Research has been lacking in exploring the implications of sexual identity on public leadership and in using discursive approaches to develop gender and public leadership literature. This study utilizes queer analysis to explore how six nonheterosexual public leaders in the Philippines negotiate their leadership identities and practices vis-à-vis a collectivistic, religious, and heteronormative culture. Interview accounts yield a reimagining of public leadership as a desire for intimacy with the people. Embedded in heteronormativity, this unspoken conception positions nonheterosexual subjects as unfit to participate in public leadership spaces, compelling them to make concessions to be allowed entry into the field. Such concessions, however, do not preclude the emergence of queer public leaderships that eventually enable a leadership praxis grounded on intersectionality. These findings reveal possibilities for a radical liberation of leaders and followers from interlocking structures of oppression.

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Despite its significant ramifications on promoting youth political competence, literature has paid little attention to parent–adolescent political disagreement and the relational dynamics underlying the phenomenon. Our study deploys positioning analysis to examine how Filipino adolescents navigate conflict-filled parent–adolescent political discussions, especially those in relation to President Rodrigo Duterte’s leadership. Interview accounts yield three storylines characterizing political disagreement episodes among participants and their parents: a control struggle storyline, a credibility contest storyline and a moral scramble storyline. Each storyline consists of adolescents and parents adopting competing positions to gain discursive advantages related to their developmental, rational or moral standing. They leverage these advantages towards influencing political opinions articulated within the family space. We conclude with a discussion of our findings vis-à-vis the need to reconceptualize political disagreement as a dynamic process, the interface between micro-level parent–adolescent political disagreement and macro-level sociopolitical discourses and the functions political disagreement serves in adolescent development.