Some of the most important lessons I’ve learned have come from surprising places. I learn more from candid, quotidian moments than the most esoteric, theoretical lectures. It’s important to engage classrooms that exist remotely, virtually, asynchronously and publicly as valid, rigorous and legitimate because it invites a new, diverse group of people to engage information as scholars, experts and leaders. As more and more credible knowledge and research is hidden behind paywalls, it’s important for critical thinkers to acknowledge diverse places where theories can be constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed. Lately I’ve learned a lot in surprising places and this blog post hopes to honor one of those sites, television, as a space to learn important lessons about humanity, justice, empathy and inclusion.
Last week I started watching the final season of the hit FX show, Pose. I know I’m a little late but I love being able to watch the whole season at once. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this season and was disappointed the series was coming to a close so soon. Pose meant so much to me in season 1 & 2 because it distinctly focused on the experiences of queer and transgender people of color in New York City, my home.
It told a history that had been erased from my history textbooks and assuaged my curiosity for epistemic justice. Epistemic justice asks thinkers to consider who we deem credible, what information we deem knowledge, who gets canonized and who gets erased. If queer and transgender communities of color have fought valiantly against the state for recognition, inclusion and equity, why have their struggles against interlocking structures of domination been removed from American educational curricula and thus the American consciousness? If we celebrate the “revolutionary patriots,” that battled Great Britain for recognition and liberation, why do we discard the histories and legacies of communities within our borders who do the same? These questions have echoed in my mind as numerous anti-critical race theory and anti-trans legislature have been circulating the state legislatures including Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, Florida and more. As American viewers watch actors recreate battles of the 80s and 90s on television, we’ve been pulled into yet another epistemic and legal battle over trans people’s ability to exist, over whether Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian American, queer, (trans)*, non-male and Disabled histories can be taught in schools. This is an important question because it asks us who national heroes are, what values we share and what progress looks like.
I came to the final season of Pose with all of this in mind. While the season had countless emotional and engaging moments, I want to highlight and unpack four important takeaways from the show. First, the AIDS crisis deserves more attention as American history. If more schools taught about the horrors of this pandemic, more people would’ve been more prepared to understand the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, queer and trans people are deserving of public declarations of love and marriage protection; they shouldn’t have to justify their family structure. Third, ballroom culture is an important cultural site where queer and trans people of color engage complex gender discourses. They are important places because they serve as conduits for living out new possibilities. There is so right insight that people can learn about gender, sexuality and sex from the ballroom scene. Lastly, there are so many stories of solidarity, mutual aid and heroism that have died along with our queer and trans elders who died of AIDS, we need to find ways to unearth their contributions and honor them for being. I explore these themes in greater detail below:
- The AIDS crisis often goes unacknowledged in American history. We rarely learn about the millions of people who died from 1981 through the 1990s. As a nation, we don’t take time to collectively remember all of the people who were lost. We also don’t take time to reflect on the stigma and racialized homophobia/transphobia that led to disproportionate numbers of queer and trans people of color to be kicked out from their homes, forced into sex work and addiction, then excluded from clinical trials. We don’t talk about the ways public institutions dismissed the severity of AIDS and belabored on offering comprehensive support because they felt it only impacted Haitians, queer and trans communities, sex workers and IV drug users, who they felt deserved to die or be punished for who they were. Since we don’t take the time to teach, reflect or mourn these moments, many Americans will never understand the extreme sense of loss, pain and betrayal that queer people, especially queer people of color feel towards the U.S.
- This show revealed the numerous efforts of queer communities made invisible due to homophobic and transphobic stigma. Many discussions around queer people and family are centered around loss, trauma and violence. However, POSE helped to reveal the ways queer and trans people come together, leveraging kinship ties to create chosen families where they are support one another in numerous ways. Oftentimes these family bonds are scrutinized and deemed “fake,” but when considering how families function, it’s important to recognize who supports you and acknowledge those bonds as real, sacred and life-sustaining. This season reminded me to honor the sacred kinship ties that queer and trans people of color make to resist their marginalization, isolation and ostracization. This is especially important when we recount the stories of people who died alone because their lovers, house mothers and siblings weren’t considered “real family.” When we impose rigid notions of how a family can be composed, we disappear and inconvenience real families whose dedication is about more than blood, but rather about loyalty, support and acceptance. If more queer and trans people’s family and kinship bonds were respected, we could love our queer siblings in life and in death by honoring their name, gender, pronouns and gender expression as they would like it. Pose gave us a taste of this painful history in ways that uncover thousands of hidden families, a passionate and transformative organizing community and community mutual aid to support those most vulnerable. Pose served history, it served drama and it served a rare realness that we often don’t get on tv.
- The wedding scene in Pose left me in tears, there were so many beautiful aspects of the wedding. The moment that stands out to me most was seeing how much Angel’s wedding meant to the greater trans community. Elektra explained it best, ballrooms are a space where queer and trans people could experience liberative possibility and expansive ontologies in ways they are denied in mainstream spaces. For many of these women at that time, the ballroom was the only space where they could have the experience of being publicly desired or being a wife, a part of a family, a professional – even their true self. What’s really magical about the ballroom is that these roles are not just performances or costumes, in fact, Blanca reminds her children that when they performed at balls they were training, not pretending. They were scenario-building real lives as wives, nurses, entrepreneurs, models and more. What’s so special about this moment is that many of these queer and (trans)* people had been discarded by their communities as “too different” and “too flamboyant,” but once they had a house mother and siblings that accepted them and supported them for who they are, they could breathe possibility into their potential and grow. These catalyzing dynamics provides one example of how real these families are and how family support translates to real life success for queer and trans people. These people who were once discarded by biological families are met with unconditional love, acceptance, freedom paired with support and high expectations with their chosen family and house members. Pose does an excellent job of showcasing how acceptance, support and safe community spaces helped these women and queer people disrobe themselves from the stigma placed on them and rise in who they are. It was beautiful to see this step and gives me hope that more queer and trans people of color, passing or not, can be loved for all they are.
- One of the most powerful moments for me was watching Pray Tell and Ricky’s love story unfold. Pray, a older Black gay man living with AIDS, fell into a deep depression after attending many consecutive funerals of people, friends and peers who died in the AIDS crisis. Unable to cope with insurmountable grief, Pray falls into alcoholism. In his battle for recovery and sobriety, Pray loses everything including his relationship to Ricky and his role in ballroom as a judge. As he starts to rebuild his life, he’s dealt another blow because his AIDS progresses and he begins dying. Luckily, as he nears the end, he’s able to get on a clinical trial for the HIV cocktail. The clinical trial had some promising results; unfortunately, viewers learn the clinical trials’ subjects were overwhelmingly White. In this moment, we’re able to see that while millions of people were dying around the world and in our backyards, a fighting chance at life was only offered to a small, mostly white sample.
This epiphany is an important moment because it shows the importance of an intersectional analytic to see the ways racial inequity harms Black and brown communities by excluding minorities from potentially life saving clinical trials. Racist attitudes also hurt science because without a representative sample, scientists are unable to know how the drug will work for the general population which is racially and ethnically diverse. Pray Tell was added to the clinical trial late because he was able to leverage a preexisting relationship and bypass standard recruiting practices. Once on the medication, his recovery was astonishing. As a result, he immediately began organizing so all people could have access to these life saving medications. He makes an important statement that he’s not going to keep quiet because he was lucky because every life lost so far mattered just as much as his and should be valued and protected equally. Everyone should be able to benefit from life saving healthcare technologies as soon as possible, however, that was not the case. Communities of color were not well represented in trials and were still dying at pandemic rates while many of their white counterparts were given a new lease on a full life. This especially hits home because Pray Tell’s partner, Ricky, is HIV positive and was developing lesions. This was a heart wrenching conundrum; imagine the weight of knowing between you and your lover, only one of you will be lucky enough to receive life-saving medicines. (Imagine having to carry the survivor’s guilt that you’re alive because your partner is dead.) Pray Tell, who is much older than his partner Ricky, is forced into a choice that he shouldn’t have had to make. When presented with the choice, Pray Tell chooses to give his medicine to Ricky, knowing it seals his fate as a martyr. It’s a devastating and deeply symbolic end for a character who believes every human life has value that should be protected, acknowledged and honored. The scene ends with a recreation of ACT UP’s Ashes Action protest where Blanca and mourners who’d lost loved ones to AIDS scatter’s Pray and their loved ones’ ashes at the White House. This was one of the most powerful moments I’d ever seen on television and it’s a real moment that happened in 1992. I was incredibly shocked that as a Queer-American that these protests are not taught as part of civil rights history, which is why I’m committed to sharing that information here on my blog.
There were so many moments in the series that placed the Pose drama in a league of its own. This series did some thing that no other show about queer and trans communities have done. Not only did Pose showcase the injustices at play in the day-to-day struggle of trans and queer communities of color, it also shows the resilient joy and creativity of these communities. Pose wasn’t just about putting queer and trans communities of color into the traditional American romantic drama, it meaningfully displayed multiple histories, struggles and grassroots activism by staying true to the realities of queer and trans people during the 80s and 90s. Pose was about the importance of family; it reminds us that it’s OK to be different. It also reminds us that we lost almost an entire generation of queer and trans elders and we need to do our best to remember them and honor their contributions to our freedom. As a queer and gender non conforming person, I’m lucky to be able to sit at the classroom of queer and trans leaders like Janet Mock, MJ Rodriguez, Indya Moore, Billy Porter and learn from my elders and ancestors transgressed the very boundaries that I transgress every day. This show gave me the gift of community, history and dignity; it healed a wound of epistemic violence that was planted by cis-hetero norms and queer and trans erasure.
The last thing that I’ll say is that, Pose did a really good job of examining the process of multiple marginalization while centering humanness and human desire. People often dismiss queer and trans peoples’ desire accepted and supported as the “gay agenda” or with violent phrases like “love the sinner; hate the sin,” but this season didn’t exceptionally good job of showing how human it is to want to be accepted, valued, loved and included. During Angel’s last meeting with her father, she realizes he will not see past his transphobia to see her and that it’s mostly his loss although she does desire his acceptance. She‘s able to see that she doesn’t need his approval because she has the unconditional love, acceptance and recognition of her house mothers, fiancé and house members. She takes this rejection as a way to remind herself what it means to be loving, and what it means to be family. She grows as a partner and mother by learning from his mistakes and vowing never to repeat them. She’s received everything she never received from her dad from a family who understands her and accepts her for who she is. Therefore, she will not turn her back on her family like he’s turned his back on her. She learns how to listen and love rather than dismiss and discard. Angel’s interaction with her dad and final revelations model ways to honor sacred parts of queer and trans folx’ identity.
Pose left us with many gifts but I’ll end by acknowledging two. They did an amazing job of showing viewers the importance of public reflection of national struggles in our history. They also demanded that as we re-envision traditions to include more diversity, it’s important to be inclusive, just and humanizing.