Queer Joy as Resistance
The Radical Act of Smiling Back
We are tired.
Open any social media app or scroll through the news, and the weight hits you immediately. It is heavy. It is constant. For the LGBTQ+ community, the narrative presented to us is often one of struggle. We see legislation targeting our rights. We see statistics about mental health crises. We see stories of violence and exclusion. History books, when they mention us at all, usually focus on the persecution we have faced or the riots we had to start just to survive.
This focus isn’t wrong. The pain is real. The trauma is real. Ignoring it would be dangerous and irresponsible. But there is a distinct danger in allowing trauma to become the only story we tell. When we define ourselves solely by the scars we bear, we inadvertently do the work of our oppressors for them. We reduce our vibrant, colorful, chaotic lives down to a single dimension of suffering.
That is why joy is not just a feeling. It is a strategy.
When the world expects you to shrink, taking up space is an act of defiance. When the world expects you to hide, being seen is a revolution. And when the world gives you every reason to cry, finding a reason to laugh is the most powerful weapon you can wield.
The Exhaustion of the Tragic Narrative
Think about the movies and books you consumed growing up. If there was a queer character, what happened to them? Did they get the big romance? Did they get to retire to a cottage by the sea? Or were they the victim? The warning sign? The tragedy that spurred the straight protagonist into action?
For decades, the “bury your gays” trope taught us that our stories end in sorrow. This cultural programming seeps into our bones. It tells us that happiness is fragile and temporary, while tragedy is inevitable. We start waiting for the other shoe to drop. We become hyper-vigilant, scanning every room and every conversation for the threat we know is coming.
This vigilance keeps us safe, yes. It is a survival mechanism honed over years of navigating a world that wasn’t built for us. But you cannot heal when you are constantly bracing for impact. You cannot grow when you are stuck in survival mode.
Healing requires safety. It requires the nervous system to come down from that high alert state. And surprisingly, one of the quickest ways to signal safety to the body is through joy.
Reframing Joy
We need to be clear about what we mean by joy. We are not talking about toxic positivity. This isn’t about pasting a smile over a wound and pretending it doesn’t hurt. That is just another form of repression.
True queer joy is grittier than that. It is the laughter that bubbles up at a funeral. It is the joke whispered in the back of a courtroom. It is the drag queen tripping on her heel and turning it into a dip. It is resilient. It acknowledges the darkness but refuses to let the darkness have the final word.
Joy is the fuel that keeps the engine of resistance running. Burnout is a very real threat in activism and advocacy. You cannot fight for your rights effectively if you are running on empty fumes of anger and despair. Anger is a spark, but it burns out quickly. Joy is the slow-burning coal that keeps the fire going through the long, cold nights.
Audre Lorde wrote about the erotic as power, talking about that deep, internal sense of satisfaction and fullness. That is what we are chasing. The feeling of being fully alive in a body that society tries to police.
The Politics of a Good Time
There is a reason why authoritarian regimes hate art, music, and parties. They hate them because people who are dancing are not afraid. People who are creating are not compliant.
When we gather in community spaces, whether it is a nightclub, a bookstore, or a potluck in someone’s living room, we are building a microcosm of the world we want to live in. We are practicing freedom.
These spaces are laboratories. In them, we experiment with new ways of relating to one another. We dismantle the rigid hierarchies of gender and power that dictate the outside world. We create chosen families that offer the support our biological families might not have been able to provide.
Consider the history of ballroom culture. Black and brown queer people created a world of opulence and grandeur out of nothing. They celebrated each other when the world outside spit on them. They created a hierarchy of houses and mothers and fathers based on care and mentorship, not blood and money. That wasn’t just a party. That was political structure. That was a survival system wrapped in sequins.
When we celebrate, we are saying that we are worth celebrating. That simple assertion undermines the entire logic of oppression. If we are valuable, if we are beautiful, if we are worthy of love and pleasure, then the laws and prejudices against us make no sense. Joy exposes the absurdity of bigotry.
Finding the Glimmers
Trauma creates triggers. We know this. A sound, a smell, or a tone of voice can snap us back to a moment of pain. But therapy tells us that the opposite is also true. We can look for “glimmers.”
Glimmers are those tiny, micro-moments of safety and connection. It is the sun hitting your face in the morning. It is a text from a friend that makes you ugly laugh. It is the perfect cup of coffee. It is seeing an older queer couple holding hands in the grocery store.
For a community dealing with collective trauma, hunting for glimmers is a form of collective therapy. We have to train our brains to notice the good just as sharply as we notice the bad.
This is difficult work. The brain is wired to prioritize threats because that keeps us alive. Prioritizing pleasure feels frivolous. It feels like we are letting our guard down. But we have to risk it. We have to risk being happy.
Start small.
Maybe it is wearing an outfit that makes you feel euphoric, even if you are just sitting at home. Maybe it is dancing in the kitchen while you cook dinner. Maybe it is reading a book where the queer characters just solve a mystery or fly a spaceship and nobody dies of a hate crime.
These small acts accumulate. They build a reservoir of resilience. When the next wave of bad news hits, and it will, you will have something to draw from. You will remember what you are fighting for. You aren’t just fighting against the bad things. You are fighting for the kitchen dancing. You are fighting for the coffee with friends. You are fighting for the right to be boring and happy.
Connection as a Balm
Isolation is the goal of trauma. It makes you feel like you are the only person in the world who feels this way. It locks you in a room with your own demons.
Queer joy shatters isolation. It is inherently communal. Even when we experience it alone, we are usually connecting to a piece of culture or art created by someone like us.
We heal through witnessing each other. There is a profound relief in being in a room where you do not have to explain yourself. You don’t have to justify your pronouns or explain the history of your rights or tone down your mannerisms. You can just be.
That relaxation is healing. It allows the cortisol levels to drop. It allows the muscles to unclench. In those moments of connection, we remind each other that we are real. We validate each other’s existence.
We also heal by mentoring others. There is a specific kind of joy that comes from being the person you needed when you were younger. Seeing a young trans kid living their life with a confidence you didn’t have at that age is healing. It heals the inner child in you. It tells you that the fight was worth it.
The Future We Are Building
We often talk about the future in terms of avoiding catastrophe. We want to stop climate change. We want to stop fascism. We want to stop the erosion of rights.
But what do we want to start?
We need a vision of the future that is compelling. We need to be able to imagine a world where queer people don’t just survive, but thrive. We need to imagine a world where our joy is the baseline, not the exception.
Speculative fiction writers and artists are doing this work. They are dreaming up futures where gender is fluid and limitless, where love is boundless, where community is the primary currency. We need to read these stories. We need to watch these movies. We need to populate our imagination with images of liberation.
If we can’t imagine it, we can’t build it.
So, dreaming becomes a duty. Fantasizing about a good life is part of the work.
Permission to Rest
Part of this resistance is also refusing the capitalist demand for constant productivity. Queer bodies have often been viewed as disposable labor or commodities. Reclaiming our bodies for our own pleasure and rest is a rejection of that system.
It is okay to take a nap. It is okay to turn off the phone. It is okay to say no to an event because you just want to stay in and watch bad reality TV.
You do not have to be an activist twenty-four hours a day. You do not have to be a representative for your entire community every time you leave the house. You are allowed to be messy. You are allowed to be tired. You are allowed to be selfish with your time.
Rest is not the absence of work. It is the maintenance of the machine. If you break, the movement loses you. We need you whole. We need you functioning. We need you around for the long haul.
The Ripple Effect
When you choose joy, you give other people permission to do the same. It is contagious.
Think about the first time you saw someone living their truth unapologetically. Maybe it was a musician, a teacher, or a random person on the street. Do you remember how it felt? It felt like a door opening.
You can be that door for someone else. You don’t have to give a speech. You don’t have to run for office. You just have to live. You just have to find what makes your light shine and let people see it.
It creates a ripple effect. One person laughs, and another person remembers that laughing is allowed. One person wears the dress, and another person feels brave enough to buy the lipstick. We pull each other up.
Conclusion
The world is hard right now. There is no denying that. The challenges we face are significant and the opposition is loud.
But we are louder.
Our laughter is louder than their shouting. Our music is louder than their rhetoric. Our love is louder than their hate.
Do not let them steal your joy. It is your birthright. It is your medicine. It is the ground you stand on while you fight.
So, find your glimmer today. Text your friend. Put on your favorite song. Wear the bright colors. Eat the good food.
Be happy. It drives them crazy.
If you are looking for a therapist to help you get there, feel free to fill out the contact form below. I’ll be in touch as soon as I’m able.
