.

Since the 1950s, when it was common practice to literally shame people who didn’t conform to socially acceptable gender roles by literally beating them into submission, or by “raiding” any place we gathered, inviting the press to o it reports and prints the names and addresses of those arrested for the sole purpose of shaming those individuals and anyone else who thought to gather in the future… until the ’80s and ’90s when, as AIDS decimated our community, we were either ignored , or worse, blamed and shamed for their own deaths, because if you can shame a community and make them believe they deserve to be shamed, you can control them.

So it’s no wonder that when the modern LGBTQ rights movement began, our elders seized on the word PRIDE to begin deprogramming all the lies and fears that had been instilled in us. It is ironic and yet historically accurate that in Companionsit’s Noah J. Ricketts’ character Frankie, a black, gender-nonconforming drag queen who, despite being the most marginalized of the core characters, fully embodies this spirit of rebellion, determination, and Queer joy.

‘Fellow Travelers’ stars Matt Bomer, Jonathan Bailey, Allison Williams, Jelani Alladin and Noah J. Ricketts.

Kurt Iswarienko/SHOWTIME

Frankie stands tall and firm in their humanity and rejects all attempts to shame them. Frankie and the generation of Queer elders who took to the streets during and after the Stonewall Riots realized that the first step to true liberation must begin with ourselves. Rejecting that indoctrination was at the heart of our struggle and it is an ongoing effort, even today… perhaps especially today.

It would be so easy to watch Companions today and think about how horrible life was for LGBTQ+ people back then, but know this: when Christian nationalists like the Speaker of the House of Representatives [Mike] Johnson, Governor [Ron] DeSantis and the most recent ex-president — and the front-runner for the Republican nomination for President of the United States — talk about making America great again, that’s what they’re about. They are actively working to turn back the clock to a time when shame kept us in closets, when series like this weren’t even allowed on our screens, a time when our relationships and our humanity were discarded, a time when people, young and old, were easier took their own lives but envisioned a life where they could be who they are, love who they love and live up to their potential.

The fact is, they know what we do: when we are brave and proud and share who we are, who we love, and our humanity, we inspire others to do the same. It is through this education of society and ourselves that we have been able to achieve the tremendous change we have seen in the last 50 years and shed the shame that was used to control us.

Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer star in the movie ‘Travellers’.

Courtesy of SHOWTIME

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Companions, although fictional, is a historical drama that shines a light on a very real, tense and harrowing time in our history that is rarely talked about and that very few people are aware of. Christian nationalists also know the power of learning this history, which is why we see such a concerted effort to erase us from the history being taught, to burn our books and censor our teachers, despite overwhelming evidence of benefits for all students, but especially LGBTQ+ students. and young people. Even attempting to erase and censor sends a message to LGBTQ+ students and their heterosexual cisgender peers that these topics are taboo and should only be discussed in whispers.

Through our world-renowned research over three decades, we at GLSEN consistently find that LGBTQ+ youth with access to education about LGBTQ+ people, history or issues report improved well-being and educational outcomes, including a greater sense of belonging at school and a reduced likelihood of truancy because they felt insecure. An inclusive curriculum that allows our youth to know who they are, see themselves as a reflection of their history, and learn the lessons of our past allows us to raise generations of young people who are never paralyzed by shame and who are able to walk the Earth with PRIDE.

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Companions airs Sundays at 9pm ET on Showtime.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education