Joy as an Act of War
The Power of Trans/Queer Joy as Resistance
Joy as an Act of War
The Power of Trans/Queer Joy as Resistance
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The Weight of Survival, The Fire of Trans Joy
They want us beaten down. Exhausted. Just surviving.
They want us too afraid to laugh too loudly, too wary to hold hands in public, too drained to imagine a future beyond this moment. They want us so consumed by the fight to exist that we forget why we fight in the first place.
But here’s what they don’t understand: joy is not a luxury. Joy is a fucking weapon.
In a world that tells us we shouldn’t exist, to wake up each day and take up space as our full, untamed, selves is an act of defiance.
When we love ourselves, when we celebrate one another, when we dance, when we refuse to be small—we are burning something into history that cannot be erased.
Joy is the thing they cannot take from us unless we let them. And we won’t.
The History of Queer Joy as Rebellion
Joy has always been at the heart of trans and queer resistance.
Stonewall wasn’t just bricks and broken glass—it was drag queens and butches, lovers, and friends, a community that had already built something worth protecting. ACT UP didn’t just fight—they threw raves in the face of death, kissed on the steps of the White House, danced under banners that read “We Will Live.”
Even in times darker than these, we’ve gathered in bars, in bookstores, in basements, in secret corners of the world to be authentic—to laugh, to celebrate, to love without shame. That’s how we survive. That’s how we win.
Because when they make laws to erase us, when they tell us we are unnatural, when they call us broken or perverse—we laugh. We love. And we build lives they swore we could never have.
Joy in the Body, Joy in the Becoming
To be trans/nonbinary is to know what it means to step into your own skin and finally feel at home (i.e.: stop dissociating for once in your life).
Not all of us get there easily, (I didn’t get there until later in my life) but when we do—when we catch a glimpse of our radically authentic selves in the mirror, when someone calls us by the right name, when dysphoria gives way to euphoria—it is nothing short of sacred.
This world is fucking determined on making us feel like our bodies are wrong, like our rejection of the colonization of gender is mental illness. But we know the truth: The weight of freshly cut hair falling to the floor. A voice, low or high, that finally sounds like home. A lover’s hands tracing the shape of you, seeing you as you want to be seen.
These are victories.
Finding Joy When the World Feels Hopeless
Some days, joy feels out of reach. Some days, it’s all survival. The headlines don’t stop. The attacks keep coming. People we love are in danger. How do we hold joy when the world is falling apart?
We make joy small when we have to. A song that feels like freedom. A hot cup of coffee in a moment of quiet. A note from a friend that reminds you why you’re still here.
We make joy big when we can. We throw trans pride picnics in states where they tell us not to. We flood dance floors and kiss under neon lights and walk hand-in-hand down streets where they never wanted us to exist in the first place.
We find joy in each other. The way another trans person looks at you and just knows. The way we hold space for each other when no one else does. The way we make each other feel real.
And when we can’t find joy at all, we hold on to the fact that we will again.
Joy as an Act of War
If they want us silent, we sing.
If they want us invisible, we shine.
If they want us afraid and ashamed, we find reasons to love our selves anyway.
Joy is not weakness. Joy is armor. It keeps us alive, keeps us whole, keeps us from letting them turn us into ghosts. We are not ghosts. We are not shadows. We are not a phase, a mistake, a moment in history that will pass.
We burn bright. And we are never going out.
We are the revolution.
In Solidarity,
—Connor Wolfe
(They/Them) Founder Wayfarer Magazine & Wayfarer Books
Connor Wolfe (they/them) is a writer, publisher, and advocate whose work spans over two decades and fourteen titles, originally published under their dead name. Their literary contributions have earned six Pushcart Prize nominations, the Gold Nautilus Medal for Poetry, multiple Foreword Review Book Awards, and the Nautilus Silver Medal in 2022. Their innovative approach to independent publishing led to two terms on the Board of Directors for the Independent Book Publishers Association, a TEDx talk at Yale University, and a degree in Abnormal Psychology at Harvard University through grant programs.
Wolfe is a lifelong advocate for mental health, trans rights, and radical authenticity—the act of breaking silence to reclaim power. After their TEDx Talk in 2018, they stepped into national conversations on mental illness, trauma, and the intersection of art and survival. Holding a degree in Abnormal Psychology, their work examines how creativity and mental illness shape one another. Their studies in Photojournalism under Samantha Appleton sharpened their ability to bear witness—to capture the unspoken, the unseen, the truths too often buried.
In 2024, Wolfe volunteered in the Collections Department of the Museum of Anthropology at Ghost Ranch, assisting in the preparation of sacred objects for repatriation under the newly updated Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. After wintering along the foothills of Cerro Pedernal, they are now traveling through the San Juan Mountains with their three-legged black cat, momo—documenting, writing, and remaining in motion, as all revolutionaries must.
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