“The world wants us dead”:stigma and the social construction of health in Pose

Through its portrayals of the intersectional identities of race and gender divergence, the FX series Pose illustrates how social structures fail marginalized communities as a disciplinary function of hegemony and perpetuate a biomedical model of health that serves to reinforce health disparities. For this study, researchers took a critical cultural rhetorical approach to the series through the lens of the social ecological model and biomedical model, to deconstruct hegemonic discourses of power present within medical practices. This paper situates Pose as an artifact that condemns the cultural practices of the marginalization and erasure of transgender communities, demonstrating how the show confronts the mechanisms of hegemonic power by exposing the cissexist stigmatization within the healthcare establishment. Through the exposure of the failings of the social ecological model with the biomedical model, Pose exposes the discrimination and stigma inherent within dominant forms of healthcare as they persist today.