Transforming power with Pose: Centering love in state-sponsored services for LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness

Abstract

Abstract The disproportionate numbers of LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness presents moral and ethical dilemmas, carries high emotional and social costs for those without safe, adequate housing, and impacts society at-large. This paper argues that rather than traditional, power-over responses that perpetuate oppression, ostracization, and feelings of powerlessness experienced by young people at multiple intersections of marginalization, public service approaches can foster power-with. The ballroom culture captured in the television series Pose provides critical insight to creating systemic change and justice from a starting point of communal love and power-with. By rejecting the politics of domination in favor of the politics of love, these approaches reaffirm self-efficacy and agency, and ultimately lead toward justice.