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

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.

Keywords:

• LGBTQ youth services
• communal love
• power-with
• transformative public administration

Notes

1 While Pose is set in the late 1980s, it is important to note that these houses still exist today. The “kiki scene” in New York City offers LGBTQ homeless youth (mostly Black and Latinx) refuge from surrogate family structures that promise youth-focused leadership and radical acceptance (Matthes & Salzman, 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maren B. Trochmann

Maren Trochmann is an Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston where she teaches in the MPA Program and the Political Science Department. Her research interests include social equity, the ethical and constitutional foundations of public service, and public sector human resource management.

Judith L. Millesen

Judith Millesen is a professor and MPA director at the College of Charleston. Her research makes a link between theory and practice and is focused on nonprofit administration and capacity building with special interests in board governance and community philanthropy.